Compatability with NAD83/WGS84

Currently openWind projects in UTM with the NAD 27 datum. NAD 27 is (theoretically) a better approximation in North America, but a poor substitute for areas outside the continent. Allowing for the use of NAD 83 or WGS 84 will allow for greater flexibility and will cut down on pre-processing steps since most GIS datasets are in these datums by default.

jackson

Actually, openWind projects in UTM with WGS84 by default. There is support in the software (dormant just now) for NAD27 and NAD83. I will activate that support in the next version. Obviously there is scope for me to add support for many more datums and projections but this has not been a priority to date. You're welcome to push for it to become one

Nick

I'm surprised (and a little concerned) that you say this. I did recollect you saying that openwind uses WGS84, but in using the software I have found that NAD 27 is the only datum that will work--if not in NAD 27 then imported vector layers will not display. In addition, in the "Globals" settings, the mapping projection gives only the choice of GCS_North_American_1927 as the world datum.

For these reasons, I have always used NAD 27 in openwind. Hopefully I have not been mis-projecting layouts this whole time...

It depends... if you are importing your data in UTM then it really doesn't matter what your datum is as long as it is the same throughout. OpenWind does not project, it merely converts or resamples geographic input when it is first loaded. OpenWind does not do datum transformations either so you cannot mix datums in openWind.

Tell me more detail what you've been up to and I can let you know if there is an impact. If you want to give me a call thats ok too.

Nick