The subject invention relates to systems and methods that facilitate
motion between different coordinate systems in an industrial control
environment. The systems and methods accept data in one coordinate system
and transform the data to a different coordinate system. Suitable
transformations include instructions that transform between Cartesian,
pre-defined non-Cartesian, and user-defined non-Cartesian coordinate
systems, including transformations between a non-Cartesian coordinate
system to another non-Cartesian coordinate system. Such transformations
can be programmed in essentially any industrial control language and can
be seamlessly integrated with the control environment. The systems and
methods can be utilized to generate a motion instruction that includes,
among other information, source and target coordinate systems and the
transformation between them. The subject invention provides for
connecting various systems together through respective motion
instructions, wherein a motion of a source system is mapped to a
coordinate system of a target system and the target system is moved
accordingly.