mradamcox
commented
11 months ago After searching through the Census exports and cartographic boundaries files, no generalized 2010 file seems to exist (on the 2010 cartographic boundaries page it looks like it will be under 1mb but actually it's the same 500mb file). So, in QGIS I
- projected this original file to Lambert Conformal Conic with feet units (it comes as NAD83 with degrees for units)
- ran the GRASS v.generalize tool with the "douglas" algorithm and maximal tolerance of 100
The resulting file is 109mb, still too big to upload to Github, but much more manageable.
I think a better pattern for these shapefiles going forward will be to zip them all together and attach the zipped file to the release as an asset.
ran the GRASS v.generalize alt
The file we've been able to find so far from the Census Bureau is really big, abou 800mb. We don't need geometries with that much detail, so it would be better to have a generalized file to use going forward. I have been asking folks at the CB, maybe there is an official generalized file available, as seems to exist for more recent years.
If not, I think it would be acceptable to run a generalization operation on the file (in QGIS or elsewhere), as long as the contiguous boundaries are retained.