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Thanks to all for your feedback.
It appears that ideally what I need is a utility that will create a “mxd” file to carry all the style information when going to shape file.
I know of a company which is in the process of creating something to manage this process. I will contact them and see if they have come up with something useful and see if they may want to share it with the wider community.
Here is a sum of replies:
Tom and Lisa, Have you had a look at MI2AP? http://www.avantra.com.au/mi2ap.htm Regards John Elliot I thought that there may me something in shapefiles or a project that allowed a thematic to be stored as default. Maybe that could be the direction. R(obert Crossley)
Hi Tom! The shape file format is not designed to retain map styles (or coordinate system info for that matter). Therefore, it is not even in theory possible to transfer the native styles of MapInfo objects to a shape file. However, when ESRI discovered that people were using shape files for GIS data, they added a *.lyr file which is used as a template for object styles. Similarly, a *.prj file was added in order to hold information on projection and coordinate system. So, if you would want to truly convert tab to shape, the converter should a write a *.lyr file as well as a *.prj file along with the basic shape file set. But MapInfo and ArcGIS uses different color schemes, different line styles and region fills. You would need to make some kind of translation table to take care of that. The same goes for the spatial reference. They use different definitions for that as well. But I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm only pointing out the some of the considerations one has to make. Do share it with the list if you find out something useful. Regards, Mats.E
I am sorry, in my previous post I wrote about the ESRI *.lyr file. My mistake, I meant *.avl which was the legend file from ArcView 3. This is replaced today, as it seems by the *.style file. This file in turn is part of the ArcGIS workspace concept which is explained in this link http://webhelp.esri.com/arcgisdesktop/9.2/body.cfm? tocVisable=1&ID=2291&TopicName=About%20workspaces Sorry about the confusion. Mats.E
Tom I remember swapping notes with Russell Lawley a year or more ago about this subject, and downloaded his "Qik_avlreader" tool. That got me started on what I wanted to do, but I didn't produce any sort of a tool that would be useful to you. as I recall, I did a lot of "translation" by hand (stuffing things into a .WOR file). What you're asking is sort of the reverse of what my task was then - you don't have the .AVL file from an ESRI dataset. Possibly your enquiry will elicit more information, but the problems (differences between the way the 2 companies do things) is an awkward one. most people would give up in frustration. I guess that's why Safe Software makes a buck out of FME. IL Thomas GeoSciSoft - Perth, Australia
Tom - I found this post/thread in the archives - it might be what I was babbling on about in my post on MI-L an hour ago. If you do a search of the archives right back to 2004, you'll find more info from Russell Lawley every few months right through to this year, since we all ask the same questions over & over again. In October 2005 there's a more detailed post from Russell that might give you some clues. But as he says in the last para, it's possibly simpler done manually (and, this is all for ESRI --> MapInfo, not the other way round). IL Thomas GeoSciSoft - Perth, Australia
-----Original Message----- From: Lawley, Russell S [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, July 30, 2004 7:38 PM To: Steve King; MapInfo-L (E-mail) Subject: RE: MI-L retaining object styleswhen translating from shape files Steve a little while back i wrote some freeware called qik_avl.mbx. you will find it on the directionsmag site. it reads the avl (arcview legend file) used to apply styles on shp files. There are however some limits to what qik avl can do: Polygons: Fill Colours are matched, but patterns are 'translated', arcv has a slightly different set of pattern styles to MI 'outside border' weights and colours are honoured, even though you cant actually set them in arcv..! Lines: Colours and weights are matched (well almost) but line styles are not(arcv can have bespoke styles Mi requires a .pen edit) Points: colours and sizes are matched (well almost), but fonts are are not (cold be possible but tehcoding would be tricky) Pie charts/graphs : not implimented in this version, could do it if asked, but to be honest would be quicker to just thematicise manually. hope this helps R -----Original Message----- From: Steve King [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 29 July 2004 21:51 To: MapInfo-L@lists.directionsmag.com Subject: MI-L retaining object styleswhen translating from shape files Hi There Is there an easy way to retain the graphic styles of the objects when translating from .shp to .tab or some way of generating a lookup table of styles from the arcview files that can then be applied to the .tab? Cheers Steve
Hi Tom The shape file (ArcView) does not have a style attribute for each object like the map file (MapInfo). However one way to achieve this would be to add column(s) to MapInfo table that shows its style(s) in the base table. Then this data attribution could be used to thematically map the Arcview table - this gets stored in a PRJ file. I use (s) as the combination of styles depends on the object type and how many variations you have used eg thickness foreground background etc. The existing style attributes can easily be added to data columns in MapInfo using Update column. If the MapInfo does not contain too many different styles another way to achieve the result would be to split the table into several smaller tables - one for each style. Each shape table would have a different style in the PRJ file. This approach would render faster in Arcview.
Regards Bob MapsByDesign.co.uk
Tom I have just found stuff from September 2004 from/to Russell Lawley, so I can refresh my understanding of what I did. He sent me some notes about the inevitable ESRI transitions in file formats and actually also changes in which files the ‘symbology’ is stored in, which changed from ArcGIS 3 to 8 and now to ArcMAP 9. It’s not so simple. An effective translator: it’s really a job that requires the knowledge of someone who uses both the ESRI and MI products reasonably often (which Russell does, I believe) – I don’t use any ESRI products, at all. But my coding and analytical skills are quite good. I could probably write something effective. Cheers, Ian GeoSciSoft - Perth, Australia
Hi Tom, In general this would be a hard thing to do because the shape files themselves don't contain any styling information. Styling information goes in an "mxd" file (with modern ArcGIS), or an older-style ArcView project file. In general those formats are not documented. In any case, that is why both the UT and the FME (its parent) don't make any attempt to carry styling information through when going into Shape files. I'd be very interested to know if anyone out there has actually done something about this, if so, and if we'd be allowed, we'd definitely consider adding it into the MUT. Dale ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Dale Lutz Safe Software Inc. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Tom Orr
Orr and Associates 4 Wildsoet Street Wongaling Beach QLD 4852 Australia
Phone: +61 (0)7 40688692 Fax: +61 (0)7 40689216 Mobile: +61 (0)409 479374
www.orrbodies.com
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