Converting LatLng coordinates to point shapefile

Question

I have more than 50,000 LatLng coordinates defined under SWREFF99 1800 projection. I want to know, is it possible to convert these coordinates into a point shapefile ? if yes, then how can I do this ?

Answer 1

You can use GDAL and the ogr2ogr command line utility, but first you need to create a VRT driver.

For example (as suggested in the GDAL doc):

(test csv)

Latitude,Longitude,Name
48.1,0.25,"First point"
49.2,1.1,"Second point"
47.5,0.75,"Third point"

This is your vrt driver:

(test.vrt)

<OGRVRTDataSource>
    <OGRVRTLayer name="test">
        <SrcDataSource>test.csv</SrcDataSource>
        <GeometryType>wkbPoint</GeometryType>
        <LayerSRS>WGS84</LayerSRS>
        <GeometryField encoding="PointFromColumns" x="Longitude" y="Latitude"/>
    </OGRVRTLayer>
</OGRVRTDataSource>

Finally use ogr2ogr to convert your test.vrt in a shapefile:

ogr2ogr -f "ESRI Shapefile" output.shp test.vrt

Answer 2

With Qgis, you can import your coordinates with the Delimited text plugin.

Answer 3

If you are using ArcGIS, use the Make XY Event Table tool . To persist the output of that tool to a shpfile/gdb, see the second bullet in the tool doc.

Answer 4

My goto place for oddball conversions like this is the opensource tools at either

QGIS http://www.qgis.org/

OR

MapWindow http://www.mapwindow.org/

My guess is there will be a "vector" plugin to do what you want at one of those two. I would try QGIS first because their plugins are less buggy.

Answer 5

Easy done in MapInfo Professional too by create points from XY, set your coordsys and output as a shapefile.