Thanks to those that responded to this. Some of you may have interpreted that I was trying to do this using MapInfo Professional, of which, I am aware of the methods to change distance units i.e. Map/Options/Map Units. However, the problem I had was changing the distance units for the users within my company of MapInfo ProViewer v6.0.
I turns out I could not see the "wood for the trees". Even experienced users can jump to conclusions. Each TAB file has it's distance units associated with it, but if you open the TAB file using a workspace which has the following statement:- Set Map CoordSys Earth Projection 8, 12, "m", 117, 0, 0.9996, 500000, 10000000 Center (580647.104,7490647.154) Zoom 0.6214363674 Units "mi" Preserve Zoom Display Zoom XY Units "m" Distance Units "mi" Area Units "sq mi" You get EXACTLY that! It just so happens that the TAB files for this workspace happened to be "km's" and "sq. km's" BUT the workspace had the above XY units statement. Upon showing this workspace to a user of MapInfo ProViewer I could not figure why I was getting "miles". Hence jumping to the wrong conclusion. Workspaces are now edited, ProViewer users happy. Thanks to all those that responded. Say no more! Chris Chris Brown - Cartographer Resources Planning, Hamersley Iron P/L Tel. +61 8 9327 2176 Fax. +61 8 9327 2478 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Steve Carlsson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) from Digital Mapping Solutions (our VAR) responded with a reply to a similar question put to MapInfo Technical Support. Steve's reply said: In response to your customers enquiry I found the following note that may rectify this... Issue: Scale bar not recognizing units other than 'inches' in ProViewer. Discussion: If you load ProViewer onto a machine that does not have MapInfo Pro on it, you are unable to change the scale settings. By using the following command : set map distance units "cm" in the workspace this changed the default setting to read something like: 1 inch = 5 km. The 'km' is being picked up from the distance settings as described in the set map command, but there doesn't seem to be any way to change the '1 inch' setting to a metric value which is what we use. This means that it requires people to calculate the scales (to inches) of the view they want. If MapInfo Pro is already installed on the machine and then ProViewer, Proviewer seems to recognise the Page and Layout units setting under 'System Settings / Preferences'. As a lot of people wont have MI Pro and ProViewer, do you know of any way that we can change this setting to be metric on both sides? Conclusion: I believe you need to copy the MapInfow.prf file from the MapInfo Pro machine where the settings are set correctly onto the Proviewer machine. This should get the units to be set correctly. William Donaldson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), GIS Applications Manager of Data Directions suggested: I haven't used ProViewer for a long time, but if it is a "cut-down MapInfo", you might be able to do the following trick which someone posted to the list in April 2000, regarding a similar theme with MapInfo. The reply is: If you want to set the default in MapInfo so that when you use functions the units are "km" instead of "mi" as in Query --> Select then using "functions" in Assist pick "Area". By default this will be in "sq. mi". Add the following two lines to "startup.wor" which resides in you MapInfo directory. Set Distance Units "km" Set Area Units "sq. km" And now every time MapInfo loads it will run the above commands and the output of functions will be returned in the above metric units. Of course, if a Startup.wor does not exist for Proviewer, you might have to search for another related file. This was also suggested by: Caroline Hilton [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]. Doug Pease, GISO, Livingstone Shire Council [[EMAIL PROTECTED]]: Actually the text / information files that come with PV state the following: 9. ProViewer provides no ability to change distance units. 10. When you open more than one table, ProViewer always maps the.... I could find no reference to changing the distance units in the help file. Original post: We currently are using v6.0 and there appears to be no way of changing the Distance units from miles(mi) to another unit (say km)? You go to the help and it says to change the distance units go to map options but this does not exist? Must be a cut down help from MI Pro. Has anyone else come across this, especially our metric users? If not, I think MapInfo Corp. should rectify this. Whether I get feedback from anyone on not I will chase this up with our reseller (Steve at Digital Mapping "are you listening"?). ---------------------------------------------- This email (including all attachments) may be confidential. If you are not the intended recipient, you must not use the information contained in it. If you have received this email in error, please delete the email and notify the sender. _______________________________________________________________________ List hosting provided by Directions Magazine | www.directionsmag.com | To unsubscribe, send e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and put "unsubscribe MapInfo-L" in the message body.
