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Degree-Minute-Second To Decimal Degree Converter



Someday, working with latitude/longitude in degrees-minutes-seconds will be a bad memory, and everyone will use either decimal degrees or rational metric units like UTM exclusively. But until that happy day, if you need a desktop utility to easily convert from degrees-minutes-seconds to decimal degrees or degrees-minutes (and the opposite direction as well), you may find it useful to have the Degree/Minute/Second Converter from Mentor Software handy. It’s a small download at 307 kB with a full installer, but make note of which Start Menu folder it puts the shortcuts in (default is Accessories). Operation is dead simple:

dms

Enter the degrees, minutes and seconds separated by spaces, set the number of decimal places with the Precision option, select the result type you want, then click Convert. It converts in the opposite sense directly, i.e. enter a decimal degree and have it converted to degrees-minutes or degrees-minutes-seconds. In this latter mode, checking Min/Sec Blank Fill removes the zero from the front of single digit minutes and seconds (e.g. 1 instead of 01 minute, 4.2 instead of 04.2 seconds). Can’t quite figure out what Degree Zero Fill does, though ….


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9 Responses to “Degree-Minute-Second To Decimal Degree Converter”


  1. 1 Brian Peasley

    Your posts are great, thanks for sharing!

    I’ve been looking for a DMS–>DecimalDegree converter that can handle batches rather than one-at-a-time conversion. I haven’t even found one that I can buy (let alone a freeware version)… I would love to hear back from anybody who knows of one before I go and re-invent the wheel!

    Thanks,
    –Brian

  2. 2 Leszek Pawlowicz

    I may have some options for you in the next post (tomorrow).

  3. 3 Dylan

    C’mon guys — there is an excellent, free tool for working with coordinates: proj !! (http://proj.maptools.org/) install it via source, or via FW Tools on windows. Spend some time with the documentation and you will be able to convert coordinates with ease.

    Dylan

  4. 4 Leszek Pawlowicz

    proj obviously does a lot, but its command-line nature and dense documentation aren’t exactly user-friendly. Call me a wimp, but if there’s a utility with a GUI that does the job I need, I’ll take it over a more powerful command-line utility any day.

    If you can send me a brief description of how to use proj to solve Brian’s problem, I’d be happy to post it here.

  5. 5 Aron Rubin

    Here’s my code for DMS to decimal degrees. If you want it wrapped in anyway let me know. I would post it here be line wrap confuses things.

    http://rubinium.org/blog/archives/2008/01/17/dms-to-decimal-by-request

  6. 6 Dylan

    You bet:

    1. convert DD -> DMS:
    cs2cs +proj=latlong +datum=NAD83 +to +proj=latlong +datum=NAD83

    2. convert DMS -> DD
    cs2cs -f “%.6f” +proj=latlong +datum=NAD83 +to +proj=latlong +datum=NAD83

    if you invoke the command as listed above (without reference to a data stream) you will get an interactive prompt. This approach is a lot more useful when you have a file full of coordinates, or a stream of coordinates:

    cs2cs +proj=latlong +datum=NAD83 +to +proj=latlong +datum=NAD83 DMS_coords.txt

    Dylan

  7. 7 Dylan

    ack! it looks like my < and > were gobbled up by the comment parser. it should look like this:

    cs2cs +proj=latlong +datum=NAD83 +to +proj=latlong +datum=NAD83 < DD_coords.txt > DMS_coords.txt

  8. 8 Leszek Pawlowicz

    Thanks, Dylan – it’ll get featured billing in tomorrow’s post as well.

  9. 9 Mihammad Irfan

    I need it for my office work

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