[Qgis-user] Converting Alberta Township System

[Ramon Andiñach]

On 20/05/2014, at 22:42 , Brent Fraser wrote:

> Michael,
> 
>     The Alberta Township System can be a pain to relate to geographic coordinates. While it is a survey system (or land parcel definition system) defined by physical monuments placed on the ground, it is often just "estimated" using the original rules used in laying out the monuments back in the late 1800s.
> 
>     The official source of the data is http://www.altalis.com/products/property/ats.html.  While the polygon file is provided at a cost ($1000), a text file of survey corners is available for free.  But joining the corners into polygons is not for the faint of heart.

Brent and Michael,

Out of curiosity (because I'm about as far away as Phil is and have no idea what an ATS polygon file should look like) do either of you know what that text file looks like?

I suppose my question is are the points for each node on a quarter shown separately (like example A)?
or is it more messy where unique nodes are recorded, but shared between polygons (like example B)? 
or something else?

If it's the first one, I've probably got something at work that could do most of the heavy lifting on it for you.
If it's one of the others then it would be more involved.

-ramon.

Example A

_________
| 2 | 1 |
|___|___|

x	y	z	quarter1
x	y	z	quarter1
x	y	z	quarter1
x	y	z	quarter1
x	y	z	quarter2
x	y	z	quarter2
x	y	z	quarter2
x	y	z	quarter2

Example B

_____________
| 2 | 3 | 4 |
|___|___|___|
| 9 | 1 | 5 |
|___|___|___|
| 8 | 7 | 6 |
|___|___|___|
x	y	z	quarter1, quarter2. quarter3, quarter9
x	y	z	quarter1, quarter3, quarter4, quarter5
x	y	z	quarter1, quarter5, quarter6, quarter7 
x	y	z	quarter1, quarter7, quarter8, quarter9