[Gdal-dev] Canadian Topographic data (NTDB) now free!

[Matt Wilkie]

Hello Folks,  Good news!

"Important Notice -- Take note that the NTDB, CanImage and CanMatrix 
products will now be available at no cost only at the GeoGratis website."
http://www.cits.rncan.gc.ca/cit/servlet/CIT/site_id=01&page_id=1-004.html

Note that the free CanMatrix available on the same server is only the 
half-resolution version (160dpi). The 300dpi is still for sale only and 
restricted distribution. A tip though, if you want the 300dpi buy it 
from  http://www.softmaptech.com/ for a fraction of the cost from NRCAN 
(with collars clipped to boot). Rumour has it that in a year or two the 
restrictions will be lifted here too.

If you already know what you're looking for, skip the 20-clicks 
interface at http://www.geogratis.ca/geogratis/en/index.html and dive 
straight into ftp://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/geogratis/bndt/

A command like this will grab all of the 250k 105 series in one go:
[windows, with cygwin tools in path; double up % to put in a batch file]

    wget --continue --recursive --level 2 
ftp://ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca/pub/geogratis/bndt/250k_shp_en/105/*

Then unpack:

    cd ftp2.cits.rncan.gc.ca\pub\geogratis\bndt\250k_shp_en\105\
    for /r %f in (*.zip) do unzip -d . %f

and mush together with OGR goodness (orders of magnitude faster than 
ArcGIS FeatureClassToXXX[*]):

    mkdir merged
    for %f in (*wetland*.shp) do (
       ( if not exist merged\wetlands.shp ogr2ogr -f "esri shapefile" 
merged\wetlands.shp %f ) else (
       ogr2ogr -f "esri shapefile" -update -append merged\wetlands.shp %f )
    )	


[*] http://www.uttara.ca/blog/gis/ipy-and-arcgisscripting


Enjoy!


-- 
matt wilkie
--------------------------------------------
Geographic Information,
Information Management and Technology,
Yukon Department of Environment
10 Burns Road * Whitehorse, Yukon * Y1A 4Y9
867-667-8133 Tel * 867-393-7003 Fax
http://environmentyukon.gov.yk.ca/geomatics/
--------------------------------------------