How to split a shapefile into separate files for each feature?

Question

I have a polyline shape files with about 20 kinds of roads. I would like to know how can I create automatically a vector file for each one.

I can use Arcgis, Qgis (or Gdal separately).

thanks!

Answer 1

you can use Export Feature Attribute to ASCII (Spatial Statistics) with arcpy. get some information here...

Syntax

ExportXYv_stats (Input_Feature_Class, Value_Field, Delimiter, Output_ASCII_File, Add_Field_Names_to_Output)

Example Code:

import arcpy
arcpy.env.workspace = r"c:\data"
arcpy.ExportXYv_stats("AidsByCaCnty.shp","HEPRATE", 
"SPACE","aidsbycacnty.txt","ADD_FIELD_NAMES")

i hope it helps you...

Answer 2

Quantum GIS has a plugin called ShapefileSplitter http://hub.qgis.org/projects/shapefilesplitter which does this.

Answer 3

Create a search cursor, loop through each row. At each row, take the OID (or any other unique value) and put it in a where clause. Use that where clause in the Select_analysis(in_feature, out_feature, whereClause) gp tool.

If you want to go by type of road rather than a new fc /shapefile for each row, you'd use the select method on the first record, then append all other records of that road type to that fc / shapefile with an if/else structure.

Answer 4

You can use this toolset for ArcMap 10 as well.