Separate shapefiles for points, places, waterways, roads, railways, landuse and buildings with relevant tags, then shapefiles with all points, lines and polygons together.
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download shapefiles created by Geofabrik, updated daily (usually) with a global extract and some countries.This page explains why and shows better alternatives like GeoJSON or vector GeoPackage.įor more info about Shapefiles see Wikipedia Obtaining shapefiles from OSM data Download shapefiles Pre-made shapefile downloads NOTE: Shapefiles have many limitations, like cutting attribute names.
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lyr file is often included as it contains specifications of how to display the data (colour, labelling, etc) in ArcGIS software. Although not part of the Esri shapefile standard, the. prj file which describes the coordinate system and projection information used.
There are also several optional files in the shapefile format. dbf - attribute format columnar attributes for each shape, in dBase IV format. shx - shape index format a positional index of the feature geometry to allow seeking forwards and backwards quickly. shp - shape format the feature geometry itself. The shapefile is in fact a grouping of several files formatted to represent different aspects of geodata: Broadly speaking these are a bit like OSM's tags. Each geometry has a set of associated attributes. In OpenStreetMap terms these can be considered as ' nodes', ' ways' and ' closed ways', respectively. Developed and regulated by Esri as a (mostly) open specification, the shapefile format spatially describes geometries as either 'points', 'polylines', or 'polygons'.