[GRASSLIST:7686] HOW to deal with polygons (ESRI shp's again)

[Dave Sampson]

When importing ESRI shape (shp) files are there primary steps you should 
take before even thinking of importing them. I feel as though things 
just are not working, what am I missing? What doc or man page did I miss?

I have been battling shape files all week. All of the bellow do not 
occur each time, but these are challenges I have been facing.

* I have to use OGR at the command line to change projections 
(GRASSLIST#7683)
* similar projections don't line up in GRASS like they did in ARCVIEW
* I loose chunks of data (missing polygons) (GRASSLIST#7685)
* SHX files become "currupt"
* PROJ files when present are not read corectly or at all
* Area information is lost and random warnings appear

Is there a script you can run on a SHP file to see if anything BAD will 
happen to it before trying to bring it into GRASS and messing things up?

Cheers

P.S Thanks for your ongoing patience and expertise.

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|Dave Sampson: Geographic Information System (GIS) Technician	|
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