Exploring the world of free tools for GIS, GPS, Google Earth, neogeography, and more.
This is the final installment in my screencast series on MapWindow GIS. In addition to an easy-to-use shapefile editor, MapWindow has some advanced tools for combining, manipulating, and selecting from shapefile layers that aren’t all that common in freeware GIS software.
Continue reading ‘Intro To MapWindow IV – Advanced Vector Tools’
Not too long ago, I posted about a free US Census TIGER to shapefile converter that works with older TIGER files, with the TIGER 2006 1st edition, and will be updated to work with the 2006 2nd edition TIGER files. Just found out that it won’t have to be updated to deal with future versions. Upcoming editions of TIGER will be issued in:
See the Census web page on “The Future Of TIGER/Line” for more info. No more paying $399 for TIGER data and the data converters.
Stumbled across another free Excel spreadsheet that uses the Yahoo geocoder to convert addresses to geographic coordinates. Simple, basic, but does the job.
A link to a compressed version of ExcelGeocoder is available at the top of this page. Run the program to uncompress the spreadsheet, then open it up in Excel. It requires Visual Basic for Applications, so it won’t currently run in OpenOffice, but apparently VBA compatibility is coming soon to OpenOffice’s Calc spreadsheet and other components.The program uses Yahoo’s Geocoder, and requires you to enter a Yahoo ID in the Settings And Instructions tab, a remainder from when you had to register to use the service. Since registration is apparently no longer necessary, you can enter anything you want for a Yahoo ID, but you have to enter something. Paste your address data into the appropriate columns in the spreadsheet, click on the Geocode button in the upper left, and you’ll get back latitude/longitude for those addresses (up to 5,000 per day is allowed by Yahoo).
If you want to use this geocoded data in Google Earth, you can use excel2kml, or if you save the resulting data in CSV format, you can use csv2kml to convert it into a Google Earth file. You can also convert it into a point shapefile using software that I’ll be covering soon.
Third in the MapWindow screencast series is a quick runthrough of MapWindow’s shapefile editing capabilities. I think it’s one of the easiest to use of all the freeware GIS programs I’ve seen.
Continue reading ‘Intro To MapWindow GIS III – Shapefile Editing’
In 1999, the United States Geological Survey published a two-volume atlas of distribution and climatic data for the trees and woody shrubs of North America. The two-volume set costs $63, but the entire contents, including digital versions of the climate and distribution data, is available online for all you treehuggers out there.
Continue reading ‘Digital Atlas Of North American Woody Plants’
Just a recap of a multi-part series on exporting and importing GIS data to and from GPS units, so that I can have a single posting to list in the “Special Series” sidebar section. If you’ve read it before, there’s nothing new.
Description of how to use DNRGarmin to export shapefile data from Garmin GPS units.
Covers shapefile data import from non-Garmin GPS units.
How to import point, line and polygon shapefile data into a GPS unit.
Brief description of capabilities of demo version of OziExplorer.
Just stumbled across another Excel .XLS file with macros that will convert a list of coordinates and descriptions into a Google Earth KML file. Not particularly fancy, but easy to use and works well.
excel2kml uses VBA, so you’ll have to have Excel (i.e. it won’t work with OpenOffice). Open the file in Excel, and enable macros if they’re disabled for security purposes. First page is the data sheet, with a set of sample data already in place: Name, Latitude, Longitude, and Description are the only data fields available. Paste your data into the data sheet (up to 50,000 lines), enter Alt-F8, and run the “Generate KML” macro. A file called “myfile.kml” will be created in the root directory of the C-drive; you can modify the file name and destination in the “File Details” tab. That’s it – tested it with the sample data and a file of my own, and works perfectly. You could probably modify it quite easily to meet any additional requirements you might have.
Second in my series of screencasts on MapWindow GIS is a brief look at MapWindow’s shapefile attribute data handling. It has some nice extra features that you might not find in other freeware GIS programs.
Continue reading ‘Intro To MapWindow GIS II – Shapefile Attribute Tables’
