Read a .asc document

[JSE]

Hi, I have been checking in the community and I did not find anything about .asc files.

Currently I am working with this document that is a Map, the format is .asc, I have previously worked with .shp, however I see alteryx is not able to read this format. Does anyone know how to draw this in Alteryx, or anywhere else I can draw it and then upload it to alteryx?

I am not able to upload the .asc file into this thread, however, you can see a workflow where I upload the file. Thanks in advanced!

Kind regards, 

[DavidP · Accepted solution]

Hi @JSE 

I think the simplest option is to convert your asc file to a shp file outside of Alteryx and then load the shp file into Alteryx.

If you're feeling adventurous, it looks like there is a Python library (gdal_polygonize.py) that can do this with command like this (best to google it)

gdal_polygonize.py -f "ESRI Shapefile" input.asc output.shp

 So you could play around with the Python tool to get this working, but I'm no Python expert.

[JSE]

I will have to google it, as I dont have a clue of Python, thanks anyway!! Was helpful

[DavidP]

Hi @JSE 

Here's some Community resources to help you get started with Python:

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Tool-Mastery-Python/ta-p/197860

https://community.alteryx.com/t5/Alteryx-Designer-Knowledge-Base/Python-Tool-Libraries-An-Introducti...

[JSE]

Thank you very much!! It´s really helpful, to conclude these questions, I would like to know, if you know any free program to change documents formats, suchs as PDF to KML or a WMS link to shapefile. Or if there is any way to do it in alteryx.

Kind regards,

[DavidP]

Hi @JSE,

This is not my area of strength, so again, Google might be your best friend here. What I do know is that you can load data from a PDF into Alteryx (search for the PDF Input macro) and once the data is in the right format in Alteryx, you can use Alteryx to write out to KML. Alteryx can also write to shapefile.

If you're getting stuck, perhaps start a new Community post with those topics and hopefully some of the spatial folks can help.

[CristonS]

hi @JSE can you please post this request to the Designer Ideas forum? That way we can get it into the queue for product management to review for either Designer desktop or Designer cloud. And also get your friends and colleagues to upvote this idea for better traction.

You too @DavidP, if you have customers who would benefit from the addition of an .adc input, please point them to the idea.

Thanks! Happy new year : )