[Qgis-developer] MXD

Barry Rowlingson b.rowlingson at lancaster.ac.uk
Thu Jan 27 04:06:28 EST 2011


On Thu, Jan 27, 2011 at 7:52 AM, Noli Sicad <nsicad at gmail.com> wrote:
> No. There is no way you can convert ArcGIS project file (*.mxd) to
> QGIS with or without ArcPy.
>
> You just have to add vector layers in QGIS project.

Looks like a proprietary binary format:

http://viswaug.wordpress.com/2009/07/18/deployment-hassles-with-the-black-box-mxd-file-format/

If you have ESRI products then it might be possible to write a simple
Qgis project file containing the layers for all OGR and GDAL layers
(not ESRI geodatabases, of course) but that would require some Arc
programming. WIthout ESRI products you are stuck unless someone can
reverse-engineer the mxd file format, or if the paths to things like
shapefiles and geoTiffs are stored in plain text within the file.

 Could you do this:

    Start ArcGIS, load one shapefile, save the MXD. Add another
shapefile, save as a new MXD. Load a geoTiff. Save as a new MXD. Put
those MXD files somewhere we can download them... I'd like to see how
obfuscated this format really is.

 Qgis project files are of course saved in an open XML format.

Barry


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