Provincial / Town Borders, how to handle.

[ironbuttpinoy]

I am doing the Luzon provincial borders, using border images from WIKIPEDIA maps.

Take a look at how im doing it. I need some guidance.
Should I do polygons or traces?

Heres what I did.
First see the screen shot of the USA map in City Navigator.
It’s a heavy Gray line for states. States would be the same as Provinces. So I can see that Jan would probably want to do the same.
Secondly Provinces have town borders that host barangays. We would call them counties.

My question is to you all.

Should my efforts attatched be.
Province borders only via trace
Province borders only via polygon
Town borders also via trace
Town borders also via polygon?

Im thinking the Province borders should be traces converted to gray like states in city Navigator.
I also think it may be helpful to add the Town borders and have them end up as thin dotted or dashed lines.

Please advise.

Ill not go anyfurther till I get some consensus on this.

Attatchments.
*Screen shot of my USA map in Mapsource
*KMZ showing an image overlay with 70% opacity and some batangas borders as tracings.

[ironbuttpinoy]

Since the KMZ is not downloadable if you are not a contributor then heres a GE Screen shot of what im looking at.

Note the image with the red mabini is just an overlay template that can be toggled off as the second pic shows.

These images show a trace of Batangas as a border, Then the borders of Mabini, and Nasugbu.

The first Im thinking should be a gray line in the finished mapsource map, and the others a dotted or dashed line only visible when you start to zoom in.

let me know. Im awaiting direction.

[ironbuttpinoy]

How Provinces are in the USA maps in Mapsource


Border Image overlaying in GE


Traces resulting in GE.

[Borgie]

Hi there ironbuttpinoy, nice project you're doing. There are actually shapefiles available for the whole Philippines ranging in detail from the regions, to the provinces, to cities/municipalities, to barangays, and even to some puroks in Metro Manila. These shapefiles are available as polygons. But their accuracy in terms of the provincial/municipal/barangay boundaries needs to be checked as i found out, in our province, that it is quite inaccurate. However, for a general representation of a particular area, i think this would suffice. It would be very tedious, imo, to go about defining the boundaries in Google Earth esp. if you're not familiar with the area.

To go back to your question, methinks polygons would be better than traces or polylines. When you have your GPS with you, it would be nice to click on a blank space in your map and have the name of the barangay or municipality or province (depending on the zoom level) appear on your screen. Makes for faster ID of where you are exactly, imo. Dotted lines or traces would only be of use when you zoom out to see the whole barangay or municipality or province, and this would be useful too. But to have that capability to check what barangay you are in when you are at street level zoom detail would be really nice. My two cents...

[ironbuttpinoy]

Hi there ironbuttpinoy, nice project you're doing. There are actually shapefiles available for the whole Philippines ranging in detail from the regions, to the provinces, to cities/municipalities, to barangays, and even to some puroks in Metro Manila. These shapefiles are available as polygons. But their accuracy in terms of the provincial/municipal/barangay boundaries needs to be checked as i found out, in our province, that it is quite inaccurate. However, for a general representation of a particular area, i think this would suffice. It would be very tedious, imo, to go about defining the boundaries in Google Earth esp. if you're not familiar with the area.

Borgie:

Thanks so much for your input. For me Im thinking the paths are easier to generate and as for mapping templates all I have found are the Wikipedia PNG files for Provinces/Town Limits/Barangays. I would love to get long/lat coordinates of each borders start/turn/end but dont know where to get that since im here in states. My wife/asawa says Bureau of Land and Transportation may be a source of this data. Any thoughts/ideas? Where would I get those shape files?

To go back to your question, methinks polygons would be better than traces or polylines. When you have your GPS with you, it would be nice to click on a blank space in your map and have the name of the barangay or municipality or province (depending on the zoom level) appear on your screen. Makes for faster ID of where you are exactly, imo. Dotted lines or traces would only be of use when you zoom out to see the whole barangay or municipality or province, and this would be useful too. But to have that capability to check what barangay you are in when you are at street level zoom detail would be really nice. My two cents...

My thought was just to help me zoom out in searching for an area hence the paths. The USA does not use polygons either in their map and the borders work fine. My intention is to first provide the Provincial borders (accurately if I can get the data). Then to provide the Town Borders. I think that would be enough. And I would also think that most folks would know the province they were in and if not they can zoom out. Look at the US map.

For me... Its a geography lesson as I DON'T live there... YET! This border project is actually a step in helping me organize my GE folders which are nested folders of country/island/province/town. In each town I can then put push pins for destinations/bonuses I have planned on using for an upcoming rally I will host. Since I don't yet "GET" the geography of the Phil this is proving invaluable in learning this.

Keep the perspectives coming.

[Borgie]

ironbuttpinoy: Are you familiar working with arcview and shapefiles? If you are i might be able to help you. In the meantime, check out this site of LGU Naga where you can download some Philippines shapefiles for province and region: http://gis.naga.gov.ph/phildata/

[ironbuttpinoy]

Arcview and Shapefiles?

ironbuttpinoy: Are you familiar working with arcview and shapefiles? If you are i might be able to help you. In the meantime, check out this site of LGU Naga where you can download some Philippines shapefiles for province and region: http://gis.naga.gov.ph/phildata/

Not at all familiar with arcview. I can do pretty good in photoshop, and i can limp around in illustrator. I have an old friend that teaches adobe graphics and I have Adobe CS3 full suite. So I have the tools and can get advanced solutions direction but I dont know what you are aiming at for the moment.

In my perspecitive I can only overlay an image, or put in pushpins, at long/lats and play connect the dot to make a real trace line if I have those long/lats.

Please continue to advise.

[ironbuttpinoy]

went to downloads.com and found a trialware version of Universal GIS Converter and Ill take SHP files and save them as images. Then Ill go from there and see if that works.

[Borgie]

Okay, i checked out the Universal GIS Converter and you can actually convert shapefiles (.shp) to .gpx which can opened in Mapsource and even Google Earth. Please check out the link i pasted, then from there download shapefiles by clicking Provinces (polys) here here here and Regions (polys) here here here .

You need to download the 3 files that will comprise one shapefile. After downloading, try opening it in Universal GIS Converter, save as .gpx. Check if you can open in Mapsource. If you can, you can open it also in GE. These are polygons that should overlay over the areas they represent.

[ironbuttpinoy]

Okay, i checked out the Universal GIS Converter and you can actually convert shapefiles (.shp) to .gpx which can opened in Mapsource and even Google Earth. Please check out the link i pasted, then from there download shapefiles by clicking Provinces (polys) here here here and Regions (polys) here here here .

You need to download the 3 files that will comprise one shapefile. After downloading, try opening it in Universal GIS Converter, save as .gpx. Check if you can open in Mapsource. If you can, you can open it also in GE. These are polygons that should overlay over the areas they represent.

Ill look into that. Its almost 11pm here. May not be able to do it immediately. Will definitely try that. Thanks a ton for the direction.

[Borgie]

So I have the tools and can get advanced solutions direction but I dont know what you are aiming at for the moment.

Forgot to answer this: I'm aiming at you getting polygon files of regions/provinces that you can overlay in Google Earth. Would save you a lot of manhours tracing them manually, plus you get to identify each polygon. Said polygon shapefiles can also be converted to polylines or traces, as you require.

[ironbuttpinoy]

Need someone with a strong PC to convert a file.

Conversion to gpx does not seem to work. So im having problems making it happen. Seems my PC does not have the resources. Could someone help out by following these simple steps below?

Seems I need some one to download from this page at http://gis.naga.gov.ph/phildata.
The files that are listed as:
"Provinces (polys) here (shp) here (shx) here (dbf)" (these links here are the same and working)

Then click here to download and install the trial version of "Universal GIS Converter". It wont totally load a program. But it will download a zip file that has an exe that runs the program.

Once into the program click "Multi Files Conversion".

At this point the only thing that makes sence is to use the applet on the far right to convert to a gpx file.

I need the shp file to be converted into a gpx file. My system wont do it because of not enough memory. If someone can send me an email (robreil@robreil.com) with the file or a link I will be happy to try this out and apply polys to GE and go from there.

Please advise.

Thanks,

Robert

[Borgie]

Followed your simple steps and tried to generate the .gpx file for provinces. Took awhile for it to read 99% complete conversion then it sort of hanged. Checked the destination folder and indeed it created .gpx file, but i was astonished to see that from a source .shp file of less than 5MB, it created a .gpx file of 393,008kb! Had to use task manager to stop "Universal GIS Converter". Seeing that a .gpx file had indeed been created even if i terminated the program before it read 100%, i tried to open the .gpx file in Mapsource. Mapsource hanged also. Undeterred, i tested a download of the smaller roadlines .shp files from the same source, ran "Universal GIS Converter" and this time it completed the conversion successfully, generating an almost 8MB file out of the less than 1MB shapefile. However, when i tried it in Mapsource, it says that the "file cannot be imported". Maybe it's not compatible with Mapsource. Haven't tested it in GE but i'm not too keen on this program, seeing how it generates very huge files.

ironbuttpinoy, pls. check your mail later, will send you .kml files and .gpx files for comparison and for you to start your project in GE.

[ironbuttpinoy]

Haven't tested it in GE but i'm not too keen on this program, seeing how it generates very huge files.

ironbuttpinoy, pls. check your mail later, will send you .kml files and .gpx files for comparison and for you to start your project in GE.

Obviously I wasn't that happy with it either. Made the files but threw errors. And my box is pretty decent (so I thought). I got your email and tried it out. I can make traces of those lines no problem, but looking at some of the ocean borders I see that some areas are pretty wacked out. Its close. Closer than the way I was doing it but you made some statements that area leading me to believe that the KML file may be even better than the KMZ file.

I want to do the best job I can with whats available. Let me know.

[Borgie]

Sorry for the mix-up, i meant kml but i wrote kmz in my email. You really can't see a perfect fit outline of the islands when you zoom in closer. Remember, these shape files were around long before GE became that accessible. I'm even pleasantly surprised that it matches the island of the Philippines properly when you zoom out. It's good enough for ID purposes, i think...