You can create and save a log file in the process by checking the appropriate box, and you can also add the newly-created shapefile to the current view in MapWindow by checking the box at the bottom. Specify the input file, the name and location of the shapefile to be created, and select the filetype that matches the input file. Select “Import AutoCAD DXF File” from the “Importers” menu (if it’s not visible, check to make sure it’s been enabled in the “Plug-ins” menu, and installed properly in the plugins directory). For this, you can use a DXF to shape converter available either as a plug-in for MapWindow GIS, or as a stand-alone application the process below and the screenshot are for the MapWindow plug-in version. Select the text in the box, copy it into your favorite text editor, then save it as a DXF file (*.DXF). Click on Export at the top, and a new browser window will open with the DXF content in a text box: For subsequent steps, I’ve found that it works best to export the data types into their own separate DXF files, rather than all together. With DXF selected as the file format for export, and the desired coordinate system (UTM or geographic) specified, you can select point, path, and/or polygon as the desired data types to export. But for now, you have to follow the DXF route, because there’s a way to convert DXF files to shapefiles. It’s currently not enabled, but hopefully at some point in the future it will be, and you’ll be able to do a direct conversion. You might have noticed that under File Format, SHP-ESRI is listed as an option. The text that appears in the box below is the actual KML file content. Here’s a screenshot of the website with a KML file loaded in: This website actually converts KML files not just into DXF format, but also GPX, Surfer, and several text formats (CSV and tab-delimited text, although some editing would have to be done to make these textfiles importable into a spreadsheet). The first step is to convert the KML files into AutoCAD DXF format using KML2x website tool. Here’s a screenshot of the KML data I’ll be using in this example: This process works with any KML file, with any combination of points, paths, and polygons unlike the previous approach, there’s no real benefit to saving points, paths, and polygons in separate files. Today, I’ll describe a simpler and faster two-step process, but one that unfortunately doesn’t keep the name or any of the other KML data associated with the original shapes. In the last post, I covered a mildly painful way to convert the vector data (points, paths, and polygons) in Google Earth KML files to shapefile format, while keeping at least the name associated with the points and paths.
SketchUp never did create any kml other than the geolocation coordinates, and it remains that way today.Note: See this series of posts for info on converting shapefiles to KML format. Google subsequently found other ways to get 3D buildings, lost interest in SketchUp, and finally sold it to Trimble. But they never implemented a way for SketchUp to load or create kml itself. They created the kmz file format to allow them to combine geolocation information to place the the 3D model on the earth. So they bought SketchUp, which models in the sort of 3D (x,y,z) coordinates people are used to, and decided that the way to get those into Google Earth was to use a non-proprietary 3D modeling format: Collada (.dae). Verticals are not parallel, the ground is not flat, horizontal dimensions are measured in angles, etc. But because kml uses (lat, lon, altitude) coordinates, it makes a very strange and awkward medium for drawing buildings. Snark aside, Google is to blame for this.īack when they owned SketchUp, they wanted a way to let users create 3D buildings to populate Google Earth for free.