{"id":218,"date":"2009-06-14T22:48:34","date_gmt":"2009-06-14T22:48:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/?p=218"},"modified":"2018-04-25T01:12:37","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T00:12:37","slug":"converting-kml-to-shp-or-shp-to-kml","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/converting-kml-to-shp-or-shp-to-kml\/","title":{"rendered":"Converting KML to SHP or SHP to KML"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You can use many different <em>free<\/em> tools (such as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.zonums.com\/kml2shp.html\">Zonum Solutions<\/a> or <a href=\"http:\/\/arcscripts.esri.com\/\">ArcScripts<\/a>) to convert from Keyhole Markup Language (KML) to ESRI Shapefile (SHP) and vice-versa.<\/p>\n<p>The best advice I can give you is keeping on thing in mind: Google Earth only reads and writes KML\/KMZ using the <strong>WGS 1984 coordinate system<\/strong>. That means that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If you are converting <strong>SHP to KML<\/strong>, you should convert your shapefile to WGS1984. Use the &#8220;<strong>Project<\/strong>&#8221; tool in ArcToolbox and select that coordinate system. You must define the projection function in order to work&#8230; Then, use the above tools to convert to KML. Simple.<\/li>\n<li>In case you are converting <strong>KML to SHP<\/strong>, do the following: open the ArcMap with a blank document. Add any kind of shapefile in your own coordinate system (Datum, UTM, etc). The mxd will gain\u00a0that coord system. Convert the KML to SHP using the tools I&#8217;ve mentioned before. Add the output shapefile to the mxd and ArcMap will convert it to your coordinate system. If you want it permanently in that format, use the <strong>Project<\/strong> tool in ArcToolbox. Remember to fill in the projection function.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Success? Troubles? If you have any doubts related to this matter, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/contact\/\">contact me<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You can use many different free tools (such as Zonum Solutions or ArcScripts) to convert from Keyhole Markup Language (KML) to ESRI Shapefile (SHP) and vice-versa. The best advice I can give you is keeping on thing in mind: Google Earth only reads and writes KML\/KMZ using the WGS 1984 coordinate system. That means that: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nunoprospero.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}