How to view shapefiles in Google Earth

I have tried it in ArcGIS 9.3.

In Arc Toolbox choose Conversion tools > To KML then choose the layer that you want to convert then choose scale as 1 if your data is currently in WGS84 projection. It will be saved as a zipped kml file (.kmz) because you chose to save a layer of your map document. Just double click the output kmz file and there you go.

Here's a screenshot of my sample shapefile (Isabela, Philippines) as viewed from Google Earth.


In one of my graduate course project, we have studied dengue and identify high, medium and low risk areas in  Quezon City, Philippines. We have also included the Google Earth upload of our output layers as part of our methodology. Here's a sample shot showing how the fields and attributes are preserved after exporting the shapefile to kmz.

Dengue Hotspots in Quezon City, Philippines
So there you go. I'll be posting too on how to work the other way around; from KML to SHP next time. Enjoy googling (^_^).

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Free Open Street Map data (i.e.shapefiles etc.) for the Philippines

Free Road data extracted from Open Street Map made available by Cloudmade . philippines.ai.zip   (28.7M) philippines.img.zip   (8.3M) philippines.navit.bin.zip   (12M) philippines.osm.administrative.bz2   (627K) philippines.osm.bz2   (29M) philippines.osm.coastline.bz2   (3.5M) philippines.osm.highway.bz2   (16.2M) philippines.poi.gpx.zip   (521.7K) philippines.poi.tomtom.zip   (334.6K) philippines.poly   (2.3M) philippines.shapefiles.zip   (20.5M) Abra Agusan Del Norte Agusan Del Sur Aklan Albay Antique Apayao Aurora Basilan Bataan Batanes
Read more

Free Philippine Administrative Boundaries shapefile

Image
Free Administrative Boundary shapefile can be downloaded here . The coordinate reference system is latitude/longitude and the WGS84 datum. Other file formats such as ESRI geodatabase (.gdb), Google Earth (.kmz), and RData for RProject. Geospatial data from other countries are also available for download here. File Formats A "shapefile" consist of at least three actual files. This is a commonly used format that can be directly used in Arc-anything, DIVA-GIS , and many other programs. Unfortunately, non-latin characters are garbled. An "ESRI geodatabase" is an MS Access fole that can be opened in ArcGIS (an expensive but powerful program). One of its advantages, compared to a shapefile, is that it can store non-latin characters (e.g. Cyrillic and Chinese characters). A "Google Earth .kmz" file can be opened in Google Earth . A "RData" file can be used in R (with the sp package loaded) Some files have been compressed and grouped i
Read more

University of the Philippines Diliman Campus

Image
In our GIS class for Geomatics Engineering, we were asked to digitize a pan-sharpened Quickbird image of UP Diliman and specify the roads, buildings, and open spaces in the campus. Also this is my first time to import data from a handheld GPS into my GIS. Here's my output map: We we're also asked to georeference a "very old" aerial photo of UP Diliman campus. Here's the result:
Read more