[GRASSLIST:4608] A million and a half questions.

[Dave Graham]

I'm an instrumentman on a land surveying crew, whos somewhat familiar with Linux, new to GIS and new to this list, so naturally I've got a million and a half questions.  (A derivative of this email has already been forwarded to the list, a week or so ago; but now I'm actually on the list myself.)

I'm looking for U.S. Land Surveyors who are doing GIS work with GRASS; particularly those working in areas with a public land system -- but most of my questions could be answered by just about anybody on this list, I'd imagine.

The State of Indiana is broken up into Townships (township and range, actually,) and the townships are further broken into Sections.  What I'm considering creating is a GIS in which each Section is a plane; this would create a huge "soccer-ball" of Section-Planes.  A job (say a boundary survey, or a subdivision) within a Section could then be described with x,y coordinates within that plane.

I've got tons of data to work with -- both raster and vector, also in a variety of projections.  What I'm wondering, for starters, is this:  

Say I have a raster image that shows the tax-parcels in a Section.  I can use some freeware utility to make a GeoTIFF out of it, etc.  Say then that I have a DXF vector file of the contours -- but the contour area covers several Sections, and is in State Plane projection.  What would be a good way to make this work in GRASS?  Would I have to import both forms of data in every Section?  Or could I have all of the contours for say, the whole township, in the PERMANENT directory of the location I'm working in?

As you can see, I only have the slightest grasp on what I'm doing -- let alone what I should be doing.

I guess I could also use some feedback on my ideas -- is the Section-plane idea a good one, or would it be better to lump a whole Township or County into one big Location?

  - dave graham


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