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Who Works In Gis?


vespax

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I am wondering who geocaches and also works in GIS. what it is about

 

I started geocaching when I was a GIS specialist with a GPS company. So was wondering since it is a natural thing for GIS people to want to map and carry GPS's, how many are there out there that spend their lives with maps and geocaching. :rolleyes:

 

On another note, for some advise, who can recommend Manifold as a GIS platform to work in? ESRI is too rich for my blood these days being a grad student now.

 

thanks and lets hear your tales..... <_<

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not directly employed in gis, im an engineer that started as a young lad pulling the chains for surveyors etc. and graduated to being an instrument man. now my time is spent doing geology prospecting as a hobby and geotechncial research as i work in a large(5.5m boom arm centrifuge,one of the top facilities in the world) and the like.

 

as for gis platforms, mapinfo gets very high reviews from the people here. is you need a cad/gis interface mscad works well.

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GIS Coordinator in county government. Just plunked down $7500 :D for a personal copy of ArcEditor for a consulting gig I am doing on the side. Ouch!

 

I confess to caching a few times while doing fieldwork. The nice thing about my job is that I work with K-12 teachers, so I get to spread the word about GIS, GPS, and geocaching. It's great that geocaching actually has something to do with my job.

 

I routinely use our aerial photography to scout out caches, since it is newer than what Google has. If you look at my profile, I have a map I've been updating in ArcGIS since I started caching.

 

A sign of my geekiness: I use GIS to calculate cache density in my area and look at patterns. Like which areas are most densely packed with micros and so on. I convert the PQs of all the caches within 100mi of me to a CSV file in GSAK, then bring that CSV into ArcMap and create a point shapefile. Then I do a spatial join of the point layer with a grid of one-mile squares to calculate the density.

 

I also am a National Map Corps volunteer. So my whole life is nothing but this big blur of GIS, GPS, and geocaching. The irony is that I had only used a GPS receiver once before I took up geocaching, and nobody ever discussed geocaching in my department when I was in college (only 2 yrs ago).

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I work for an engineering firm as a GPS/GIS Technician in the Albany, NY area. I get to use all types of Trimble GPS receivers including the latest RTK centimeter units and Pathfinder submeter units to capture data for export directly into GIS format. In GIS I prefer ESRI's ArcGIS 9 but also use MapInfo Pro. I love being able to take a project from planning GPS sessions, to field collecting the data, to creating mapping as a final product. Of course, I geocache and have been since early 2001.

 

I loved studying maps since my earliest memories as a kid. I once worked for the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico using USGS topo maps to prospect for uranium, well before the advent of GPS. As mentioned earlier, I live for maps, playing with GPSrs, and geocaching.

 

I use GSAK for waypoint management, and DNRGarmin to translate my GIS shapefiles between GIS and .gpx format, and load GIS shapefiles directly into my Garmin GPSrs for my field work or for play. I record tracklogs of my hikes and bike rides to create trail mapping. I am also a National Map Corp volunteer and love anything to do with my field. Great idea for a topic by the way!

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I work in the environmental remediation field. GIS plays key a role in our field starting from the initial subsurface investigation and on to the engineering/corrective action phase and ending with the remediation of a contaminated site, property or area.

Edited by indygpser
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Yep, I spent several years of my career doing GIS & other mapping type things in the Exploration Dept of a major oil company. We dealt with more d.a.m.n map projections than you could shake a stick at. I mostly wrote GIS database and mapping related software during that period (1970-1985). Later I was in charge of putting all our maps into digital image data bases with appropriate info to facilitate retrieval. I was on several TIFF format definition committee's in the 1970's & early 80's.

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as for gis platforms, mapinfo gets very high reviews from the people here. is you need a cad/gis interface mscad works well.

 

I am going to look into mapinfo, but may be too high price also. I want to do some GIS consulting on the side with school, that is why I am looking for a program to use. South Africa is very 'new' when it comes to GIS implementation..... ie: market opening for me.

 

GIS Coordinator in county government. Just plunked down $7500 :D for a personal copy of ArcEditor for a consulting gig I am doing on the side. Ouch!

 

A sign of my geekiness: I use GIS to calculate cache density in my area and look at patterns. Like which areas are most densely packed with micros and so on. I convert the PQs of all the caches within 100mi of me to a CSV file in GSAK, then bring that CSV into ArcMap and create a point shapefile. Then I do a spatial join of the point layer with a grid of one-mile squares to calculate the density.

 

$7500! Yeah, ESRI is a killer. Manifold sells for $245 but Idon't know anyone that uses it.

 

I have a map in my profile that I update when I feel like it.

 

I work for an engineering firm as a GPS/GIS Technician in the Albany, NY area. I get to use all types of Trimble GPS receivers including the latest RTK centimeter units and Pathfinder submeter units to capture data for export directly into GIS format. In GIS I prefer ESRI's ArcGIS 9 but also use MapInfo Pro. I love being able to take a project from planning GPS sessions, to field collecting the data, to creating mapping as a final product. Of course, I geocache and have been since early 2001.

 

I loved studying maps since my earliest memories as a kid. I once worked for the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory in New Mexico using USGS topo maps to prospect for uranium, well before the advent of GPS. As mentioned earlier, I live for maps, playing with GPSrs, and geocaching.

 

I use GSAK for waypoint management, and DNRGarmin to translate my GIS shapefiles between GIS and .gpx format, and load GIS shapefiles directly into my Garmin GPSrs for my field work or for play. I record tracklogs of my hikes and bike rides to create trail mapping. I am also a National Map Corp volunteer and love anything to do with my field. Great idea for a topic by the way!

 

Use DNRGarmin as well. Very useful for consumer level GPS use in GIS. A friend at SanParks uses it for all the trail data that they map out. He geocaches as well, on the job! :D

 

I work in the environmental remediation field. GIS plays key a role in our field starting from the initial subsurface investigation and on to the engineering/corrective action phase and ending with the remediation of a contaminated site, property or area.

 

Studying Environemtnal Management at the moment so that I have an added skill on top of GIS. Hope to use GIS in enviro work afterwards.

 

Thanks for all the comments so far.

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I am wondering who geocaches and also works in GIS.

 

GIS Coordinator in government, also. I live and breathe maps, and have since I was little. For fun, I plotted my cache finds with some spatial statistics tools for crime analysis to see if it would predict where my "home base" is. It got pretty close! :anicute:

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While GIS is not my prime role here (though I would love it to be :-)), I do create for my bosses for their marketing presentations these neat demos using MapInfo where they change the zoom level or the center and a map with different things comes up.

 

I always wondered if a lot of GIS-folks are into caching. And like geomanda, "I live and breathe maps, and have since I was little" (my profile tells more on all this).

 

I wonder if anyone else on here uses MapInfo at work, etc. (I saw a couple of posts). I think ESRI/Arc GIS is probably more popular and more powerful now (and only a little more pricey), but MapInfo has a special place in my heart because the company was founded by a few college students at my alma mater while I was there (like I was a freshman and they were seniors.....I have nothing to do with forming of the product or creating of the company, but I just know a lot about it as a result)

Edited by HaLiJuSaPa
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I went from a cartographer to GIS analyst to GIS programmer all before I got into geocaching. I've splurged on my own ArcGIS 9 (only $1200 for ArcView) and a hp 500ps 42 inch plotter. Now I make wall maps of my geocaching adventures and I've got some interesting travelbug wallmaps in mind.

 

Being immersed in GIS has made me quite picky about the software I use, so I wrote my own that does everything exactly the way I want it to on my pocket pc including database organization, mapping, and export to shapefiles and other formats.

 

GIS certainly makes headache issues like caching along a route seem trivial.

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I'm new to Geocaching, this website, and this forum. I am a GIS Analyst at a company in Louisville, KY. I know of another member of the site that is an employee here too. He actually got me started in caching. I recently graduated from Western Kentucky Univ for GIS/Spatial Analysis. I work in the DNC department at this company. We're currently using ArcInfo Workstation in a Unix environment. Hopefully that will all be changing soon. We have started testing the DNC production line tool set from ESRI on ArcGIS 9.1 but we have found a few problems working in an SDE database. Anyway...enough with the tech talk.

 

Indotguy, do you work at the garage near the intersection of 265 and I-65? I know a couple people that work there. Do you do all of your mapping in house or just the data collection?

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I have worked in GIS for the last 6 years. I graduated from Oklahoma state with a degree in geography and GIS certificate. Right out of college I got a job as a contractor in Washington D.C. doing map monkey GIS. Currently I am employed by a large GPS comapany based out of Tulsa Oklahoma sourcing data for products. I didn't start Caching until very, very, recently. But I am already addicted.

 

Unfortunatley there is not much variety when it comes to GIS Software packages. ESRI has a pretty good monopoly on it. I have used several different packages over the last 6 years, one that comes to mind is called Taukis GIS, its available as a free trial, can't remember how much it cost to purchase, but it was not $7500!!

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Currently I am employed by a large GPS comapany based out of Tulsa Oklahoma sourcing data for products. I didn't start Caching until very, very, recently. But I am already addicted.

 

Could that company start with a G? If so, good to know there are some cachers inside the mothership! :ph34r:

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Currently I am employed by a large GPS comapany based out of Tulsa Oklahoma sourcing data for products. I didn't start Caching until very, very, recently. But I am already addicted.

 

Could that company start with a G? If so, good to know there are some cachers inside the mothership! :ph34r:

 

No I'm guessing it's Lowrance, they are based in Tulsa. The big company that starts with a G is based in Olathe, KS a small ways down the road from Kansas City.

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I am trying to learn a little GIS for work. I gave up on ESRI, too expensive. I use DIVA-GIS, developed by the University of Berkley. It is also much easier to use.

 

If you can afford it (almost as expensive as ESRI/Arc View), MapInfo is quite easy to use yet pretty powerful....

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I am trying to learn a little GIS for work. I gave up on ESRI, too expensive. I use DIVA-GIS, developed by the University of Berkley. It is also much easier to use.

 

If you can afford it (almost as expensive as ESRI/Arc View), MapInfo is quite easy to use yet pretty powerful....

I work with both softwares, and I find that ESRI's ArcView is much better for the price and is more compatible with GPS data if this is what your aim is. The current US retail price for ArcView 3.3 is $1,195.00 for the Windows version. ArcView 3.3 may not be supported soon, so the price should come way down if and when this occurs. ArcGIS 9.x is far better but its price is higher and the licensing is more restrictive.

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I work with both softwares, and I find that ESRI's ArcView is much better for the price and is more compatible with GPS data if this is what your aim is. The current US retail price for ArcView 3.3 is $1,195.00 for the Windows version. ArcView 3.3 may not be supported soon, so the price should come way down if and when this occurs. ArcGIS 9.x is far better but its price is higher and the licensing is more restrictive.

Unless they were using Avenue scripts, why would someone buy ArcView 3.3 for $1195 when ArcView 9.1 is far more functional and is only $300 more?
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I work with both softwares, and I find that ESRI's ArcView is much better for the price and is more compatible with GPS data if this is what your aim is. The current US retail price for ArcView 3.3 is $1,195.00 for the Windows version. ArcView 3.3 may not be supported soon, so the price should come way down if and when this occurs. ArcGIS 9.x is far better but its price is higher and the licensing is more restrictive.

Unless they were using Avenue scripts, why would someone buy ArcView 3.3 for $1195 when ArcView 9.1 is far more functional and is only $300 more?

 

That's what I'm screaming! :grin: I can't believe ESRI still charges $1200 for 3.3 when it is outsated by 8 and 9. I have 3.3 but can barely stand to use it. I learned in 8.3 and find it hard to reverse back to 3.3.

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Currently I am employed by a large GPS comapany based out of Tulsa Oklahoma sourcing data for products. I didn't start Caching until very, very, recently. But I am already addicted.

 

Could that company start with a G? If so, good to know there are some cachers inside the mothership! :grin:

 

Nope, Sorry! Starts with an "L", those "G"men are up in Kansass!

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That's what I'm screaming! :grin: I can't believe ESRI still charges $1200 for 3.3 when it is outsated by 8 and 9. I have 3.3 but can barely stand to use it. I learned in 8.3 and find it hard to reverse back to 3.3.

Their educational pricing is fantastic though. While working on my master's thesis, I bought ArcView 9.0 for only $250 plus $150 for the 3D Analyst extension.
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That's what I'm screaming! :grin: I can't believe ESRI still charges $1200 for 3.3 when it is outsated by 8 and 9. I have 3.3 but can barely stand to use it. I learned in 8.3 and find it hard to reverse back to 3.3.

 

It all boils down to: Had you rather sell 1000 copies at $1000 apiece or 100,000 copies at $100 apiece. If engineers are in charge it's the former. If marketing people are in charge it's the latter.

 

I saw an engineer put a $25,000 price tag once on a contouring package for the PC. After a year or two of complaining that he was making no sales I told him to sell it for $100. He never did think I was serious and finally gave up and went back to working for someone else.

 

But, when you price something to high and people make up their mind that they don't need it, then they generally won't buy it later at any price.

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Unless they were using Avenue scripts, why would someone buy ArcView 3.3 for $1195 when ArcView 9.1 is far more functional and is only $300 more?

 

Become a reseller, ESRI sells ArcGIS 9 to them for $900. :rolleyes:

 

Or you can buy it from a reseller, I've seen it as low as $1100 (for 8.3 a couple years ago, ESRI prices for ArcGIS/ArcView haven't gone up since then).

 

But really, $600 dollars off is still just taking 6 of the 15 daggers out, You'll still be dead when its over. Its nice (from a government standpoint) to be compatible with most everyone else, but it also sucks to be a perpetual beta tester.

 

Besides, the thing thats worse than paying $1500 for ArcGIS is paying an extra $2500 to be able to make contour lines from a DEM.

Edited by gcslim
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Besides, the thing thats worse than paying $1500 for ArcGIS is paying an extra $2500 to be able to make contour lines from a DEM.

 

How hard is it to become a reseller for ESRI?

 

You could use this software: DEM2TOPO

which requires this software as well: IDL Virtual Machine

 

I have used it to create contour lines for my Garmin GPS here in Cape Town, SA. It works really well although I can't verify the exact precision of it. But I used it today hiking in the mountains and I have saved a ton of money by making my own Garmin maps myself rather than buying from resellers here.

 

The software is free although a little annoying to install. But hey, it can save you $2,500 so it's worth a try.

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I have worked in GIS for the last 3 years. Before that, I studied geography at university and also had some GIS courses. I worked with Mapinfo and Idrisi (raster gis) and now use Mapinfo and a GIS system, developed at my current company for performing analyses on sewersystems. I've heard that ESRI-software is often more easy to work with, but never got the change to try it as as well at university as at my current company Mapinfo is chosen because it is much cheaper.

 

I only recently started with geocaching (i.e. this weekend), but got the idea from a colleague/fellow geographer who also works with GIS. So maybe their is a link...I know about GPS technology from my education and my professional career, maybe that takes away a threshold or something?

Edited by jenfosch
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I am currently working on my masters degree in GIS. I had read about geocaching about 2 years ago while taking a GPS class. I was interested then but didn't have a reciever of my own.

 

This semester I borrowed a unit to work on a project and in the process really enjoyed gathering data and hiking trails. Now I am about to get my own unit so that I can start geocaching.

 

My nephew is a cub scout and is interested in geocaching as well so I am hoping it can turn into a family adventure. :unsure: Since I also love nature I'm hoping to instill some environmental knowledge at the same time. :unsure:

 

What I really need now is some insight into the world of actually working in GIS. The students at the university I am attending are very involved in their own work and sort of run into and out of classes at night to get back home. It's hard to really 'network'.

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I've been a mapping/GIS programmer geek for many, many years and am currently working as a spatial database administrator looking after a terrabyte of spatial data. We run a pool of approx. 600 ESRI licenses (ArcGIS 9.x and ArcView 9.x) and while fairly new to geocaching, I've been running tracks and waypoints into ArcView and Arcinfo for many years (can't resists the chance to create new map data!). The irony of it is that many of the people that I work with are also geocachers and although we have access to all of the expensive GIS tools, most of us have given up the high end stuff in favour of the simplicity of Mapsource :unsure: !! I still pump out some quality hardcopy plots when I head off on my longer treks but I'm finding that I seldom use them. My GPS is loaded with stock mapping software (Garmin) which works just fine (although the mapping is rather crude at times) and now that Mapsource has integrated Google Earth into their product, I don't have any desire to fiddle with data imports into ArcGIS. (maybe it just feels too much like work!)

 

For those of you out there that can't afford the high-end GIS software you may want to have a look at ESRI's ArcExplorer. It's free and reads shapefile format and there are lots freebies out there for converting GPS data to shapefiles.

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I teach GPS and GIS. In our classes we teach how to tie GPS and GIS together. We use an ESRI product called ArcVoyager Special Ed for schools which is about 90% ArcView but free to schools. You could also to the same thing with ESRI's ArcExplorer.

 

Is it work, yes but you can tie information to the points you save and make it a seperate layer. You can also make your tracks another layer. We teach also how to map the gps on topographic maps as well as air photos. Gives a lot of possibilities for educational projects.

 

If you want to map it on USGS topographic maps, look at National Geographic's TOPO! GPS USA. They just updated it in June. It will interface with serial or USB units, and also works with MACs. TOPO comes with the the 3 of the 5 levels of maps. You can download the data and see it right on the maps with pretty good detail. The software runs $25.00. If you want real good views, which is level 4 and 5, the state set runs about $99.00 - ouch. The first three levels are pretty good.

 

GIS does require some work. But it gives you several opportunities. Below is an example of a screen shot of ArcView. The green dots are the waypoints, the yellow are tracks.

 

example2.gif

 

Can't seem to get the image to show - sorry

 

 

Ed

Edited by egorny
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ED and everyone else that has replied.

 

When I first moved to South Africa I decided to carry my GPS around with me for the first month. I made a quick map from all my tracks (geocaching and daily stuff) for my own reference. I am now trying to get a few other cachers to try and map ourselves caching trips for a month just to see.

 

Here is the link to the thread in South Africa forum about it.

 

Glad to see so many people posting in here. I knew there would be some people since it is a natural progression between the two, so it is nice to hear what everyone does and their tricks.

 

I am looking forward to Garmin supporting Mac OSX at the end of the year. I would love to kick my PC out the window and stick with the Mac. Rumors have it that Apple is introducing a mapping program of some sort. I could never bend my mind around GRASS to do GIS on my Mac! :unsure:

 

Keep the posts coming. We could always learn a bit more from each other.

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Anybody know how to get a track from an eXplorist into ArcGIS? It's easy to bring points in. Just convert the .upt POI file to tab delimited in GPSBabel. I've done this for work several times. But how about tracks?

 

With DNR Garmin and other tools, it seems easier to use a Garmin with GIS than a Magellan.

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Anybody know how to get a track from an eXplorist into ArcGIS? It's easy to bring points in. Just convert the .upt POI file to tab delimited in GPSBabel. I've done this for work several times. But how about tracks?

 

With DNR Garmin and other tools, it seems easier to use a Garmin with GIS than a Magellan.

 

I use G7toWin to download my tracks from a Sportrak... I don't know if it supports the Explorist but the GPS setup page looks like it supports Magellan USB so it would probably work. G7toWin allows you to download both tracks and waypoints and save them as GPX files. Once in GPX it's just a matter of picking one of the many conversion tools that are available (ie. GPX2Shp). I can download from the Sportrak into G7toWin and then upload to my Garmin which can talk directly to ArcMap so I haven't checked out the other conversion routines available.

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Whoa! Thank you. I just tried GPX2Shp on one of my tracks and it worked.

 

After writing my note I decided to try it as well :laughing: . GPX2SHP didn't seem to like the GPX file that I created in G7toWin (it had waypoints and tracks in the same file) however I loaded the file into Mapsource and then re-exported to create a new GPX file and GPX2Shp handled that file just fine.

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I work in GIS in a roundabout way for the forest industry in Alberta. All of our information systems use GIS for mapping of cutblocks, roads, and buffers etc. so I use ArcView ALOT. Every year they do aerial photograph flights of all the cutblocks and new roads. The data is then digitized from the aerial photos and organized into shapefiles, and line and point features.

 

I use my Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx alot in the field and I'm hoping to soon figure out how to transfer shapefiles directly to my GPS so that i know where all the blocks and roads are. Any tips on programs to use for accomplishing this....... or even better...... does anyone know for any tutorials on the subject?

 

THANKS!!

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I use my Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx alot in the field and I'm hoping to soon figure out how to transfer shapefiles directly to my GPS so that i know where all the blocks and roads are. Any tips on programs to use for accomplishing this....... or even better...... does anyone know for any tutorials on the subject?

 

If you look in the links page than there are a couple of starting points for making your own Garmin maps for your units. You can create the maps straight from shapefiles, or use a program called GPSmapedit to visually see what you are doing.

 

It is a little tricky to get the map made, but possible. If you do get into it, than please consider making some Alberta maps for travelers to use.

 

Good luck, and let me know if I can help further. :rolleyes:

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I use my Garmin GPSMAP 60Cx alot in the field and I'm hoping to soon figure out how to transfer shapefiles directly to my GPS so that i know where all the blocks and roads are. Any tips on programs to use for accomplishing this....... or even better...... does anyone know for any tutorials on the subject?

 

THANKS!!

I also use my Map60Cx in my GIS/GPS field of work, along with the Trimble RTK and Pathfinder units. I use DNR Garmin, a free ArcView extension, with ArcView 3.x and ArcGIS 9.x to do precisely what you are hoping to do. This program transfers data between your Garmin GPSr and GIS. I collect point and track data to convert directly into shapefiles, and can reproject my data to whatever my project calls for. DNR has a pretty good users guide, but I wrote a more specific step-by-step guide that I'd be happy to share. Contact me via email so I could reply with the ~1MB guide as a .PDF document if you'd like to get it. Trust me, DNR is exactly what you need. It is an AWESOME tool for us using GIS and our Garmins!

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I am wondering who geocaches and also works in GIS. what it is about

 

I started geocaching when I was a GIS specialist with a GPS company. So was wondering since it is a natural thing for GIS people to want to map and carry GPS's, how many are there out there that spend their lives with maps and geocaching. ;)

 

On another note, for some advise, who can recommend Manifold as a GIS platform to work in? ESRI is too rich for my blood these days being a grad student now.

 

thanks and lets hear your tales..... <_<

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Hi,

I wasn't sure if someone already pointed this out. Since you are a student, you are likely to be able to obtain a cheap version of ArcView (stripped down that is). You should check this out with the geography department at your school. As for me, I'm a GIS analyst for a private firm. We have a garmin geoxt for fieldwork. At home I have a Garmin Etrex Legend. My work doesn't involve fieldwork, but pretty basic map creation and data manipulation.

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Can maps made in ArcView be imported into an eXplorist 500LE?

No, sorry. There's been a lot discussed regarding "rolling your own" maps so you search these forums for that.

 

On a separate ArcView subject, I have upgraded to ArcGIS 9.2 and by accident discovered I can now open a .gpx file! Too cool! I can download my GPSr and save all waypoints, tracks, and routes as a .gpx file, then open it and all the data imports right into ArcView. I love it!

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On a separate ArcView subject, I have upgraded to ArcGIS 9.2 and by accident discovered I can now open a .gpx file! Too cool! I can download my GPSr and save all waypoints, tracks, and routes as a .gpx file, then open it and all the data imports right into ArcView. I love it!

Timpat, how are you bringing in the GPX file? I just tried to add in a GPX file from a folder full of GPXs. None appear in the list of files in the Add Data dialog, since ArcMap doesn't appear to think it is a valid data type.
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Geognerd, just saw your reply. I'll have to wait till morning at work to look thru things, but I used the Add Data button and mine sees .gpx files. I'm running 9.2, my old 9.1 would not. I did sign up for a 60-day trial of the Data Interoperatibility extension, so perhaps this is allowing me to open them, hmmm. I'll report back Thur morning.

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At the moment, I don't currently work with GIS. However, as an undergrad, I took a number of courses that used GIS. Of course, I took the GIS course offered at school, and I took geology and biology courses afterwards that integrated use of GIS.

 

I am working at getting accepted into grad school so I can work in spatial ecology studying island biogeography, habitat fragmentation, home ranges, and things like that. The last GIS program I used was ArcGIS 8.0. Quite a bit has changed since then, it seems.

 

If you want cheap GIS solutions, you might look into QGIS (www.qgis.org). It reportedly works on Windows. Last time I tried, it didn't work. Trying again.

 

Edit: Just installed QGIS 0.7.4. So far, it works.

Edited by mtbikernate
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Geognerd, I had a moment to test my Arc9.2 opening .gpx files. It is indeed due to the fact I have the 60-day trial of the Data Interoperability extension. Darn! I think that extension is about $1,500. I don't think the boss is going to spring for that! Had high hopes this was just a general improvement.

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Geognerd, just saw your reply. I'll have to wait till morning at work to look thru things, but I used the Add Data button and mine sees .gpx files. I'm running 9.2, my old 9.1 would not. I did sign up for a 60-day trial of the Data Interoperatibility extension, so perhaps this is allowing me to open them, hmmm. I'll report back Thur morning.

I bet it's the Data Interoperability extension that's letting you see the GPX files. I was able to fool ArcCatalog into listing GPX files, but it couldn't make heads or tails of the file. I'm running ArcInfo 9.2 without the trial Data Interoperability extension. It's a shame ESRI couldn't add something to the Toolbox to convert GPX. GPX is just a flavor of XML, how hard could it be for ESRI? They figured out how to do KML in ArcGIS Explorer and display Excel files in ArcMap.

 

Looks like the best way to get GPX data into ArcGIS is to either run GPX2SHP or export the GPX file to tab-delimited or CSV from GSAK/GPSBabel and then do the Add XY Data thing.

 

I am working at getting accepted into grad school so I can work in spatial ecology studying island biogeography, habitat fragmentation, home ranges, and things like that. The last GIS program I used was ArcGIS 8.0. Quite a bit has changed since then, it seems.

 

If you want cheap GIS solutions, you might look into QGIS (www.qgis.org). It reportedly works on Windows. Last time I tried, it didn't work. Trying again.

 

Edit: Just installed QGIS 0.7.4. So far, it works.

I tried QGIS a while back and kept managing to crash it. Maybe I'll give it a whirl again. I also tried TatukGIS. I remember it working OK. However, that thing just takes over all your file associations. Even though I uninstalled the program, I had to make several registry edits to keep the program name from showing up in the list of opening programs when I right-click a file. Supposedly one of these programs is able to read GPX...I think it was QGIS.

 

You mentioned spatial ecology, which reminded me of a nice extension called Hawth's Tools that you may find handy.

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