One of the issues with ArcGIS (at least early on) was that the file names should not have spaces in between or else it fails to read it. For example, the filename "Mycountry train routes.shp" should no be used. Instead use "Mycountry_train_routes.shp" I wonder if this is the cause of your error message. May not be.

Srini Vasan , I dont think so. My filename doesnt contain any space in between. I still think that there is something wrong with the directory setting.

Anyhow, thanks for responding :)

Have you tried placing it in the same directory as your netlogo script? Add no directory then in Netlogo but just the name of the file, "test.shp", for example.

This would allow you to test if the directory is the real problem.

Any special characters in your filename or the attribute table?

Andreas Braun , i put my data in the directory

C:\Program Files\NetLogo 6.0.3\app\models\Code Examples\Extensions Examples\gis\data

where all the example data were kept.. but still it yields the same runtime error.

and then, i tried to do as your suggestion: putting the data with the nlogo script, but it still coming up with runtime error. hmm.. helppp.

i use underscore (_) in my filename, though.

If you put it in the same folder as your script it should work.

If you want to place it in a separate folder, you can put it in data and define it like this:

set shapefile gis:load-dataset "data/my_shapefile.shp"

Have a look at this example:

http://geospatialcss.blogspot.com/2015/10/tutorial-on-using-and-exporting-gis.html

Andreas Braun, i think i have found the solution. Search in the forum about the error and i tried to change (reproject) the coordinate system from local to geographical coord system (im using mrso and then converted into WGS84), and it seems works! Thanks Mr Braun!

to conclude and to answer the question,

the data and the script must be inside the same folder.

local coordinate system (projected) is not supported by Netlogo.