Chip Taylor writes:
I need a tool that can take a shape file with a polygon, such as a state
boundary, and expand it x amount in all directions. For example, take a
shapefile of the boundary of the State of Tennessee and expand the polygon
.5 degrees in all directions. Anyone know of such a tool?
Chip,
I'm not sure about buffering by degrees but that could just depend on the
projection. Mapscript does have GEOS buffering built-in now so you could
open the shapefile and loop through each polygon performing a buffer on each
then write each back out into a new shapefile. Because shapefiles are more
like areas than polygons there shouldn't be any problem with the resulting
shapes overlapping in the new shapefile.
Lowell
