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The NSGtoTAB MapBasic utility may be used to convert a standard National Street Gazetteer (NSG) CSV file to MapInfo TAB format. Two versions of the utility are available, one to import DTFv6.3 format data and the second to import DTFv7.1 format data. All future development work will be undertaken using DTFv7.1 format of the data.

NSGtoTAB reads a standard validated NSG CSV file and produces a 'flat' MapInfo table with NSG information. Options include the colouring of ESUs based on the naming attributes of Name/Description/Road Number/Alias. Also each ESU is populated with data attributes from the USRN records so that any MapInfo User is able to query the naming information without the use of any special functions. The lengths of each ESU are also calculated.

Additional options now included to 'colour' ESUs based on 'Street State', 'Street Surface' and 'Street Classification'.

NSGtoTAB may also be used to import multiple NSG CSV files - so that a single process could import a number of NSG CSV files and at the end of the process merge these multiple MapInfo Tables into one set of NSG/ASD tables.

NSGtoTAB now includes options to 'check' validity of geometry records. These are the Record Type 13 and 14 records in the CSV file. Option also included to export data back to CSV files.

NSGtoTAB is a standard MapBasic program and may be run from any version of MapInfo v5.0 and above. The output produced by NSGtoTAB is a standard MapInfo Table and therefore may be viewed by any MapInfo user or any application that can view standard MapInfo tables. The adjacent screenshots show samples of the output but using fictitious data.

Additionally the utility may be used to import the ASD data associated with the NSG data. Optionally this data may be 'mapped'. Each ASD Record Type (61,62,63,64 and 65) is created in a separate MapInfo Table. Start and End points, where the 'restriction' only applies to part of the road, are created as point features within the table. The geometry of the USRNs/ESUs are taken from the previously created NSG table so that users are able to view the 'geometry' of the ASD data. The ASD data is concatenated to form one field in the table. In the case of the ASD63 data, there may be many individual 'restrictions' created against each USRN and in this case an extra option is available so that the users may create an ASD63 MapInfo Table for a particular Special Designation Type. So for example, Special Designation Type 3 - Special Engineering Difficulty may be created in a separate file. The start and end points for this Designation Type may also be extracted and saved in a separate points file. Where possible, these ASD geometries are also colour coded to make viewing of the ASD data simpler.