Just got an email from Zonums Software that, after a prolonged hiatus, they’ve resumed development of free stand-alone and web-based geographic tools. I’ve posted previously on their stand-alone KML to shapefile converter, but a glance through that post’s comments will reveal that it has some serious bugs in it. While those are still being fixed, Zonums has released an online KML to shapefile converter:
Select the KML/KMZ file you want to convert, or paste the KML text into the box at the bottom. In this case, I’ve uploaded a KML file with 3 points, one path and one polygon, and the KML code appears in the text box:
Click on “Process KML Data”, and the file will be analyzed to determine what kinds of shapes it contains, and how many:
You have the option of setting either UTM or latitude/longitude as the coordinate system. Click on any of the Export buttons on the left, and the selected data points will be converted to shapefile format, with the option to download the resulting shapefile:
For this case, with Points selected, I can download a points.zip file that contains the required shp, dbf and shx files, as well as the option prj file that contains coordinate projection system info.
The buttons at the right give you the additional options to Convert the original data to a different vector format, then Export it to shapefile format. So for a set of three points, I can convert those to a line or polygon format by selecting the desired format from the drop-down, then export a line or polygon shapefile with those three points as the vertices. Seems to worked as advertised; here are the point (red dots) and polygon (gray area) shapefiles generated from the same sample points, plotted in a GIS viewer:
For converting KML files to other formats, like DXF, GPX and CSV, Zonum’s kml2x online converter is still available.
Not sure if anyone needs to convert from kml to shp, but QGIS will do this in just a few clicks.
http://www.stevevance.net/planning/2009/02/converting-shapefiles-and-kml-files/