[GIS] How to convert an active kmz file to a shapefile using either ArcMap or QGIS

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I need to convert an active kmz file to shapefile. I have a layer file and a kmz file which feed data from a server. If I try to convert using the kml to layer tool in ArcMap it fails as there is no underlying data. I am also not able to export the layer file to a shapefile for the same reason. Both the layer and the kmz file work well as the data is being fed directly from the online server. A few posts suggested using Arcmap2SLD but this crashes as soon as I try to run it. I have tried running it on a couple of computers with no luck. I am running Windows 7.

I'm attaching an image of a couple of kmz files loaded into Google Earth Pro. The first two are ordinary kml files. The last one (in Temporary Places) is an active kmz file which link directly to an online server (in this instance a government server). You can see this by the difference in the icons.

Best Answer

It seems to that your .kml file might just link to a WMS (Web Mapping Service.) To find out, you can open you kml in a text editor, then look for an URL within the document. Look for WMS in the URL.

If it's a WMS layer, then you cannot save it as a shapefile. WMS servers take the client request and push composite rasters back. However, if you are lucky, whoever serves the WMS layer also serves it as a WFS (Web Feature Server) and you can save that as a shapefile. WFS layers serve the actual vector data. You might be able to change WMS to WFS to get it to work. If you can get to the meta data stage, it might just the URL for the WFS.

I know this sounds crazy and it may not work for you. But it did actually work for me once.

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[GIS] Can QGIS open KMZ files

On a Mac, where QGIS uses the Kyngchaos.com GDAL 1.9 Complete framework, or on any platform where QGIS has been compiled against a GDAL build with support for the Google LIBKML driver, you can open .kmz files directly using the open dialog and selecting the All Files (*) option, or simply drag/drop onto QGIS. (Otherwise, you will need to decompress the .kmz to .kml files as noted by @Kurt)

enter image description here

If the .kmz has multiple layers, you will be presented with a layer selection dialog (single layer .kmz files are immediately loaded):

enter image description here

You can select multiple layers in that dialog to import. The Example Overlay of Multiple Datasets .kmz file I tested (from here) allowed multiple layer import of point, line and polygon layer types.

EDIT: You can check for ogr LIBKML driver support in your version of QGIS by running the following commands in QGIS's Python Console:

import osgeo.ogr
print 'Has LIBKML ogr driver: ' + str(osgeo.ogr.GetDriverByName('LIBKML') is not None)

[GIS] Custom Symbols are too small in KMZ File from ArcMap

In ArcMap 10.1/10.2 the export to KMZ tools as very "what you see is what you get".

That is, what you see inside ArcMap is how the output KML should look. This is the reason you need either a layer from ArcMap or a LYR file for the Layer to KML tool (opposed to just features).

For points, the symbology you have inside ArcMap gets exported as a .PNG for each layer and bundled with the KMZ. A quick test shows that whatever you "point" size is, gets doubled for the resulting PNGs. You may have to do a couple test exports untill you get the icons looking exactly as you want them. A quick test on exporting shows the point size in ArcMap vs. image dimensions on disk: enter image description here

The help topic on creating KML in ArcMap is here.

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[GIS] Can QGIS open KMZ files

[GIS] Custom Symbols are too small in KMZ File from ArcMap

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