Are shapefiles a polygon?
Shapefiles can support point, line, and area features. Area features are represented as closed loop, double-digitized polygons.
What kind of data does shapefile contain?
A shapefile is a simple, nontopological format for storing the geometric location and attribute information of geographic features. Geographic features in a shapefile can be represented by points, lines, or polygons (areas).
What are shapefiles for?
A shapefile is an Esri vector data storage format for storing the location, shape, and attributes of geographic features. It is stored as a set of related files and contains one feature class.
How are multipolygons used in GeoJSON shapefiles?
Shapefiles don’t differentiate between Polygon and MultiPolygon – all Polygon shapefiles can contain MultiPolygons. When you convert a Polygon shapefile to a GeoJSON file, a MultiPolygon is used for each feature to ensure that the feature geometry can be correctly saved.
How are shapefile polygons constructed from closed rings?
Each Curve in the boundary of the MultiPolygon is in the boundary of exactly 1 element Polygon, and every Curve in the boundary of an element Polygon is in the boundary of the MultiPolygon. Shapefile polygons are constructed from one or more closed rings.
What’s the difference between a polygon and a multipolygon?
The boundary of a MultiPolygon is a set of closed Curves (LineStrings) corresponding to the boundaries of its element Polygons. Each Curve in the boundary of the MultiPolygon is in the boundary of exactly 1 element Polygon, and every Curve in the boundary of an element Polygon is in the boundary of the MultiPolygon.
Is it safe to use polygon in QGIS?
However, some tools do make a distinction, QGIS being one of them. If all you will ever have in a shapefile is simple one-ring shapes, then you can safely choose Polygon. If the shapes may contain “holes”, it is also safe to choose Polygon.