7 replies to this topic

[Hans van der Maarel]

I've been asked to suggest a workflow to go from GPS tracks (GPX to be exact) to a vector or raster drawing program, using free or cheap software as much as possible. So far I've come up with 3 scenarios:

• GPX into QGis, save as Shapefile, import those into Ortelius.
• GPX into QGis, create layout, save as SVG or PDF and open that in Inkscape
• GPX into QGis, create layout, save as PDF and open that in Gimp

Any other suggestions?

[Ted Florence]

For those using MAPublisher, please be advised that the next release, version 8.4 due next month, will import GPX format directly intro Illustrator.

Cheers
Ted

[Mike Boruta]

Hans, another free option is to use the website GPSVisualizer.com. It allows you to convert GPX to SVG/JPEG/PNG via your browser. (It also can be used for many other tasks - I use it get SVG's of elevation profiles from GPX).

From there, if someone really wanted to stay cheap, simple and in the "cloud" they could use the online tools from Aviary.com (Raven for vector, Phoenix for rasters). I don't have much experience with them, but they seem surprisingly powerful and user friendly if you have any experience with their more expensive counterparts.

[l.jegou]

GDAL/OGR can read GPX and write many vector formats :

http://www.gdal.org/...gr_formats.html

[Hans van der Maarel]

From there, if someone really wanted to stay cheap, simple and in the "cloud" they could use the online tools from Aviary.com (Raven for vector, Phoenix for rasters). I don't have much experience with them, but they seem surprisingly powerful and user friendly if you have any experience with their more expensive counterparts.

Raven looks pretty neat, definately a whole lot more user friendly than Inkscape (but keep in mind that I have the evil eye when it comes to FOSS software...)

Laurent, is there an interface on top of GDAL/OGR or is it all command-line stuff? I always get the impression it's not for the faint-of-heart in terms of usage and installation.

[l.jegou]

Laurent, is there an interface on top of GDAL/OGR or is it all command-line stuff? I always get the impression it's not for the faint-of-heart in terms of usage and installation.

There is several interface projects for partial functions of gdal/ogr (OpenEV for raster for example), but i don' know any about ogr vector conversions, sorry.

As for installation, it's very straightforward now with FWTools on windows :

http://fwtools.maptools.org/

[l.jegou]

I was wrong, here's one :

http://www.ogr2gui.ca

[SaultDon]

I use this little ditty every once in a while. It seems to 'babel' a lot of vector formats. Its free and small, and just recently, the entire GUI was upgraded.

GPS Babel