Adding GPX files into ArcMap?

GPX File Support has 820 points so far on the ArcGIS Ideas page, so I guess there are few people around waiting for this functionality (vote on the Ideas page please! :]).

There are few ways to tackle this problem (in no particular order):

  1. Use GPSBabel to convert your GPX files to CSV and then import them into Arc.
  2. Use GPX to Features Tool from script gallery. (Have a look at the Analyzing your GPS Tracking Data with Python presentation for more info.)
  3. Use An Automatic GPX Ingestion and Cleaning Tool from script gallery.
  4. Use Convert GPS Files (KML, GPX) to Shapefiles script.
  5. Use gpx2shp tool.
  6. Use ogr2ogr tool by calling ogr2ogr -f "GPX" yourGpxFile.gpx yourShpFile.shp. (This tool might be helpful here)
  7. Load your data to PostgreSQL and connect to it from ArcGIS.

I think 'smoothest' approach might depend on several factors, including:

  • Amount of GPX files you want to convert.
  • How often do you plan to do it (and how eager you are to automate it)?
  • Do you want to have one output (shape file? feature class in geoDB?) per GPX or merge them all together.
  • What is the destination of your data (shape file? DB?)

For those with ArcGIS 10.1 and newer, the GPX to Features tool in the Conversion toolset seems to be what you are looking for because it:

Converts the point information inside a GPX file into features.


You can try the AmigoCloud GDAL/OGR plugin for ArcGIS I am writing. It is free, open source and still in beta. It has an installer that works with ArcGIS 10.1.

Here is a screenshot of a GPX file that I opened natively (no conversion necessary).

Opening GPX file natively.

In addition, you get access to 55 other formats.

1) ESRI Shapefile 15) GPX            29) DXF           43) Geomedia
2) MapInfo File   16) KML            30) Geoconcept    44) EDIGEO
3) UK .NTF        17) GeoJSON        31) GeoRSS        45) GFT
4) SDTS           18) GMT            32) GPSTrackMaker 46) SVG
5) TIGER          19) SQLite         33) VFK           47) CouchDB
6) S57            20) ODBC           34) PGDump        48) Idrisi
7) DGN            21) PGeo           35) OSM           49) ARCGEN
8) VRT            22) MSSQLSpatial   36) GPSBabel      50) SEGUKOOA
9) REC            23) PostgreSQL     37) SUA           51) SEGY
10) Memory        24) MySQL          38) OpenAir       52) ODS
11) BNA           25) PCIDSK         39) PDS           53) XLSX
12) CSV           26) XPlane         40) WFS           54) ElasticSearch
13) NAS           27) AVCBin         41) HTF           55) PD
14) GML           28) AVCE00         42) AeronavFAA

Let me know how it works for you and please submit bugs when you find them.

Tags:

Gpx

Arcgis Desktop

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