About SnakeGrid

Benefits

At present it is believed that the SnakeGrid approach developed at UCL is the only solution on the market to overcome the problem of multiple overlapping local grids in large scale engineering projects

The Snake Projection solution uses the facts that railway lines, pipelines or roads are very narrow compared to their length and that the project corridors in such cases have gentle curves. Thus the system defines a local coordinate system that has a unity scale factor along a line that follows the trend of the route. The system also extends into three dimensions removing the need for height scale corrections. The Snake, or localised grid, for each project is unique to the project depending on the particular horizontal and vertical trends that the route takes.

The SnakeGrid solution provides a coordinate grid system that maintains a unity scale factor along a trend line that follows the project in plan and height.

In this way, projects such as railways, highways and pipelines that extend for hundreds of kilometres can have a single seamless grid with a scale factor distortion less than a few parts per million along the whole project and for several kilometres on either side.

The knowledge and experience of UCL's Dr. Jonathan Iliffe combined with legal and marketing support from UCLB allowed us to concentrate our software development skills on creating 'SnakeGrid Transformer' - an innovative world-class solution to the problem of linear projections. Working with UCL and UCLB has been a great experience for dhp11". Derek Hunter, Director, dhp-11 Ltd.

SnakeGrid is likley to be offered as an additonal functionality on Trimble's Co-ordinate system management in Field and Office software solutions. SnakeGrid will eventually be offered as part of several surveying tools, softwares and field equipments.

SCS Computer, Ireland, has collaborated with SnakeGrid to create a solution based on a tablet PC using the existing version of SnakeGrid. Efforts are also on to develop solution for scenario where Rail companies are using slightly older Leica 1200 receivers with RX1250 controllers, as they could get the SnakeGrid functionality without having to purchase or change their survey hardware.