British Cartographic Society / Society of Cartographers conference 2016. Presentation on cartographic tools and features available in QGIS 2.14 and 2.16 including labelling, layer symbology, 3d rendering, map layouts. Includes examples of live style dock, print composer features and labelling engine enhancements.
1. BCS – SoC Conference 2016 : Mapping at the Edge
QGIS ESSEN 2.14
(and beyond…)
2. BCS – SoC Conference 2016 : Mapping at the Edge
Ross McDonald
GIS Data Coordinator
Angus Council
mcdonaldr@angus.gov.uk
@mixedbredie
#qgis #bcssoc16
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QGIS
/kju: djis/ or kew-jiss
a free and open source geographic
information system
(with top end cartographic tools...)
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QGIS Factoids
First source code written 2002
304 devs committed 34000 changes in 838,000 lines of
code
111 developers committed 5927 changes in the last 12
months
increasing year-on-year contributions
229 person years of effort at an estimated cost of $12.5m
See Openhub.net for more
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So, Essen…
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LTR – Long Term (Support)
Release
Support for a year
Stability for larger organisations
Better continuity and less disruption
Back-ported bug fixes and enhancements
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HOW RELEASES WORK
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WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
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RENDERING TOOLS, ANALYTICAL
TOOLS, MAP PRODUCTION
TOOLS, PLUGINS, EDITING AND
DIGITISING TOOLS, DATABASE
TOOLS, SCRIPTING TOOLS,
BUTTONS, WIDGETS, MORE
BUTTONS
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CONSUME DATA
All supported OGR vector formats
Spatial databases
All supported GDAL raster formats
OGC compliant web services
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MANAGE DATA
Read and write to your database of choice
Export to just about any format inc. CAD
Save associated styles with the layer in the database
Create custom forms for data capture and editing
Edit, snap and trace features with digitising tools
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ANALYSE DATA
Plugins for GRASS, R, SAGA and fTools
The Processing Toolbox
Batch processing
Drag 'n drop modeller
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PRINT COMPOSER
Custom templates
Multiple map layouts
(on multiple composers)
Atlas generation
Dynamic legends, guides, insets, overviews and
graticules
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PLUGINS!
603 at the last count, extending QGIS in all areas
Check out QGIS2web, QGIS2ThreeJS, TimeManager
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INTERACTIVE 3D OUTPUT
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PYTHON
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CARTOGRAPHIC TOOLS
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LABELLING
"cartographic" placement
rendering order
complex rule based labelling
See Nyall Dawson's blog
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CARTOGRAPHIC PLACEMENT
2. top left 7. top (rightish) 1. top right
6. middle left 5. middle right
4. bottom left 8. bottom (leftish) 3. bottom right
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OS datasets come with
useful attributes
font
font height
orientation
anchor position
QGIS wants to maximise
# labels on display
Priority can be data
defined
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OBSTACLE ONLY LAYERS
a non-labelled layer as
obstacle for labels in
another layer
Examples by Nyall Dawson
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POLYGON OBSTACLES
Choose between interiors or boundaries
Examples by Nyall Dawson
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OTHER LABEL FEATURES
Fit labels in polygon
Label every feature part
Limit labels to ### features
Rule based labelling
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SYMBOLOGY
Choice of renderer
Choice of symbol layer type
Blending
Draw effects
Save as QML/SLD/QLR
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Diagram by Tim Sutton, Kartoza
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2.5D RENDERER
and Single, Categorised, Graduated, Rule-based,
point displacement, heat map, inverted polygons
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RULE BASED RENDERING
Assign features to a class based on attribute
Use the data to define the style
Use the map scale to show/hide or generalise
features
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BLENDING
Dodge, burn,
lighten, multiply…
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DRAW EFFECTS
Drop shadows and glows
Blurs
Transformations
Stacked effects
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SAVE AND SHARE STYLES
Save styles with the data
In the database
In a layer package
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NEW IN NØDEBO
See
https://www.youtube.com/GKg2SHmBExs
on how to pronouce Nødebo.
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LIVE STYLE DOCK
Select a layer, press F7
Edit symbology
Edit labels
Save multiple styles per layer
History
Thanks to Nathan Woodrow https://nathanw.net/
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Using data-defined styles
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Single / categorised /
graduated
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Use the histogram, Luke!
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Whoopsie? Nae bother, pal!
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Oh, it does raster too
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PRINT COMPOSER
Composer manager with
Multiple compositions with
Multiple layouts with
Insets and overviews.
Templates
Grids and guides
Atlas generator
Variables
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MULTIPLE LAYOUTS
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EXPORTING YOUR #cartowin
Save as image, SVG, PDF or
Generate an Atlas
Use your data to generate a series of maps
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VARIABLES
QGIS has dynamic variables.
There are different variables in different places.
You can create @custom_variables
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QGIS ESSEN 2.14
(and beyond…)
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QGIS RESOURCES
QGIS Map
Design: Gretchen Peterson
and Anita Graser
qgis.org,
gis.stackexchange.com and
mailing lists
QGIS UK user
group: qgis.uk and G+
group and @qgisuk
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Thank you
Ross McDonald
Angus Council
mcdonaldr@angus.gov.uk
@mixedbredie
LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/1yWAY5J
Notas del editor
Hello and thank you for coming to find out about my favourite desktop GIS, QGIS. I’ll be talking about QGIS Essen and some of the features in Nodebo. It’s going to be a whistle stop tour through features new and old.
I am Ross McDonald, the GIS coordinator at Angus Council on the east coast of Scotland north of Dundee. Together with my colleague Roger we manage about 55 GIS power users on QGIS, half a dozen on ArcGIS and about 300 on our web GIS.
Over the last few years we switched out a lot of proprietary software and replaced it with an open source stack based on Postgresql, PostGIS, QGIS and Geoserver.
It is an established project 14 years old.
It's just about the largest open source development team in the world.
Some of you may have heard Steven Feldman's talk - there's no such thing as a free lunch. And there isn't - although it is free to download and use, there has been a huge cost in people's time (and own finances) developing QGIS and it is only through sponsorship and donation of more people's time and money that QGIS gets better and better.
QGIS releases are named after places where a gathering of developers have hacked and worked on the project to make it the tool of choice for many. I'll be talking about Essen and some of the new features in Nodebo.
The long term support release was created by the development team after requests from the community for something that didn't break paradigms every four months. Something easier to manage in large organisations but still supported with fixes and enhancements.
There is the stable LTR series - 2.14 - and the stable latest series - 2.16 - and the bleeding edge master release leading up towards the version 3 release.
Slide taken from Oslandia’s presentation at FOSS4G 2016.
So, what do you get with a default install of QGIS?
Everything you can expect to see in a fully featured desktop GIS package and more. And free. And open.
What does all this open source goodness let us do? It can consume data in any format supported by GDAL and OGR
It allows you to manage your data in all those supported formats but it works best with a database out back.
QGIS has built in support for other geo-spatial toolkits through the Processing toolbox including batch processing and a drag ‘n drop modeller.
Once you’ve added your data, morphed it into the correct format and done your analytics you can print out your results using the Print Composer. This is one part of QGIS that has come along in leaps and bounds and if you’ve not used it in a couple years you should try it again.
QGIS is extensible through plugins – some are built in and others are available from the repository – there are a lot to choose from.
QGIS2WEB by Tom Chadwin
TimeManager by Anita Graser and others
Qgiss2threejs by Minoru Akagi
Qgis2three js example.
But what cartographic tools are there at hand?
There is a powerful labelling engine inside with a huge number of configuration options available – Nyall Dawson does a lot of work on this part of QGIS and it is improving all the time.
Nyall Dawson and Nathan Woodrow amongst others do a lot of work on making QGIS output high quality.
If you work with Ordnance Survey data and QGIS then you can leverage all the additional attribution the Carto Design team (https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/resources/carto-design/) have added to their datasets with the data defined options within QGIS.
QGIS also allows you set a layer as an obstacle to labels – in this example we don’t want the labels covering the railway lines so set the lines as an obstacle to the labelled layer.
Examples from Nyall Dawson’s blog
You can do the same with area boundaries – only place the label inside a polygon and don’t let it cross an edge.
All this functionality and more help make automated labelling in QGIS very good – you will still get those use cases where nothing but hand crafted label placement will do and QGIS will let you do that too.
QGIS offers you all the styling tools and function you need in a GIS and some that would normally only find in a graphics package.
Play with pixel values to blend your layers together.
Blend mode set to multiply – i.e. multiply the pixel values of this layer with the layers underneath. Let’s add another layer – a hill shaded image.
You’ll need to play about with the brightness, saturation and transparency to get it just right.
Draws effects is another new feature that allows you to add inner or outer shadows and/or inner of outer glows to your features.
Let’s combine some layers with blend modes and draw effects – a vanilla base map
Some vegetation classification data overlaid
Blend the vegetation layer
Add some outer drop shadows and an inner glow
Once you’ve done all the hard work creating your custom style you can save and share those styles. We save layer styles in our database so that all users get the same look and feel when they load a layer. If you use spatialite databases then you can save the style with the data too. Or as a layer file or layer package which are file based.
All these features I’ve shown you are available in Essen but Nodebo has some new features that make workflows much slicker.
Animated gifs by Nathan Woodrow
Animated gifs by Nathan Woodrow
Animated gifs by Nathan Woodrow
Animated gifs by Nathan Woodrow
Animated gifs by Nathan Woodrow
The QGIS Print Composer gives you a composer manager to handle multiple compositions with multiple layouts
If you want to go deep then you can dive into using QGIS variables and even create your own. You could, for example, take the user’s name and contact details and assign them to variables that are then automatically embedded in a custom template and will appear on all maps that are printed.
But that’s enough for now. If you want to find out more then …
QGIS map design is a new book just out the goes into detail with all the mapping tools I’ve mentioned.
For help check the docs or gis.stackexchange.com and the mailing lists.
Find a QGIS user group near you and meet up or join the Google+ group.
Thank you.
All maps contain Ordnance Survey data. Crown copyright and database rights 2016. 100023404.