Receiving information from Arc/Info

[David Wheatley]

> > I am going to be receiving some data from an Arc/Info system.  I know that
> > GRASS can handle Arc/Info "Generate" format, but I'm told by the person
> > I'm getting the data from that the "Generate" format would require one
> > file per layer and attributes would come across in a separate file per
> > layer and this would require more time than he can spend generating my
> > data. Is there a better format method of bringing the data in?  He has
> > suggested using a DXF file because it would be a one file solution.  Any
> > ideas?

Philip Verhagen wrote:
> 
> the person telling you this is definitely wrong about things. Assuming you're
.. stuff deleted about using ungenerate ...
> 

Phillip has misunderstood, I think, and the advice is quite correct. The
point 
it makes is that Arc/Info exchange format (.eoo) can contain many
different 
themes (soil, geology, roads etc etc) in one file. Philip correctly
described 
the only  way to move this data to grass using ungenerate, but you will
have to 
repeat the procedure for every theme in the Arc database, making it very 
tiresome in for your data supplier if there are many different themes.

DXF will allow all the themes to be written to one file (one theme for
each 
layer), but you will almost certainly loose some of the attribute data,
even if 
the polygons and lines themselves are transferred successfully (e.g. you
may
end up with contour lines, but not the heights of the contours)

Sorry, this isn't a very constructive response - I could be wrong, but I
think
the only way is to ungenerate each theme separately and to bribe your
data 
supplier.

-- 
David Wheatley
Department of Archaeology,
University of Southampton,
UK, SO17 1BJ