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How to convert data with .asc extension to raster or .shp file

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12
a month ago
NadaKadhim
Regular Contributor

Hi,

Please, how to convert data with .asc extension to a raster or .shp file?

I need a little help.

12 Replies
tikola
by Esri Contributor
Esri Contributor

This depends what .asc contains. Bascially it can be several things depending where it is from:

1) Old Esri ASCII raster that contains a short header and then matrix form of pixel values

Esri ASCII raster format—ArcMap | Documentation

 

2) Or sometimes it is XYZ style list where we have just X,Y and Z coordinates in a text files - one coordinate per row

 

3) or sometimes it is just pixel values in matrix without any headers.

 

In any case it is some sort of text file containing raster or grid of pixels. It is impossible to say which variant it is as I have seen all these with .asc ending.

 

If it is old Esri .asc raster Pro should probably be able to open it more or less directly. If it xyz style then tools like this might work:

ASCII 3D To Feature Class (3D Analyst)—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

If it is something else then you must invent the headers or find some other ways. In generally none should really anymore deliver raster in .asc format. I can see it still in some Geoid models here but I really see no point why to use it - unless of it is just old forgotten file found in somewhere.

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NadaKadhim
Regular Contributor

Thank you, Tikola, for your response. I took data from:

https://globalsolaratlas.info/download/iraq

It was a map with an extension .asc!

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Eugene_Adkins
Frequent Contributor

In addition to what @tikola said, here’s an older post from stack exchange, an older post from the community that used python as the solution, and some Pro documentation about the deprecated conversion tool.

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NadaKadhim
Regular Contributor

I appreciate your help, I have tried many but it does not work!

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Luke_Pinner
MVP Regular Contributor

They are definitely  Esri ASCII Raster format (and seem ok to me though I'm not at work so couldn't test in ArcGIS and only tested in QGIS).

But if you can't open them that page also lists GeoTIFF as a download option which ArcGIS also supports.

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NadaKadhim
Regular Contributor

Thank you Luke for your reply. I will try to work on GeoTIFF.

tikola
by Esri Contributor
Esri Contributor

Tiff is simplest. No point of fighting with ancient formats if there is basic things like TIF available. That is for sure just drag&drop and works always.

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NadaKadhim
Regular Contributor

Yep, this is true. But, again, could you please help me derive the shapefile from the raster format in ArcGIS Pro? My goal is to get the attribute data behind these maps!

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Luke_Pinner
MVP Regular Contributor

Why do you think you need to convert raster to vector? You can still access the attribute data as raster.

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