The NEX2SHP.exe public domain utility is currently used to convert NEXRAD Level 3 Product #19 reflectivity into Shapefiles (TM ESRI) for use with desktop GIS and ArcIMS applications. This paper discusses the history and evolution of NEX2SHP.exe, and potential plans for future development. The NWS Office of Science and Technology/Systems Engineering Center has upgraded a version of this utility to support NWS NEXRAD siting analysis using ArcView 3.2 with the Spatial Analyst and 3D Analyst extensions. The resulting project and Avenue scripts compute and visualize beam propagation and occultation over terrain databases, and supports the correlation of NEXRAD coverage with geographic Census datasets.