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
Anzeco Pty.
Limited
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
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