Patent ID: 7558678

Claim:
A geographic information system comprising: a database including a plurality of survey project files, each project file including a plurality of points, each point including at least a first set of coordinates in a local coordinate system of the survey project, at least two points within each project also having coordinates in a global coordinate system; a box tool configured to permit a user to define a virtual box encompassing at least one point from each of a plurality of survey project files, calculating an elevation for the virtual box and determining a coordinate system for the virtual box based on the elevation of the virtual box; a coordinate calculator configured to calculate a coordinate transformation for each survey project from the local coordinate system of the survey project to the coordinate system of the virtual box, each coordinate transformation including only a translation and a rotation to be applied to the local coordinates of the project file, with no scaling; a coordinate transformer configured to apply the coordinate transformation for each survey project to the points within that survey project to calculate new coordinates for each point in the survey project, the new coordinates defined in the coordinate system of the virtual box.