[postgis-users] Projections and Functions (was Simple question: How to get projected distance?)

[Gustavo Henrique Sberze Ribas]

> If you are not super concerned about accuracy, create a 
> planar project  for your region of interest (CONUS, right?) 
> and use that instead of figuring out the right UTM zone on 
> the fly.  I think there are some nice 
> Lambert parameterizations that do all of CONUS.  You can just 
> insert the 
> relevant definnitions into spatial_ref_sys and go from there.

 
  Paul, what if my region of interest covers the whole world?
Would you be so kind as to elaborate your idea? I'm a bit
confused.


>> One last question - Is this cycle of WGS84 -> UTM -> WGS84 
>> considered best practice i.e. is this the easiest way to 
>> accomplish what I need?  
 
  I don't know if it's the best way, but it's easy and it seems
to work. However I keep asking myself what would happen if
I create a buffer of 1km real close to the border that
delimit a zone, will the Easting and Northing be correctly converted
back to lat/long?

 
>> It would imply that I need to add logic to figure the right 
>> intermediate UTM zone.

  Now that's easy, to get the UTM zone of a lat/long coordinate:

  select (round((X($1)+180)/6 + 0.5))::int

  where $1 is a geometry. The boring thing is to create a table
that will map all UTM's SRID.

  or you could create some functions like 
      toUTM(geometry) 
      toLongLat(geometry) 

 where it assumes the ellipsoid of the given geometry to calculate
the output.

--
Gustavo