DESCRIPTION

v.import imports vector data from files and database connections supported by the OGR library) into the current location and mapset. If the projection of the input does not match the projection of the location, the input is reprojected into the current location. In case that the projection of the input map does match the projection of the location, the input is imported directly.

Supported Vector Formats

v.import uses the OGR library which supports various vector data formats including ESRI Shapefile, Mapinfo File, UK .NTF, SDTS, TIGER, IHO S-57 (ENC), DGN, GML, GPX, AVCBin, REC, Memory, OGDI, and PostgreSQL, depending on the local OGR installation. For details see the OGR web site. The OGR (Simple Features Library) is part of the GDAL library, hence GDAL needs to be installed to use v.in.ogr.

The list of actually supported formats can be printed by -f flag.

NOTES

v.import checks the projection metadata of the dataset to be imported against the current location's projection. If not identical a related error message is shown.
To override this projection check (i.e. to use current location's projection) by assuming that the dataset has the same projection as the current location the -o flag can be used. This is also useful when geodata to be imported do not contain any projection metadata at all. The user must be sure that the projection is identical in order to avoid to introduce data errors.

Topology cleaning

When importing polygons, non-topological polygons are converted to topological areas. By default, a very small snapping threshold is applied (1e-13 map units) to avoid topological errors caused by numerical inaccuracy of the input data format. If the original polygons contain errors (unexpected overlapping areas or small gaps between polygons), the import might need to be repeated using a larger snap value.

The snap threshold defines the maximal distance from one to another vertex in map units (for latitude-longitude locations in degree). If there is no other vertex within snap distance, no snapping will be done. Note that a too large value can severely damage area topology, beyond repair.

Post-processing: Snapped boundaries may need to be cleaned with v.clean, using its tools break,rmdupl,rmsa. For details, refer to the v.clean manual page.

EXAMPLE

# import SHAPE file at full extent and reproject to current location projection
v.import input=research_area.shp output=research_area extent=input

AUTHORS

Markus Metz
Improvements: Martin Landa, Anna Petrasova