There are well over 100 GIS, CAD and Remote Sensing applications on the market. Listed here are some of the more common file formats.

Difficulty Level: Easy    Time Required: 1 minute

1. The file extension is the last 3 charcters after the period in the file name. Each of the steps will be looking at these characters
2. Files with *.e00 are ArcInfo export files.
3. A set of three files with the same name but with the extensions *.shp, *.shx, and *.dbf are ArcView shapefiles.
4. Files with *.mif and *.mid are MapInfo files.
5. Files with *.dwg are AutoCAD files.
6. Files with *.dxf are Drawing Exchange Files.
7. Files with *.dgn are Bentley Microstation files.
8. A TIFF (*.tif) file with an accompanying world header file (*.tfw) are georeferenced imagery files.