When you have successfully registered the gSpatial Toolbar, the main program window appears, as per the screen shot below.

The abovementioned window has a menu bar like most Windows applications (File, Layers etc) and a toolbar below the menu bar. In the toolbar is a list of existing layers (the layers combo box) and collection of buttons to the right of the layers combo box. The buttons have hints assigned to them. If you let your mouse cursor hover over the button, the purpose of the button will be displayed.

gSpatial keeps tracks of the shapefiles you have previously attached and displays a list of these in the layers combo box. You therefore only have to any given shapefile once, and gSpatial will remember which shapefiles you've previously attached. You can export the same shapefile to Google Earth multiple times. Each shapefile corresponds to one layer. You can at any time attach another shapefile, by clicking on the button directly to the right of the layers combo box. When you do so, you will be prompted to pick a shapefile from your hard disk. A layer dialog box will appear that allows you to change the properties of your shapefile layer. The Rendering type determines how a layer is drawn. You can for example require that only the geometries are drawn, geometries with labels or a thematic query.

As you can see from the dialog box below, you are able to pick the attribute data source. You can use either the DBase table that accompanies the shapefile (gSpatial will assume it is always present and has the same name as the shapefile) as the source of the attribute data, or it can use an Excel spreadsheet or an ODBC data source as the source of your attribute data. At the bottom of the window is the default feature style, which allows you to change the way the features are drawn (for example line colour and fill style). To change the style, please click on the ellipsis button (..).

To modify the properties of a previously attached shapefile, click on the second button from the layers combo box. To remove a previously attached layer from the list of layers, please click on the scissors button (3rd from left). When you remove a previously attached layer, the shapefile isn't deleted. Only its reference in gSpatial's database is removed.

The earth icon, fourth from left, is used to preview an existing layer. This will open the map view and will allow you to zoom and pan around the layer in order for you to make sure that this is the correct shapefile. When you open the preview, additional buttons appear in the button bar, and the map is drawn. You can use the additional buttons to zoom and pan to larger and smaller areas of your map layer. As you move your mouse cursor over the map, the attribute data for each feature is displayed.

The sixth button from left in the abovementioned image is the Export to Google Earth button. This button will cause a dialog box to appear that will allow you to export the current shapefile as a Google Earth KML file. It will also automatically invoke Google Earth and load the shapefile into Google Earth. You will be prompted for the name of the KML file when you click on the OK button.