Exploring the world of free tools for GIS, GPS, Google Earth, neogeography, and more.
Yesterday’s post dealt with converting point shapefiles to a text format compatible with spreadsheets. Today’s post handles the opposite - converting spreadsheet data to point shapefile format.
Continue reading ‘Converting Text/Spreadsheet Files To Point Shapefile Format’
Note: See this series of posts for info on converting shapefiles to KML format.
In the last post, I covered a mildly painful way to convert the vector data (points, paths, and polygons) in Google Earth KML files to shapefile format, while keeping at least the name associated with the points and paths. Today, I’ll describe a simpler and faster two-step process, but one that unfortunately doesn’t keep the name or any of the other KML data associated with the original shapes.
Continue reading ‘Another Way To Convert Google Earth KML Files To Shapefiles’
No new content - just a consolidated listing of the posts in this series.
Description of basic shapefile viewing, and modifying views using attribute data.
Opening, querying, editing, and otherwise modifying shapefile attribute tables.
Creating shapefile layers, adding shapes, modifying shapes, and adding attributes.
Advanced shapefile manipulation, including merging, erasing, clipping, selection by mask, and buffering.
Using MapWindow to re-project shapefiles into different coordinate systems and datums.
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’
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’
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’
I’ve posted about MapWindow in earlier posts on Shape2Earth (a shapefile to KML converter), and on reprojecting shapefiles from one coordinate system to another. So I figured it was time to take a longer look at some of MapWindow’s GIS capabilities, since it’s one of the best open source shapefile viewers and editors out there, and has many other useful functions. In addition, GIS novices might find this series useful as a general introduction to GIS programs, since it covers some of the basic operations applicable to other GIS programs as well.
Continue reading ‘Introduction To MapWindow GIS I - Shapefile Viewing’
Shapefiles can be created in any coordinate system, and are often (and annoyingly) found in a coordinate system different than the one you’d like them to be in. For example, several of the shapefile to KML converters posted about recently require that the shapefile be in Google Earth’s native coordinate system: geographic coordinates (latitude/longitude), WGS84 datum; what do you do if your shapefile is in a different coordinate system, like UTM, Lambert Conformal Conic, or State Plane Coordinate System? There are lots of free conversion utilities out there that can reproject shapefiles from one coordinate system/datum to another, but there’s one I prefer because it’s fast and easy to use.
Continue reading ‘A Free And Easy Shapefile Coordinate Converter’
