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Anyone know where I can get a decent mxd file that has country boundaries. Currently I'm using the world.mxd file that comes with ArcObjects; however, what I really am looking for is one that has all of the counties so I could click on a country and get it's boundaries in a List of Points so I could draw an outline around said country.

I'm looking for one that's free - obviously that might be a problem, but figured I'd throw it out there.

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I'm pretty sure you want the actual shapefile, not the mxd file. I have used this stand alone tool to export the boundaries of the shapefile for use in other programs (it allows you to export the coordinates in a csv file as well as various other file types)

DNR Garmin App from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources

If that isn't an option I imagine someone can give a code snippet of how you would extract this info in either VBA or Python (or whatever language). You could always check out the Free Geography Tools blog and it may have other programs that can do this for you.

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Shape file was the answer. So now I can click on the map, the IIdentifyObj tells me I clicked on the United States. – PSU_Kardi Oct 28 '10 at 16:12
Just need to figure out how to get the list of points....anyone know how that works? – PSU_Kardi Oct 28 '10 at 16:13
@PSU, the DNR link I pointed to has a stand alone tool that you can upload shapefiles to and extract the boundary vertices of that shapefile (even if it is a polygon shapefile). I just used the tool with a US State boundary file though and it took quite a while to upload, you may want to simplify the world country shapes before using that tool (depending on what you want to do with the vertices this may not be a bad idea anyway). – Andy W Oct 28 '10 at 16:46
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orginfo (gdal.org/ogrinfo.html) will also also print a full list of vertices for any shapefile. Just omit -so (summary) and you're all set. You can pipe it to a text file if you need. – Darren Cope Oct 31 '10 at 23:00

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