Chris,
I am wondering if your use of the term 'projections' really means Coordinate Systems? Read on...
1. I have to deal with lots of user defined projection files and would like to organize/edit them more efficiently.
- There is no way to organize the projections, only coordinate systems. The Projection list is not all that long, ~55, so we don't use categories. There are about 2000 Coordinate systems, which is why we need categories. The Category Manager will allow new CS categories and you can move CS's from one category to another.
2. Does any newer version of AutoCAD Map or third party software have a better category manager than 2000/4?
- Not that I know of. I am not sure if there is an API for this either. Tell me the problems with the existing Category Manager. It seems you would like to be able to organize Projections? (As opposed to Coordiante systems)
3. Can you move projections from one category to another?
- Projections are not organized by category anyway. See #2 above.
4. Is there any way to store projection files on a central server and point workstations to that location rather than storing these files on each individual hard drive?
- No, coordinate systems are always installed on the users local machine in the common files location because they need to be registered. You can use the CSUpdate.exe utility over the network to keep other users up to date with CS changes.
5. What are MRT, LAS, LOS, & CSD files and is there a way to manually edit them (wordpad)?
- Please don't edit any of these files in any way. it will break your coordinate system functionality. (I don't think it is possible anyway because they are not ASCII). The MRT, LAS, LOS, etc are used for datum shifts, MRT is for Multiple Regression Transformations and the LAS/LOS are for the NAD transformations. The CSD files are the actual list of categories, coordinate systems, datums, and ellipsoids.
Please post any specific recomendations that you might have. Who knows, maybe they will get fixed to your liking. Hope this helps...
Martin