What free programs should every GIS user have installed?

Question

I'm not necessarily referring to ESRI extensions or open-source products, but others that increase your productivity and ability to handle GIS tasks.

For example, Notepad++ for writing code snippets or editing XMLs. Paint.NET for quick graphic editing.

Answer 1

Gaia from Carbon Project is free and supports many spatial data types.

http://www.thecarbonproject.com/gaia.php

"Gaia is a platform designed for advanced geospatial network and SDI needs. Based on the CarbonTools PRO open-geospatial development toolkit, this viewer can access an array of geospatial sources such as the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Mapping Service (WMS), Web Map Tile Service (WMTS), Web Coverage Service (WCS), Web Feature Service (WFS), and Filter Encoding (FE), services such as Microsoft Bing Maps, Yahoo! Maps and OpenStreetMap (OSM), as well as file formats such as ESRI Shapefiles, Google Earth KML/KMZ, DXF, MIF, Geography Markup Language (GML) and GML Simple Features (GMLsf)."

Answer 2

Polymaps, Tableau Public for charts, PeaZip for zip files. WinMerge

Answer 3

Everything, quickly find any file in your computer.

Evernote, remember everything of life.

Python Tools for Visual Studio, a VS plugin for python.

Answer 4

Here it is another solution: Geobide SDK a set of components for the development of gis professional applications. Free versions of the tools are available.

Geomap, System for viewing, editing and analysis; [Geoconverter][3], geodetic reference systems and geographic formats converter: Converts formats, ipdate fields... (available in English); [Geobuilder][4], solution for the design and execution of diagrams of geoprocessing. (available in English); [Geobridge][5], plug-in for access to CAD/GIS data from Autocad, Microstation, ArcGIS...

Answer 5

For metadata and other XML files, First Object's Free XML editor (Windows) works really well.

Answer 6

While it's not focused on GIS development, Rainmeter has proven to be very useful in terms of increasing productivity and monitoring system resources. I have created a GIS "sidebar" on my desktop that holds all of my development tools, as well as links to the online resources I used the most. It's nice to be able to use one location, rather than many (e.g. taskbar, bookmarks in browser, search engine).

Answer 7

For file management that goes beyond windows explorer, it's hard to beat eXtreme from http://textmode.cwahi.net/

for quick viewing of shapefiles, where you can see the shape and the attributes table, I use Mapbrowser from http://www.vdstech.com/mapbrowser.htm

For renaming multiple files I use http://www.fastfilerenamer.com/

Answer 8

I love PicPick for Windows for image capture/quick editing and on-screen measurements, it includes a screenshot capture utility, an on-screen protractor, pixel ruler, color picker, and more. The current version (3.1.7) is free for personal use only. The last version that was free for all uses is 2.1.5, I use that version daily and very rarely does it give me any problems. You can grab it from my dropbox, it's a portable app, just copy the files somewhere and run it.

Another handy link is http://www.321download.com/LastFreeware/index.html, which has downloads of the last freeware versions of some popular programs that later became shareware or commercial software. I don't think it's updated anymore but the download links still work.

Answer 9

I am working with Rasterdata a lot, DEMs and Orthofotos so I have a bunch of basic tools I need to handle them

• Landserf is great for quickviewing DEMs, create Hillshades, Slope, Aspects, Profiles, and to convert to other formats (ASCII Grid to XYZ for example). A good alternative is GridConvert
• I use TotalCommander to manage thousands of files,renaming them (create worldfiles and renaming them to fit to tifs for example)
• Since ER Mapper is ERDAS now its hard to get, but free ECW Compressor and ECW Header Editor are still better (in compressing images) than GDAL with the ECW SDK linked. Lucky you if you still have the setups.
• Already said here, that Irfan View is one of the best Image Viewing and processing tools out there

Answer 10

GPSBabel to convert waypoints, tracks, and routes between popular GPS receivers and mapping programs.

Answer 11

Excellent sugestions here.

Just thought I would add the FREE Double CAD XT which is an AutoCAD LT-like program with more features then AutoCAD LT, simpler interface. Excellent for those GIS folks that have to interact with a lot of CAD data. Double CAD XT also claims excellent support for Sketchup - might be a good tool for those looking to integrate GIS, CAD & SketchUp data.

AutoCAD LT ($1200) and Double Cad XT ($0) Comparison chart

Answer 12

For documentation and screen grabs and copying workflows to video, then Snagit and Camtasia are used regularly by me. These may not be GIS specific but a must in my world.

Answer 13

TatukGISViewer (www.tatukgis.com/Products/EditorViewer.aspx) is great for quick viewing of raster and vector files. I work with both ESRI and MapInfo which forces me to do tons of converting .tabs to .shps or the other way around. Tatuk is great because it handles both formats, just drag-and-drop and they all show up nicely. It also truly shows the geographic location of the data if two datasets have different coordinate systems (I don´t like ESRIs automatic compensationing).

Answer 14

Here are a couple of web-based tools for entry-level GIS users:

Inquiron has a free online file converter for shp/xls/csv/gpx/dxf/kml to kml with more content being added. It's a simple process of just dragging and dropping the file into the relevant box - if you're using Chrome the file will automatically download.

There's also Mapsdata which lets you load geodata from xls/csv to view as pins, heatmaps, bubble maps, cluster maps, all of which can be colored, made transparent, etc. They have auto export to png and iframe.

Both of those are geared towards the novice or lite GIS user and aren't designed to detract from QGIS, etc.

Answer 15

OpenRefine (formerly Google-Refine).

This free and open-source tool is awesome for cleaning up messy data. I typically use it for fairly simple operations like concatenation, trimming, replacing one character with another, removing spelling mistakes, etc.

One of my most common use cases is grouping similar items via the clustering tools. This is great for finding spelling mistakes or abbreviation problems (e.g. Road, road, rode, rd, rd.) and changing them all to a single correct value.

Having clean data makes database operations and definition queries MUCH simpler to perform. You can even "record" the operations you've performed on a set of data for reuse on the next bit of messy data you encounter.

I don't use anywhere near the full potential of this software, but I find it easy to pick up and use for the simple tasks I've described. Here are some screencasts that touch on some of the more advanced operations. Oh yeah, you can also use it for geocoding!

The project has moved from HERE to GitHub.

Here's what the ReadMe says:

OpenRefine is a power tool that allows you to load data, understand it, clean it up, reconcile it internally, and augment it with data coming from Freebase or other web sources. All with the comfort and privacy of your own computer.

The wiki has everything you need to know including download links.

Answer 16

Bulk Rename Utility is a great program that can do a lot of renaming and custom naming for data sources without the need of scripting. Data is an absolute for GIS individuals, and having access to free data is a great tool to have. I regularly use geobase.ca, geogratis.gc.ca and ESDI at the Global Land Cover Facility to get a range of raster and vector products.

Answer 17

ER Viewer. Fantastic way of 'fool-proofing' imagery. I find that its very unbiased in the way it raster imagery is viewed.