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Problem with spTransform en +towgs84 ?

5 messages · Roger Bivand, Agustin Lobo

#
Hi!

Might it be that spTransform is not taking the +towgs84 string into account?
I have:
[1] " +proj=utm +zone=31 +ellps=intl +units=m +no_defs +towgs84=-87,-98,-121"

and do:
Then, in QGIS, with reprojection on the fly activated, the 2 vectors
are not coincident.
Instead, a polsfl1_1000lonlatv2 made from the original polsfl1_1000
shapefile in QGIS, is coincident.

As there are 2 different programs here, I'm not positive of my diagnostic. But
I think there is a problem with spTransform

Thanks

Agus
#
On Tue, 21 Sep 2010, Agustin Lobo wrote:

            
Could you please provide links to screen shots and input and output data 
objects, as well as sessionInfo() output? Which OS is involved, and are 
spTransform() and QGIS using the same PROJ.4 library and metadata. Is your 
input actually:

CRS("+init=epsg:23031 +towgs84=-84,-107,-120")

with the three-parameter datum shift from:

http://www.asprs.org/resources/GRIDS/

of July 2000? Where does yours come from? The way QGIS treats the *.prj 
file is also of interest.

Roger

  
    
1 day later
#
Roger,

I apologize for not including version details etc, here they are:
Loading required package: rgdal
Geospatial Data Abstraction Library extensions to R successfully loaded
Loaded GDAL runtime: GDAL 1.7.2, released 2010/04/23
Path to GDAL shared files: /usr/share/gdal17
Loaded PROJ.4 runtime: Rel. 4.7.1, 23 September 2009
Path to PROJ.4 shared files: (autodetected)
_
platform       i486-pc-linux-gnu
arch           i486
os             linux-gnu
system         i486, linux-gnu
status
major          2
minor          11.1
year           2010
month          05
day            31
svn rev        52157
language       R
version.string R version 2.11.1 (2010-05-31)

Also, I've put SPDF polsfl1_1000 here:
https://sites.google.com/site/openfiles2/home/polsfl1_1000.rda?attredirects=0&d=1

Finally, the towgs84 parameters come from the last paragraph in the pdf
for The Kingdom of Spain (July) listed in the page you mention. (BTW,
I recall having seen
another list with slightly different parameters but cannot find it anymore)
I had to put
the same 3 parameters for the definition of the projection in QGIS
(which qgis does not
do by default, had to define a custom projection to get the datum
shift working). The towgs
parameters are not in the proj file of the shapefile set, at least not
in the ones created
by writeOGR.

Hope this helps to clarify the problem. I'm still not certain that
spTransform is doing anything wrong.

Thanks for your help,

Agus


2010/9/21 Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no>:
#
On Wed, 22 Sep 2010, Agustin Lobo wrote:

            
I think that this is the issue - there does not seem to be a portable way 
of setting the +towgs84= values in the representation used by ESRI for the 
shapefile *.prj file - "DATUM["D_unknown", ..." is what comes out, and 
that is maybe what QGIS tries to respect. Have you tried other drivers?

Roger

  
    
#
I'm getting conflicting results on this issue. I will do more
and more formal testing and will report back.

Agus

2010/9/23 Roger Bivand <Roger.Bivand at nhh.no>: