Opthumb

GIS data and Google Maps

Trying to convert an old .e00 gis file collected from the us census bureau to arcView.  Then from ArcView into a shape format that Google maps can plot.  There is a ton of discovery involved specifically with the types of map projections the census bureau uses.  There might need to be some normalization, but until I plot my data, I won’t know (their data is extremely undocumented).  Anywho…. I’ll be updating my progress.

Links:

-Raw Data:  http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/co2000.html

-Tools: http://freegeographytools.com/2007/converting-e00-vector-data-to-shapefiles-a-free-and-fairly-painless-approach

Update: Gave up on the arcView format because of it’s proprietary nature.  Looks like arcview is pretty expensive, so I’m using the ascii formated data set which seems to be a space and line delimited list of coordinates (found here: http://www.census.gov/geo/www/cob/co2000.html).  Here’s the general format:

2      -0.737111200944987E+02       0.447554053271605E+02
-0.740250260000000E+02       0.449800360000000E+02
-0.740274011055598E+02       0.449957651692313E+02
-0.740274011055598E+02       0.449957651692313E+02

END

Looks like the first line is the center point of the shape, where each proceeding line until the “END” represents each point in the polygon.