Converting LatLng coordinates to point shapefile

Question

I have more than 50,000 LatLng coordinates defined under SWREFF99 1800 projection. I want to know, is it possible to convert these coordinates into a point shapefile ? if yes, then how can I do this ?

Also see this question: http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/327/how-can-i-convert-an-excel-file-with-x-y-columns-to-a-shapefile — scw, Mar 24 '11 at 15:13
I think this question is a clone then. Also my answer related to GDAL vrt driver, given from someone else, is there ;) — capooti, Mar 24 '11 at 15:20
What the heck is a "SWREFF99 1800 projection"? Are you perhaps referring to the Swedish reference frame 1999? — whuber, Mar 24 '11 at 15:42

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 24 '11 at 14:25

8

With Qgis, you can import your coordinates with the Delimited text plugin.

answered Mar 24 '11 at 14:25

simo

8,580
1
28
56

you beat me to it by 23 seconds and you actually found the plugin.. nice work :-) – Glenn Mar 24 '11 at 14:26
1

hehe ;-) you still deserve an upvote! – simo Mar 24 '11 at 14:40

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 24 '11 at 14:42

You can use GDAL and the ogr2ogr command line utility, but first you need to create a VRT driver.

For example (as suggested in the GDAL doc):

(test csv)

Latitude,Longitude,Name
48.1,0.25,"First point"
49.2,1.1,"Second point"
47.5,0.75,"Third point"

This is your vrt driver:

(test.vrt)

<OGRVRTDataSource>
    <OGRVRTLayer name="test">
        <SrcDataSource>test.csv</SrcDataSource>
        <GeometryType>wkbPoint</GeometryType>
        <LayerSRS>WGS84</LayerSRS>
        <GeometryField encoding="PointFromColumns" x="Longitude" y="Latitude"/>
    </OGRVRTLayer>
</OGRVRTDataSource>

Finally use ogr2ogr to convert your test.vrt in a shapefile:

ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" output.shp test.vrt

btw, I believe that the QGIS plugin (Delimited test) is based on the ogr2ogr utility used with the vrt driver like in my sample (in other words QGIS acts as a GUI to the ogr2ogr command) — capooti, Mar 24 '11 at 14:43

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 24 '11 at 14:19

4

If you are using ArcGIS, use the Make XY Event Table tool . To persist the output of that tool to a shpfile/gdb, see the second bullet in the tool doc.

answered Mar 24 '11 at 14:19

gotchula

3,203
1
16
18

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 24 '11 at 14:26

My goto place for oddball conversions like this is the opensource tools at either

QGIS http://www.qgis.org/

OR

MapWindow http://www.mapwindow.org/

My guess is there will be a "vector" plugin to do what you want at one of those two. I would try QGIS first because their plugins are less buggy.

score 1 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 24 '11 at 15:09

1

Easy done in MapInfo Professional too by create points from XY, set your coordsys and output as a shapefile.

answered Mar 24 '11 at 15:09

Hairy

4,843
1
26
45

Converting LatLng coordinates to point shapefile

5 Answers5