Just another quick vignette.  From the Ohio Statewide Imagery Program (OSIP) there is a 1-meter DEM for all of Ohio.  To get contours from this dataset, one approach is to use GDAL tools, i.e. gdal_contours.  As I’m working on a Mac today, I used Kyng Chaos pre-compiled Frameworks:

http://www.kyngchaos.com/software:frameworks

Then I needed to update my path variable in the BASH shell:

export PATH=/Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Programs:$PATH

Now we can loop through, again, inelegantly (we’ll get unwanted extensions, i.e. *.txt.shp) and create 1-ft contours for a whole county.  Why 1-foot (the OSIP dataset is meant for 2-foot contours).  Well, 1-foot so that later if I want 5-foot contours, I can have them… .

#!/bin/bash
x=0
for f in $( ls *.txt); do
 x=`expr $x + 1`
# echo number of file we are on + name of file
 echo $x $f
# perform analysis, output to *.shp
 gdal_contour -i 1 -nln elev $f $f.shp
done

And the stdout and stderr:

1 S1890435.txt
0...10...20...30...40...50...60...70...80...90...100 - done.
2 S1890440.txt
0...10...20...30...40...50...60...70...80...90...100 - done.
3 S1890445.txt
0...10...20...30...40...50...60...70...80...90...100 - done.
4 S1890450.txt
0...10...20...30...40...50...60..

etc...