Platt River ASCII Digitizer Format


Platt River ASCII Digitizer Format

Developed by Platte River Digital Cartography
A division of the WhiteStar Corporation

Data vendors distribute digitized township and range information in various formats. The Platt River ASCII Digitizer Format, also known as the GeoGraphix Township/Range Digitizer Format, is a comma-delimited ASCII text format for land grid data. The format assumes that township and range data are stored as polygons. This is an excellent and simple way to distribute land grid data as it loads readily into GeoGraphix, Petra, and IHS Spatial Explorer, and is straightforward for writing conversions to other mapping systems. Each township or section polygon is introduced with a header line in the following format:

>,	Each Header line begins with this character followed by a comma.

T	The letter T introduces the township number.

XXX.X	The township number is a floating point number from 1 through 999.5

N,	This character designates township as either N for north or S for south, followed by a comma.

R	The letter R introduces the range number.

YYY.Y	The range number is a floating point number from 1 through 999.5.

W,	This character designates ranges as either W for west or E for East, followed by a comma.

S	The letter S introduces the section number.

ZZZ,	The section number must be an integer. Enter 0 if you wish to designate a township boundary. This number is followed by a comma - if and only if the USGS Meridian code is given in the data.

M	Optional. The letter M introduces the meridian code.

MMM	Optional. The USGS Meridian Code is an integer between 1 and 100.



The header line is then followed by longitude comma latitude coordinate pairs proceeding from the southwesternmost point in the section. Your software should close the last point back to the first point to complete the polygon. Longitude coordinates are not signed. Your software will need to check for the appropriate hemisphere. Longitude coordinates are typically negative in the northwest hemisphere by international convention. Here is a sample of a DAT file for two sections: >,T34.5N,R9.0W,S31,M23 107.884127,37.251482 107.883984,37.249995 107.883006,37.240486 107.900833,37.240481 107.900924,37.249998 107.900925,37.251205 >,T34.5N,R9.0W,S32,M23 107.865926,37.251390 107.865953,37.250006 107.866038,37.241449 107.874909,37.241151 107.883006,37.240486 107.883984,37.249995 107.884127,37.251482

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