shp2tile question

[Don Deskins]

hello, another newbie question.

My project has large shp files (2 are greater than 1 gig).  My obvious
solution to the speed problem was to tile the shp files.

After (finally) getting shp2tile compiled, I tried several different option
combinations and got what were to me unexpected results.  What I expected
was some kind of world file for each tile and then use shptree to index the
files.  What I got of course was a series of shp files.

My questions are as follows:

1.  How do I figure out how many rows and colums to use in the shp2tile
program?  The shp file contains approx 54000 shapes.

2.  If i use the quadtree option, how do I know what value to use?

3.  Is there a way to create an index on the shp files that are produced
with the shp2tile program, so that I do not have to create a layer for each
shp file?

4.  What else am I missing?

Thanks,

Don