Although there are several commercial software programs for converting shapefiles into .kmz or .kml formats, here is free program created by a student at the University of Arizona.
The program is designed for use in Google Earth 3, there will be minor symbology problems if the outputs are used in Google Earth 4 (large pushpins will appear even if you choose other symbols).
This is easily remedied by editing the .kmz file and replacing the hyperlinks. (its easier than it sounds).
- In a Google Earth viewer, right-click the new .kmz dataset > copy
- Paste into wordpad (it’s better than notepad for this).
- Find and replace the hyperlinks (use the symbology hyperlinks from another .kmz file that you want to mimic). If you’d like to alter the size of the symbol, insert a copy the <scale>x.x</scale> text.
- Save As > .txt > type in .kmz as the extension
I hope that ESRI software will eventually support .kmz, doesn’t it seem odd there aren’t any tools embedded in ArcGIS to do this seemingly simple conversion?
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