The ESRI Shapefile (SHP) format is a proprietary spatial data file format developed by the ESRI company, which creates and markets software for Geographic Information Systems such as Arc / Info or ArcGIS. It was originally created for use with its ArcView GIS product, but has now become the standard de facto format for the exchange of geographic information between Geographic Information Systems because of the importance that ESRI products have in the GIS market and for being very well documented.
A shapefile is a vector format of digital storage where the location of the geographical elements and the attributes associated with them are stored. However, it lacks the capacity to store topological information. It is a multi-file format, that is, it is generated by several computer files. The minimum number required is three and they have the following extensions:
.shp - is the file that stores the geometric entities of the objects.
Before cloning you must install Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate and MapWindow