Resources

Shape file tools¶

Shape files are available from many sources and in numerous formats. The following applications may be useful when working with shape (.shp) files:

• Mapshaper—If you wish to view or simplify .shp files, this can be downloaded from mapshaper.org
• DBFExplorer—When you have .shp files, you may want to modify the .dbf file that contains the information about each shape. A free DBF editor can be downloaded from pablosoftwaresolutions.com

• FWTools—If you have a .shp file that does not conform to the WGS84 co-ordinate system, you need to convert it. This can be done using ogr2ogr, included in FWTools, which can be downloaded from fwtools.maptools.org. Example usage (converts from British National Grid to WGS84):

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  ogr2ogr -t_srs WGS84 -s_srs EPSG:27700 destination.shp source.shp