The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
GIS - Looking for a free (or cheap) way to do shapefiles to KML
big l
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I've been trying to teach myself a bit about doing GIS stuff. I think it would be helpful for work, and I think I could pick up a couple hundred dollars here and there for a little bit of consulting work doing it for clients I know. Since this is out of my own pocket for now, I've been trying to do it without buying an expensive program like Maptitude or ArcGIS. I tried ArcGIS Explorer, the free version of ArcGIS - it had no useful features as far as I could tell. I downloaded Quantum GIS but haven't really given it as much of a shot as the next program I downloaded, MapWindow GIS. Using MapWindow, I managed to use the shapefiles and their data to make the maps I want. The trick is, I can't figure out how to export the maps to KML files that can be used as Google Earth layers and this is an important piece of functionality that I need to be able to do. Supposedly, Shape2Earth, a $40 plug-in for MapWindow, can do this. I tried the demo version, though, and it didn't work. It created a KML file, but when Google Earth opens it, there isn't any data to be seen on the GE globe. I don't know yet if it was a problem with the program being a demo or if there was a problem with my data I don't know about but I'm hoping to figure that out. I'd have no problem paying the $40 if it worked, but I want to be sure it will before I pay up. shp2kml does the same thing - takes in data, makes a kml, GE doesn't show any data from it. There are a couple tools that seem to convert shapefiles directly to KMLs - I don't think this will be quite enough since I want to assign colors and pop-up info to the polygons in my KML map, but maybe MapWindow or Quantum could export a shapefile that could be converted?
I'm making this thread to see if anyone has any ideas for how this might be done - any other free or cheap programs I might have missed or issues to consider.
The maps I'm trying to make are quite simple - I have shapefiles of a bunch of districts on the map, I have values associated with them, and I want to assign colors to the districts on the map based on the values, and then export KML files of the maps and nice high resolutions pictures of the maps. This seems like fairly basic functionality and that most any program should be able to do it but the programs are remarkably user-unfriendly so I would appreciate any help or suggestions. Thanks!
Edit: Okay been testing out some other shapefiles, it seems these programs do work and the problem is with my data and not the programs. I think I don't have the right projection data or grid coordinate system underlying the shapefiles. I'd still appreciate any advice anyone has since I still haven't totally figured this out yet.
I'm making this thread to see if anyone has any ideas for how this might be done - any other free or cheap programs I might have missed or issues to consider.
The maps I'm trying to make are quite simple - I have shapefiles of a bunch of districts on the map, I have values associated with them, and I want to assign colors to the districts on the map based on the values, and then export KML files of the maps and nice high resolutions pictures of the maps. This seems like fairly basic functionality and that most any program should be able to do it but the programs are remarkably user-unfriendly so I would appreciate any help or suggestions. Thanks!
Edit: Okay been testing out some other shapefiles, it seems these programs do work and the problem is with my data and not the programs. I think I don't have the right projection data or grid coordinate system underlying the shapefiles. I'd still appreciate any advice anyone has since I still haven't totally figured this out yet.
big l on
0
Posts
You can write your own shapefile writer/reader if you'd like. Not super easy, but not super hard either. Just a lot of things to implement. Also, keep in mind shapefiles have lots of rules regarding terminating the shapes with the first point again, holes coordinates have to be counter clockwise vs. clockwise (or vice versa, I always forget), meta data headers can't be longer then 10 characters. So again, not hard per se, but lots of things. But these are all things that have bitten me in the past.
KMLs are readable text, so if you're having problems with it, you can just open it and read it. Start off small, one polygon and load it into Google Earth. If it doesn't work, read it and try to figure out why. Edit it manually till it works, then get your program to implement those changes as well.
WGS-84 is the projection I've seen used most. So maybe start with that?