10 replies to this topic

[Steve Spindler]

I've been getting the cartotalk digest for awhile but thought I might be more participatory in the forum. Mostly I make bike maps , transit maps, and maps for bicycle and pedestrian plans. These include city, county and regional maps as well as cross state bike tours. And I do some maps for trails organizations. Basically, I work on projects that promote non-automobile activities.

One thing I'm looking for is a GPX <=> Shapefile converter. I'm in the process of contracting a programmer to develop a web-based solution, but if one exists, please let me know. A lot of data that I use comes from GPS these days. And I'm coordinating a web based bicycle routing system for the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.

My cartographic interests are a bit different than the maps I do for clients. For client projects, I need to be able to make changes as effortlessly as possible and therefore mostly use vector programs. But for my pet projects, I'm trying to improve my proficiency in a raster environment (Like Painter) that allows for watercolor and other texture effects that I haven't used much in my maps for clients (outside of shaded relief).

Steve

[Martin Gamache]

Hi steve.

I found a command line, PC based application a short while ago that does GPX to Shape but did not try it. But there is one out there, I just used google....

[Hans van der Maarel]

Hi Steve,

Welcome to Cartotalk!

[Rick Dey]

Hey Steve,

Welcome, we look forward to hearing your input.

[ELeFevre]

Hi Steve,
Welcome to the forum! Erin

[franciscocartographer]

Welcome to the forum. I just read the survey you collected in 2003 about the business of cartography (http://www.direction...?article_id=466). Very informative.

I am looking forward to hearing from you in future discussions.

[DaveB]

Welcome Steve!

[dylan]

Hi!

The conversion of GPX files to shapefiles can be accomplished with various tool sets. I would recommend looking into the following tools:

1. gpsbabel
2. gpstrans
3. gpsd
4. GRASS
5. PERL and shapelib

Also, if you have access to a copy of the book "Mapping Hacks", there is a chapter in there about such a conversion.

Cheers!

[Martin Gamache]

My last look into this did not show that the tools suggested by Dylan could do it directly. GPS Babel may work by going GPX to Tiger and then using a Tiger2shape utility included with ARC. Let us know how you end up solving this. I wrote to the Mac GPS pro folks requesting a shapefile export but....

The following also claim to be able to do the conversion:

GPX2SHP

GPSMAN

[Steve Spindler]

Thanks for your thoughts on GPX=>Shapefiles and back as well as the other responses.

The method I've been using is pretty simple, but I was trying to eliminate steps:

Here's the method I've been using:

I convert the GPX files to AN1 format using http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/
Then I open the file into XMap and save it as a shapefile.

Here's a sample of what we're doing with the GPX files.

http://www.bicycleco...ter_routes.html

The following page shows bike lanes and bike routes in Philadelphia. This was done by hand by John Boyle, but it would have been easier to just import the shape files. This is where the Shapefile=>GPX can really come in handy.

http://www.bicycleco...googletest.html

[Maisie]

Hi Steve,
Your Lancaster County bicycle map rocks! In fact, it may be the best sheet map of the county available. Nice work.

Martha