Here is a list of best free GIS data viewer software for Windows. GIS or Geographic Information System format files contain various types of spatial data (maps) and attributes (geographical information). In order to view GIS data, you need GIS data viewer software which can load and show GIS files of various formats like SHP, MIF, DXF, DWG, etc. The most common and popular format that contains GIS data is shapefile (.shp).
In these software, you can load any GIS data file, view it, and analyze spatial data contained in the file like maps. To analyze maps, you get tools like zoom in/out, pan, rotate, etc. Along with maps, a detailed GIS data attribute table can also be viewed in most GIS viewer software. However, some software can only show you the spatial data. In a few of these, you can also edit GIS data files by using various editing tools. These editing tools include stretch, break, split, trim, etc.
My Favorite GIS Data Viewer Software For Windows:
TatukGIS Viewer is my favorite software because it can handle very large GIS data files. Plus, it provides all essential tools and features to view and analyze both the spatial data and associated GIS attributes.
TatukGIS Viewer
TatukGIS Viewer is a free GIS data viewer software for Windows. You can also use this software to map as well as to edit existing GIS data files. In it, you can open GIS data stored in Shape File, Binary Terrain File, Digital Terrain Elevation Data File, Geographic Data Files, and more. It can also display geographical maps, that you can edit and save in other supported file formats. The main advantage of this software is that it can handle large GIS data files of up to 2 GB because of its use of R-tree indexing.
To view the geographical data, this software provides a dedicated Data Panel. In the Data panel, you can view geographical data such as country name, length, area, country rank, and more. Apart from geographical data, you can view and edit geographical maps. For editing, it provides tools like line, polygon, rectangle, circle, etc.
This software also provides facility to access and view your GIS data from any server by providing the server address. After viewing or editing the data, you can save it as PDF or as TatukGIS project file.
ESS Shape Viewer
ESS Shape Viewer is another free GIS data viewer software for Windows. It is mainly used to view shapefile that contains geographical spatial data as well as attributes tables. Besides shapefile, you can also open data contained in Database, Excel, and Text files through this software.
This freeware provides all necessary tools like zoom in/out, pan, distance scale, etc. to make spatial data (maps) viewing easier. It also lets you edit spatial data using various available shape editing tools like identify, edit shapes, etc. Through identify tool, you can select a shape of a country from a map to view information like country name, area, coordinates, economy, etc. Edit shape is basically a tool to edit shapes; it also highlights the selected shape, country, or state and shows a number of boundary points.
This GIS data viewer has some more handy functions such as integrating chart functions, CAD functions, shape filtering, subsets, polygon binning, shape functions, etc. Using these functions, you can easily edit and create GIS data.
SHPViewer
SHPViewer is a free and portable GIS data viewer software for Windows. It is a straightforward software which is used to view shapefiles (.shp). It shows both types of GIS data namely spatial (geographical) data and attributes of geography (country name, postal info, Region, GDP, Economy, etc.). However, it has one disadvantage that it does not support GIS data files of any other format except SHP.
This viewer shows outer as well as the internal boundaries of the input GIS maps. This property is helpful to view the outer boundary of a whole country with the internal boundary of each state. It does not provide any additional tool, but you can perform zoom in and zoom out by scrolling the mouse wheel.
This GIS data viewer can open large shapefiles, still it does not stresses the CPU. As it is a portable software, you can also use it on the go without installing it on your system.
Geographic Explorer
Geographic Explorer is another free GIS file viewer software for Windows. Using it, you can view and explore spatial or geographical area maps of world, country, state, etc. However, it doesn’t show GIS attributes (GDP, economy, area, etc.) which is the main drawback of this software.
In this software, you can view GIS data contained in various formats such as SHP, MIF, DXF, DWG, etc. This GIS viewer is also a very good file finder. You can search any supported file format in your system by using its name and location section.
The viewer section of this freeware is simple and has all essential tools to explore spatial data (map). Through available tools, you can perform zoom in, zoom out, and pan operations over the map to get a better view. As it lets you open multiple maps at once, you can compare two maps side by side. If you want to know the exact latitude and longitude coordinates of any place within the map, just place your cursor at that point and get coordinates on the bottom left corner of this viewer.
Christine-GIS Viewer
Christine-GIS Viewer is the next free GIS Data viewer software for Windows. In this software, you can view and analyze both GIS spatial maps and GIS attributes. It provides two separate View and Tables options on the side panel to view Maps and Attributes, respectively. In its view section, you can load SHP files containing the geographical map. To take a closer look at geographical maps, you can use available tools like zoom in, zoom out, pan east, pan south, etc. Unlike View option, tables option loads database files containing the GIS attributes (Economy, Income_GRP, Subregion, etc.). As soon as you load a database file, you can immediately view all GIS attributes on the interface. Plus, options to create, update, and save individual attributes as dbase file are also present in it.
This software also offers some advanced tools namely Statistics (to extract important statistics like variance, standard deviation, mean, etc. from GIS data), Calculator (to calculate fields and their types), and Table Merger (to merge multiple GIS attributes tables).
Avangardo ShapeView
Avangardo ShapeView is another free and portable GIS data viewer software for Windows. Using it, you can view GIS data consisting of Shapefiles, MapInfo Files, and Drawing Interchange Files. However, this software only shows the spatial geographic data and not the attributes of geography.
In this GIS data viewer, you can easily view as well as analyze GIS spatial data by using its handy Analyzing tool. This tool highlights all the boundaries contained in the spatial map or data. Besides this, normal tools to zoom in/out and a mirror effect tool can also be accessed from its toolbar. Some smart features like the ability to pan the map by holding the right click and option to highlight the boundary region of selected shape are also present in it. Besides this, an additional SHP to BMP converter is also provided by it.
Overall, it is another good software to view and analyze GIS data.
Shape Viewer
Shape Viewer is another free portable GIS data viewer software for Windows. Using it, you can view all the GIS information contained in a shapefile. It also helps you study and analyze borders of various countries, states, or any other region in details. While viewing the shapefile, you can use zoom in, zoom out, or pan tool to analyze region boundaries and shapes clearly.
This software comes with its own file explorer through which you can browse and load SHP files. Other than SHP file, you cannot open GIS data files of any other format. However, you can create shapefile shape index format (.shx) and an empty shapefile attribute format (.dbf) files. The important information related to GIS data such as data type, number of records, coordinate details in X min/max, Y min/max, etc. can easily be viewed using this viewer. Moreover, you also get the option to export coordinates in the Excel file format.