Being part of an open community like QGIS is a unique experience. We get to engage with and become friends with people from many different backgrounds and walks of life. Each person brings their unique flavour to the project and helps create something that is more than just the sum of its parts. The QGIS community is blessed enough to also have attracted some of the greatest minds in the Open Source Geospatial community.
Martin Isenburg was one of these great minds – his work on LASTools and making LiDAR data accessible to the world was truly groundbreaking. The .LAS/.LAZ formats for point cloud data have become ubiquitous, supported by virtually all point cloud processing tools in existence.
This week we received the incredibly sad news that Martin is no longer with us. Martin was a regular fixture at QGIS Hackfests, sitting quietly to one side doing incredible things with his plugin that integrates LASTools into QGIS or sharing a stand-up paddleboard outing with fellow QGISers.
Beyond being a gifted software developer, Martin was acutely aware of our impact on the world and its perilous ecological state. Like many in the QGIS community, he cared not only about technology but also about the potential of technology to transform lives and improve the planet and the human condition. With great sadness, we say a last goodbye to Martin Isenburg and wish his loved ones our deepest condolences.
Read the guest post and congratulate Francesco Bursi, who successfully completed GSOC 2021 project to add
virtual raster provider for QGIS with help of mentors Martin Dobias and Peter Petrik.
In this year’s Google Summer of Code (GSoC), I decided to work on the native QGIS raster calculator. Martin Dobias and Peter Petrik volunteered to mentor my work. I’ve been studying Civil Engineering and GeoInformatics at the University of Padua; here I had the opportunity to work both with a lot of GIS software including QGIS. I enjoyed working with QGIS almost immediately because of the possibility to perform complex analysis with a few clicks or with few python commands. Being passionate about programming and enthusiastic about Open Source, I realized that having the possibility to work together with some experienced developers and with an active community was really a great and unique opportunity, so I decided to apply to the GSoC.
Virtual Raster Provider
The existing raster calculator is a powerful tool to perform map algebra that outputs a raster layer, before this work it was possible to take advantage of this tool only by saving the output of this operation as a file. The aim of this year GSoC was to allow users to perform their analysis without creating a new derived raster and taking up disk space and therefore have the result as an on-the-fly computational layer.
Let’s jump to an example and let’s say I want to compute the Chanopy Height Model (CHM), subtracting the Digital Terrain Model (DTM) from the Digital Surface Model (DSM).
I also want to perform some other analysis on the DTM since I want to compute the ideal elevation value for a particular tree planting (disclaimer: the elevation value used is example purposes only, moreover when planting trees you should take into account a lot of factors like slope, aspect, latitude. QGIS, by the way, can really be helpful in this kind of analysis). To do so I will start from the same data and I will create different on-the-fly layers for each calculation, in order to avoid the creation of different files I can take advantage of the new checkbox added to the raster calculator dialog.
The computation of CHM is performed in the next screencast and the output layer name is, of course, CHM.
I’ll end up with a new raster layer (CHM) that can be styled as a normal raster and that is not written as an output file to the disk.
For some further analysis, from the DTM, I want to obtain the portion of the area with an elevation between 150 and 350 metres above the datum. By applying the following expression to DTM I’ll end up with a raster that has a value of 1 where conditions specified by the expression is TRUE and it will have value of 0 otherwise.
("dtm@1" > 150) AND ("dtm@1" < 350)
I did not select the output layer name intentionally. The resulting layer will be named after the expression used to generate the layer.
Conditional Statement
I also had the opportunity to improve the raster calculator capabilities by adding the possibility to write expressions that involve conditional statements. Taking the already used example, let’s imagine I want to compute the CHM only for the areas of the DTM that are between 150 and 350 metres above the datum. It’s now possible to write an expression as the following one:
if ( ("dtm@1" > 150) AND ("dtm@1" < 350), CHM, -10)
This expression will output a raster with values of the CHM where the conditions are met and value of -10 if the conditions are not met. Since this is a final result of our analysis I’ll store this output as a file to the disk in the form of a GeoTIFF. I’d like to outline that the CHM used in the expression above and in the next screencast is an onn-the-fly computed raster, so it is possible to:
Take advantage of the virtual raster provider (on-the-fly computed raster) in other analysis with the raster calculator (and with other analysis tools);
Store the on-the-fly computed raster as a file.
Conclusion
I had fun and I struggled working with QGIS, but I learned a lot of new and interesting things.
My pull requests were met with several constructive comments, suggestions and feedback.
Some suggestions can be a starting point for future improvements.
An enhancement for the feature I’ve developed can be the possibility to take advantage of OpenCL acceleration as it has also been suggested in the dev mailing list;
Another enhancement that concerns the raster calculator and only partially the virtual raster provider would be the possibility to support the creation of output raster with multiple bands with the declaration of multiple formulas.
I hope to continue to contribute to the QGIS project in the future.
Every year, teams of volunteers walk door-to-door through the Czech town of Litomyšl collecting charitable donations. Event organisers define routes for the various volunteer teams by marking-up paper maps with pens. The process has a number of issues both in the making and usage of the maps which organisers worked to overcome by making the maps digital using open source GIS software.
Maps were developed using QGIS and made available on volunteers’ phones using the Input app. Volunteers are now able to easily orientate themselves on maps which clearly show their routes. Organisers have reduced the time it takes to update routes and distribute these to volunteers.
Veronika Peterková works for the Litomyšl Parish Charity, a non-profit organisation providing health and social services to people in need since 1993.
Veronika describes the charity’s activities: “We provide home medical services and nursing care to the residents of Litomyšl and its surrounding villages. This includes helping families where the healthy development of a child is at risk and providing respite stays for clients who are otherwise cared for by their families at home. We provide care for about 1000 clients a year.”
She added: “We also coordinate the activities of volunteers who visit the elderly, help with tutoring children and with various leisure and cultural activities.”
One of the parish charity’s biggest fundraising events is the “Tříkrálová sbírka” (Three Kings Collection), a door-to-door carol-singing collection taking part around the 6th of January each year.
Volunteers participating in the Three Kings Collection.
“The Three Kings Collection is the largest national volunteer event in the Czech Republic. In the Litomyšl region alone, nearly 300 volunteers are involved each year with the carol-singers collecting over 500,000 Czech crowns (~20,000 EUR) in sealed boxes. The proceeds are intended to help the sick, the disabled, the elderly, mothers with children in need and other in-need groups in the local area.” Veronika explains.
The Three Kings Collection is organised by Caritas Czech Republic and at least 10% of its proceeds are allocated for humanitarian aid abroad.
The Challenge
Veronika is responsible for planning routes for the carol-singers so they efficiently visit households in the Litomyšl area. Singers are split into groups and paper maps are provided which show groups which households to visit.
An example of previous paper maps, image courtesy of Farní charita Litomyšl.
The above maps were produced by printing screenshots from a national web mapping provider and marking-up printouts for each of the 50 teams using marker pens.
This method proved to have a number of issues as Veronika describes: “On maps of larger areas, house numbers were not always visible due to the scale. This made it even harder for coordinators not familiar with the area to orient themselves, leading to confusion. Coordinators also found it hard to keep the maps dry and undamaged during unfavourable weather. If new groups signed-up afterwards or others opted-out, we’d have to redo/redivide the areas which would be very time-consuming as the maps would need to be marked-up manually once again.”
The Solution and Implementation
Veronika wanted to try a new solution for organising the 2021 Three Kings Collection with the goal of making volunteer tasks clearer and less reliant on paper maps. She wanted the new solution to allow her to:
reduce work through the reuse of maps in future Three Kings Collection events
easily update maps if new groups sign in/out and areas need editing
allow carol singers to see exactly where they are on the map
gradually replace paper maps while still allowing the use of paper maps where preferred
group and colour buildings to be visited on the computer
record a building’s use (e.g. commercial) to direct volunteers more effectively
clearly show how areas are assigned so anyone can see who is responsible for a given area
In addition, Veronika wanted the solution to be affordable and work offline without volunteers needing internet connectivity in the field.
Peter Petrík, a regular participant of the Litomyšl Three Kings Collection suggested Veronika try using the Input app for coordinating the collection in 2021. Peter works for Lutra Consulting, the company behind Input and Mergin.
He showed Veronika how to create the maps in QGIS, a free and open source mapping software. Using map data from OpenStreetMap, they created a project showing the buildings to be visited, coloured by their associated volunteer group number.
Houses grouped by team in QGIS, image courtesy of Farní charita Litomyšl.
The styled map was uploaded to Mergin, a collaborative mapping platform, making it readily available for viewing interactively on volunteer’s phones using the Input mobile app. Both QGIS and Input integrate closely with Mergin which meant that maps could be adjusted in QGIS with the resulting changes being visible to volunteers shortly thereafter.
Outcomes
Veronika reflects on the solution: “The solution met all our requirements and the maps we’ve prepared can easily be reused in upcoming events, saving us time. The fact that the new maps were made publicly accessible means volunteers can just download them using Input which makes distributing and updating them very easy.”
Volunteer routes and position information shown in Input, screenshot courtesy of Farní charita Litomyšl.
She adds: “All the districts we wanted to visit were distinguished from each other by colour and we were also pleased to be able to clearly mark the areas not to be visited like industrial areas by colouring them in grey.”
Unfortunately COVID meant that Veronika’s plans changed as she explains: “Using these new methods we were able to prepare for the 2021 Three Kings Collection in a short time. Unfortunately however, the COVID situation meant we could not go out on the streets to use the new maps as intended. We hope that in 2022 we’ll be able to more closely evaluate the positives and negatives of the field aspect of the project.”
She adds: “We already see it’s now much easier to allocate areas of the town to our volunteers in a clear and fair manner using QGIS. Producing printed maps for those who prefer them is also now easy and the maps look much more professional. Those who only wanted to use the Input app could see the same information as on the paper maps, but had the advantage of being able to pinpoint their exact location and clearly see the house numbers of each building.”
Example printed map created for volunteers wanting also paper maps, image courtesy of Farní charita Litomyšl.
She concludes: “Overall we found the solution user-friendly, and appreciated being able to discuss the process with Lutra Consulting who helped us solve issues as required. About a third of our volunteers are interested in using Input, which I consider positive.”
We are pleased to announce that today we have published a new release of QGIS Cloud. Besides a whole bunch of bug fixes, we have also introduced new features for QGIS Cloud Pro customers. Starting with this release, we will be releasing more features for our QGIS Cloud Pro customers in the coming weeks.
The following new features are available for QGIS Cloud Pro users starting today.
Import Layer: In the Layers & Legend tool you will now find the possibility to import layers.
The case study presents the C++ development of QGIS Desktop to support rendering of 3D results produced by TUFLOW’s 3D capable solver: TUFLOW FV (10 minute read)
Introduction
TUFLOW is a suite of advanced 1D/2D/3D computer simulation software for flooding, urban drainage, coastal hydraulics, sediment transport, particle tracking and water quality. With over 30 years of continuous development, TUFLOW is internationally recognised as one of the industry leaders for hydraulic modelling accuracy, speed and workflow efficiency.
Lutra Consulting Ltd is a leader in software development for pre- and post-processing of hydraulic and meteorological results in open-source QGIS. We also work on mobile data collection Input App and GIS data synchronization service Mergin
In 2019 the TUFLOW team commissioned us to develop post-processing support for their TUFLOW Flexible Mesh format for QGIS 3.12. The format is 3D stacked mesh, which consists of multiple stacked 2D unstructured meshes each extruded in the vertical direction (levels) by means of a vertical coordinate.
At that time QGIS only supported 2D meshes that defined results on vertices and faces. We had been keen to extend the capabilities of the software stack to support 3D mesh data for a long time so this was an exciting opportunity. Part of the task was also to include rendering support for TUFLOW model results on the QGIS 3D view. The delivery of the project was within one QGIS release cycle (less than 6 months time for users to use it on their projects!)
Contact us at [email protected] if you’d like to discuss the benefits of integrating your flood modelling software more tightly with QGIS or you have some custom QGIS development in mind.
C++ Development Process: From requirement to delivery
Communicate project with the community first
When doing a substantial change in the QGIS codebase, the developer needs to write a technical specification of the QGIS changes for community discussion. QGIS Core Developers (which Lutra is a part of) can give valuable feedback to the overall technical approach and the wider community can raise some usability issues or enhancement proposals. Most importantly, each part of the QGIS code has its lead maintainers, for example Martin Dobias, our CTO, is the maintainer of QGIS 3D code and Peter Petrik is the maintainer of the Mesh layer code. It is a good practice to address the maintainers’, users’ and other developers’ concerns and feedback to ensure the feature can be implemented in QGIS.
So after a thorough discussion about the requirements with the TUFLOW team and analysis of the existing tools for post-processing and display of the TUFLOW FV format we came up with the QGIS Enhancement: Support of 3D layered meshes
The community reaction was very positive and supportive. Time to start coding!
MDAL to support TUFLOW FV NetCDF format
Mesh Data Abstraction Library MDAL is a C++ library for handling unstructured mesh data. It provides a single data model for multiple supported data formats. MDAL is used by QGIS for data access for mesh layers. If you want QGIS to support your data format, you need to have a driver in MDAL that implements it.
We added support for 3D stacked meshes and the TUFLOW FV format in MDAL. When we develop features in MDAL, we focus on quality code, so
all changes have a proper code review,
all code has fully automated tests with more than 90% coverage target
the documentation and manual testing is done after coding
To implement the TUFLOW FV driver for 3D stacked meshes, we added a new API/interface in MDAL, so we needed to follow up with the QGIS changes in QgsMeshLayer and MDAL data-provider.
QGIS C++ Development to support stacked meshes and visualization in 3D
The implementation of large feature changes is best to split into smaller but self-consistent parts. For example the first pull request added the basic support for the new 3D stacked meshes. Each pull request we do has a screenshot or gif/video with the new functionality preview, follows QGIS Coding Standards, has unit tests where necessary and includes the documentation for the functions/classes added in the public interface. Once the request is merged, the features are next day available in nightly builds on all platforms for testing!
Final Steps: feedback, testing, documentation and presentation
When all the features were in QGIS master, the TUFLOW team used windows nightly builds to test the new features and provide feedback. After a small number of iterations, all issues were resolved and implementation signed.
Shortly the new official QGIS release was published and we started promotion of the new features on our social media channels. Also, the features developed under this contract were promoted in the visual QGIS changelog.
Benefits for TUFLOW to support QGIS Core C++ Development:
Reduced development and maintenance costs for tools such as the TUFLOW Viewer QGIS Plugin since the new features are part of the QGIS core
By being part of the QGIS ecosystem it provides opportunities to approach QGIS users in the flooding and coastal modeling industry to use TUFLOW software
As a project sponsor, the requirements of the new features meet the present and future needs of the TUFLOW user base.
At the beginning of the project Lutra showed all the current relevant capabilities of QGIS ecosystem, allowing TUFLOW to be aware of the latest and greatest features
Allowed TUFLOW to solve upstream bugs in QGIS or MDAL due to the open-source nature of the projects
Benefits for TUFLOW users:
Key benefits made available to TUFLOW users include:
Being able to work with TUFLOW models using open source GIS on all major operating systems
A full GIS application to support their data pre-processing
Logical and intuitive workflows
Visualisation and post-processing of TUFLOW results natively in QGIS via mesh layer
The development allows interactive plotting features for 3D results, such as 3D profiles and curtains that can be easily extracted, providing an improved user experience
Ability to use all native QGIS support and development channels in addition to TUFLOW support
Integration of internal workflows with powerful native QGIS features including projection support, GDAL/OGR integrations, background maps support (e.g. vector tiles) and printed flood maps.
One of the new features in QGIS 3.20 is the option to trim the start and end of simple line symbols. This allows for the line rendering to trim off the first and last sections of a line at a user configured distance, as shown in the visual changelog entry.
This new feature makes it much easier to create decorative label callout (or leader) lines. If you know QGIS Map Design 2, the following map may look familiar – however – the following leader lines are even more intricate, making use of the new trimming capabilities:
To demonstrate some of the possibilities, I’ve created a set of four black and four white leader line styles:
You can download these symbols from the QGIS style sharing platform: https://plugins.qgis.org/styles/101/ to use them in your projects. Have fun mapping!
Mesh Data Abstraction Library MDAL proudly joins the OSGeo Community program
We would like to share the excellent news that the OSGeo incubation committee kindly accepted the MDAL project into its Community
Program. MDAL is an MIT Licensed C++ Library which integrates into your QGIS installation and is backed by the Lutra Consulting team and the wider community.
MDAL is a low-level library which allows reading unstructured mesh data from various formats. If you’ve never seen a QGIS Mesh Layer, then check out my presentation at FOSS4G 2019.
We kicked-off the MDAL project at the time we were migrating the Crayfish plugin to QGIS version 3. The Crayfish project started in late 2012, has more than 120,000 downloads and opened the way engineers and data scientists to visualize their hydro and meteo-data in QGIS.
QGIS uses MDAL to visualize, analyze and even modify data on unstructured meshes which are used by many hydraulic / numercial modelling solvers.
In addition to providing abstraction for complex mesh data structures, MDAL also allows vectoral (e.g. wind speed) and temporal data to be visualised effectively and easily in QGIS.
The MDAL project (and therefore the wider community) has benefitted from generous sponsors such as TUFLOW, 3Di, Hydrotech, DHI, FLO-2D, Artelia, Federal Ministry of Austria for Agriculture, Regions and Tourism
and many others. If you’d like to see your formats or workflows supported by QGIS then please consider becoming a sponsor or contact Peter at [email protected]
Right now we’re working on some new mesh frame editing tools for QGIS 3.22 (due for release in autumn 2021) and of course support for additional result file formats.
Today’s post is a video recommendation. In the following video, Alexandre Neto demonstrates an exciting array of tips, tricks, and hacks to create an automated Atlas map series of the Azores islands.
Highlights include:
1. A legend that includes automatically updating statistics
2. A way to support different page sizes
3. A solution for small areas overshooting the map border
You’ll find the video on the QGIS Youtube channel:
This video was recorded as part of the QGIS Open Day June edition. QGIS Open Days are organized monthly on the last Friday of the month. Anyone can take part and present their work for and with QGIS. For more details, see https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/wiki#qgis-open-day
With QGIS Cloud Pro it is possible to change the appearance and behaviour of the QGIS Cloud Web Client via CSS. You can easily manipulate the colour of frames and fonts, etc. An example that is not obvious is displaying the legend in a fixed location on the map. In this way, the legend can be made a fixed part of the map in QGIS Cloud QWC2.
In the basic configuration of QGIS Cloud QWC2 the legend of a layer is not permanently displayed.
The Swisstopo services can be used free of charge for commercial purposes since March 1st. In this blog article I want to show how these high quality data can be published on qgiscloud.com.
Swisstopo-Services The Swisstopo WMTS services are tiled raster data. Due to the prior tiling, the loading times are significantly reduced. WMTS data are used when an up-to-date background is always required. For publication as a background layer on the QGIS Cloud Platform, the National Maps and the Swissimage orthophoto are very interesting.
We would like to thank the developers, documenters, testers and all the many folks out there who volunteer their time and effort (or fund people to do so). From the QGIS community we hope you enjoy this release! If you wish to donate time, money or otherwise get involved in making QGIS more awesome, please wander along to qgis.org and lend a hand!
QGIS is supported by donors and sustaining members. A current list of donors who have made financial contributions large and small to the project can be seen on our donors list. If you would like to become a sustaining member, please visit our page for sustaining members for details. Your support helps us fund our six monthly developer meetings, maintain project infrastructure and fund bug fixing efforts.
QGIS is Free software and you are under no obligation to pay anything to use it – in fact we want to encourage people far and wide to use it regardless of what your financial or social status is – we believe empowering people with spatial decision making tools will result in a better society for all of humanity.
We’d like to share some exciting news with you about our cloud-based geo-data synchronisation service, Mergin.
In this post we’ll talk both about Mergin the online managed service (Mergin Cloud) and also about the software stack that powers it (the Mergin Software Stack).
Mergin CE
The Mergin Software Stack has been developed and maintained at Lutra Consulting over the past 3 years to power our Mergin Cloud service and has been maturing nicely in production.
We believe a sync service for supporting field-based GIS activities has been a missing piece of the open geospatial puzzle, and as strong advocates of open source software, we’re now sharing the Mergin Software Stack with the community. Therefore, on the 14th of June we released Mergin CE on GitHub. The CE stands for Community Edition.
The release means a fully open solution for field data collection and synchronisation is now possible using QGIS, Input app and Mergin CE.
Mergin CE is released under the AGPL licence and we are open to contributions from others. Looking forward to seeing what the open source community has to offer!
Mergin CE gives you the freedom to deploy, host and manage your own Mergin server on your own infrastructure, giving you complete control over your data. Mergin CE comes without commercial support.
Our main efforts are still very much focussed on the continuous improvement of Mergin Cloud, making it an awesome fully managed service for our customers.
We also now provide Mergin EE (Enterprise Edition) for those who want an on-premises deployment but with extra features like Active Directory integration, commercial support, and/or prefer a licence other than AGPL.
Changes to Mergin Cloud
Releasing Mergin CE got us taking another look at Mergin Cloud’s Community (free of charge) tier. That’s why from today we’re updating Mergin Cloud’s Terms of Service so its free tier can no longer be used to store projects for commercial use. Mergin accounts storing projects for commercial use should now purchase a paid subscription after their initial 14 day evaluation period.
A common surveying setup is a single paid account (providing extra storage for projects) and a handful of free tier accounts used by surveyors for collecting field data. This is still possible because the new Terms only require that the Mergin account hosting/storing/owning the commercial project has a paid subscription.
For example, consider two users: Fred (who uses a free account) and Penny (who uses a paid account). Penny is permitted to use the project Penny/Survey for commercial purposes as it resides on her paid account. Fred (who uses a free account) is permitted to collaborate on the commercial project Penny/Survey as it resides on Penny’s paid account. However, Fred may not use the project Fred/Survey2 for commercial use as it resides on his free account.
In light of the release of Mergin CE, we feel it is fair to encourage those using Mergin Cloud’s free tier for commercial gain to support us with one of our affordable subscriptions. The link also has a number of frequently asked questions relating to this change.
It is with a heavy heart that we announce that on 2021-05-31, our friend and colleague Håvard Tveite has passed away at the age of 59 after a period of illness.
Håvard was a very active member of the QGIS community, providing valuable input to the documentation, developing numerous plugins, and taking care of the QGIS Resources Sharing Repository to name just a few of his contributions.
The QGIS community would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to Håvard’s wife Ingrid and son Nils. Håvard’s contributions to the QGIS Project will leave a lasting impact on the lives of many people around the world as they benefit from the work he has done on a daily basis.
We are excited to announce that the geodiff library has finally reached version 1.0. We have started to develop geodiff back in 2019 as a part of our efforts to allow synchronisation of changes between the Input mobile app and Mergin platform.
At the core, geodiff library provides functionality to:
compare a pair of GeoPackage databases and create “diff” files containing changes between them
apply a “diff” file to a GeoPackage database
rebase changes in a “diff” file
invert, concatenate diffs and other utility functions
Thanks to the above low-level operations, any changes to data stored in spatial/non-spatial tables in GeoPackages can be easily transferred to others and applied. And thanks to the “rebase” functionality - inspired by source code management systems like git - we can automatically merge changes from multiple users capturing data offline in Input/Mergin (see our recent blog post that covers rebasing for more).
The library is written in C++, providing stable C API and offering Python bindings as well (look for pygeodiffpackage in pip). It also comes with a command line interface tool geodiff covering all major features. The whole package has a very permissive MIT license.
Support for drivers
Initially, geodiff library only worked with SQLite / GeoPackage files. This has changed with the version 1.0 - geodiff supports drivers, allowing use of different database backends to compare and apply diffs. In the 1.0 release we have added PostGIS driver in addition to SQLite/GeoPackage driver.
This means that users can compare tables or apply diffs in PostGIS databases using the same APIs as with GeoPackages. And not only that - diff files are compatible across different drivers. That means it is possible to take a diff file from a GeoPackage and apply it to PostGIS database!
Using the PostGIS driver we were able to create mergin-db-sync tool as a companion to Mergin platform. With DB sync, one can keep a local PostGIS database always in sync with a project in Mergin, supporting automatic transfer of changes from Mergin to PostGIS and the other way round as well - from PostGIS to back Mergin.
Try it
The library is hosted on GitHub in lutraconsulting/geodiff repository. We would love to hear your feedback!
Stay tuned for more!
As announced earlier, next week we will be open sourcing Mergin, our platform for easy sharing of spatial data in teams (whether they are in office or in the field). If you have not heard about Mergin platform yet, please have a look at the Mergin website, try Mergin plugin for QGIS and Input app, a mobile app based on QGIS for iPhone/iPad and Android devices. Since the initial release in early 2019, Mergin and Input have been used by thousands of users around the world.
At Lutra Consulting, we are dedicated to improving free and open source software for geospatial. We will be releasing Mergin as open source to solve another missing piece in the puzzle, providing open source end-to-end solution for mobile data capture for QGIS users. Watch our blog and Twitter for further updates!
Today, on QField’s 10th anniversary, we’re extremely proud to publish the results of over 18 months of development and give you the source code of QFieldCloud to go and make your awesome adaptations, solutions, and hopefully contributions
If you want to quickly try it out, head to https://qfield.cloud where our hosted solution is running and secure yourself a spot in the beta program.
QFieldCloud’s unique technology allows your team to focus on what’s important, making sure you efficiently get the best field data possible. Thanks to the tight integration with the leading GIS fieldwork app QField, your team will be able to start surveying and digitising data in no time.
What a journey it was and what plans do we already have… It has now been 10 years since I pushed the first scripts to build Quantum GIS for Android and it is incredible what we’ve been able to achieve thanks to a vibrant community, sponsors and especially our fantastic team.
At OPENGIS.ch we strongly believe in giving back. We live from open-source projects and are deeply committed to sustaining their technological and economicwell-being. We also believe everyone should have access to the best possible tools and knowledge. By committing ourselves to develop open-source applications, we give everyone access to powerful tools to plan, review and mitigate geospatial issues.
That is why we are even more thrilled to have created and open-sourced a professional data and team management solution for the best QGIS fieldwork app and would like to share a bit of the history of how we revolutionised field work by creating QField for QGIS.
Prehistory – QGIS for Android is born
Stone-, bronze-, iron-age, you get it, the beginnings of field mapping in the QGIS world were pretty rough around the edges. It all started thanks to me being accepted in the Google Summer of Code 2011 programme with the “QGIS mobile” submission. In the following 3 months, I’d try, with the help of my mentors Pirmin Kalberer and Marco Hugentobler, to get Quantum GIS to run on my tablet.
The first start
Hi all, it is a pleasure to announce that I finally got Quantum GIS to start on an android (3.2) tablet (Asus transformer). I tested as well on a Samsung Galaxy phone with cyanogen mod 7 RC1 and it works well (with the obvious screen size limitations). Qgis still doesn’t load many elements, but the GUI is there and the rest should be only minor issues. I’ll post more as soon as I make further developments. Meanwhile, if you want to test the apk, you can download it from my GitHub here. For building your own, have a look at qgis wiki
See my last posts. In short, I managed to get qgis packaged as an APK and to properly run with only one major problem. The map canvas is always black. I’ll investigate this till Tuesday. Cheers
After 3 months of intensive work, QGIS for android finally has a a proper GUI
Blazing fast startup
Hi, I just managed to create an APK with all the resources needed by qgis …
The only inconvenience at the moment is that at the first startup the app shows a black screen while it’s copying the files for about 30 to 60sec so just be patient and remember that the whole app will take up to 230MB (it installs on external storage by default)
I still remember the feeling that day when after almost 3 months, of fighting with shell scripts, patching of build systems, debugging via ADB, writing C++ in Java wrappers and so on, my Quantum GIS test project was suddenly running on my tablet… I Was so happy I just went running in the mountains :).
Just a quick screenshot to show that qgis on android is now a working reality. Tomorrow I’ll make a video and so on. The major missing thing now is reading SHP files ad maybe spatialite… maybe tomorrow. Now it’s Sunday
At the end of the Google Summer of code, I received my MSc in geoinformatics and left for 3 Months to Indonesia working as a consultant/developer for the World-bank Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery.
So, it is over, after 3 months of working on QGIS for android as a Google Summer of Code project it is now time to wrap up what I did and didn’t do. First of all a QGIS android app exists now and it has many features including: – reading/writing projects – raster support – spatialite support – WMS support – (apparent – untested) WFS and Postgres support – partial shape files support (string attributes still crash the app) – Fully functional GUI (SymbologyV2 doesn’t work yet) – (all?) core C++ plugins beside globe (any takers? ) Furthermore, I created a series of build scripts that make it easier to set up a dev environment. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to implement live GPS tracking and a larger GUI optimisation, but all in all, I’m very happy with the results and seeing that few peoples are already testing it. Soon ill publish a video. cheers
Quantum GIS for Android was a reality and I was fully committed to keeping working on it. Turns out I wasn’t wrong
A commitment is a commitment
Classical – QGIS for Android grows
The Next Era of QGIS for android is what could be seen as the time of great knowledge enhancement, philosophical musings and the rise of the first great features including:
The dark ages, times of instability, change and some setbacks. Sounds terrifying, it was not at all, on the contrary it was a very formative period that apexed with the fantastic release of QGIS 2.0 for android.
The QML app experiment
From the beginning on, the idea behind QGIS for android was to eventually ditch the GUI and build a dedicated one for touch devices. The code for the future.
UX mockup for the first QML based app
UX mockup for the first QML based app
UX mockup for the first QML based app
Screenshots of the first QML based UI
The Python failure
Probably the major setback in QGIS for android’s history was the non-completion of the Python support. I got really close to it multiple times but unfortunately never managed to tame the snake. Maybe something we’ll look into in future, who knows.
The pivotal point of the Middle Ages was definitely 20.09.2013, when Tim Sutton presented to a full auditorium the shiny new QGIS 2.0. And along with it it introduced the general availability of QGIS 2.0 on android. The first real QGIS version for mobile devices was finally available for the broad public.
Tim Sutton announcing QGIS 2.0
Tim Sutton announcing QGIS 2.0 for Android
QGIS 2.0 general availability for Android
After the launch followed a very active time of keeping QGIS for Android on pair with the desktop versions leading to a regular release of updates on the playstore between 2013 and late 2014. This is also when Matthias Kuhn started committing to the QGIS for Android repository.
Early Modern – QField for QGIS is here
Humanism, Renaissance and Enlightenment are what we saw happening in the period between 2015 and early 2019. Field users were put at the centre of the design process, new ideas were explored and a new name was chosen to reflect the main goal of the application: Make fieldwork as efficient as possible.
Early 2015 was also when Matthias Kuhn and myself decided to join forces in OPENGIS.ch LLC.
The rebranding
The project never had a clear name, at times it was called QGIS for Android at times QGIS mobile, we felt that to clearly convey what we were building we needed a clear, simple and poignant name.
Beginning of 2015 saw the last rebranding
It is with great pleasure that we want to announce the new name for what was briefly known as QGIS mobile.
Please welcome QField for QGIS!
After long thinking about various names and variants including QGIS mobile, QTouch, OPENGIS.ch QGIS mobile, QWork, and many more, we felt that QField represents best what we want to archive. A field data capture and management app fully compatible with QGIS.
QField Experimental is out, after a couple of months of requirements gathering, private early alpha testing and foremost tons of emails requesting access to the testes group we decided today to put the current BETA version in the playstore.
Since the beginning of QGIS for android, to distribute the needed Qt libraries, we used a project called “ministro”. This was interesting because it allowed to download the libraries only once but on the other hand, it was a very painful experience for the user that needed to install a second app before getting QField to start. Around the end of 2015 it was so far, we finally managed to get rid of that dependency and make the installation process as streamlined as possible.
It’s done, finally we managed to get rid of Ministro so that we finally can say, QField runs on any android from 4.0.3 (ICS). This makes as of today (according to google) 96% of the android installations worldwide.
In these 3.5 years, a continuous, mainly volunteer-driven iterative process led by Matthias Kuhn made QField grow to the point where we felt confident it was time to launch QField 1.0.
After a series of release candidates with lots of feedback from the community, we felt it was time to move into a New Era.
It was a long and winding road but we are very excited to announce the general availability of QField 1.0 Release Candidate 1.
Packed with loads of useful features like online and offline features digitizing, geometry and attributes editing, attribute search, powerful forms, theme switching, GPS support, camera integration and much more, QField is a powerful tool for those who need to edit on the go and would like to avoid standing in the swamp with a laptop or paper charts.
We are incredibly pleased and proud of just having released such a jewel and are convinced that thanks to all its features and conscious design choices, QField will make your field digitizing work much more efficient and pleasant.
In the last 2 years the development pace increased tremendously, the sponsored featured grew as never before, QField rating skyrocketed to 4.7 we currently have 100’000 active users and we’re getting around 500 new users every day.
Our QField core team grew more and now thanks to David Signer’s lead and Mathieu Pellerin keen eye for UX we’re pushing QField even further.
Going into all releases would be so much information that this post would turn into a 3 volumes classic, and since starting from QField 1.0 we’ve documented each new release, we’re just going to link them: https://www.opengis.ch/category/qfield/highlights/
The future is cloudy – ehm sunny of course
Yesterday we published QField 1.9.6, which is going to be the last 1.X release and will put QField 2.0 into the beta channel so that every beta tester can start using QFieldCloud without having to use the developer version.
But that is a different story and you can read all about it in our latest newsletter…
From unlocking selective atlas layout export to opening individual datasets and creating GeoPDFs, QField 1.9 is all about giving even more power to its users. The release also comes with significant user experience improvement, such as faster rendering and restoring the last viewed map extent.
QField has long supported exporting print layouts to PDF, but now users are able to export atlas-driven layouts from selected features, all while being in the field. A new print action is now attached to the feature form and identified features list for all vector layers acting as atlas coverage layers in any of the print layouts present in a loaded project.
Oh, and did we mention exported PDFs from QField are now georeferenced?
Opening of individual datasets
Users in the field can find themselves in need of opening individual geospatial datasets not bound to a project: that KML file a colleague has just sent through via a messenger app or a new GeoPDF sitting in the inbox. QField 1.9 will seamlessly do that for you.
Out of the box, users will now be able to open vector and rasters datasets from their mobile devices. By default, an OpenStreetMap base map will be added as an underlying basemap to the opened dataset layer(s).
Geometry digitizing when adding child features to relationships
While QField has long allowed users to add new child features to predefined layers’ relationships, users were only able to add feature attributes. This changes with this new version of QField.
As of now, users will be able to digitize geometries alongside attributes for new child features. This is a significant user experience improvement and will surely ease field data entry in many cases.
A maturing search bar now with address searches
A new address search framework was added to QField’s search bar. In this new version, Finnish users will be able to search for street addresses and locations straight from QField. More coverage is planned in future releases.
If you want to sponsor a specific country, contact us.
User interface and experience improvements
While this new version of QField brings an exciting amount of new features, it also showcases countless refinements and improvements to its user interface and experience. Some noteworthy improvements include:
QField now remembers the last map extent for each project and dataset opened, allowing users to launch QField and pick things up where they left off.
QField now provides visual feedback when opening large projects so users don’t have to wonder what is happening to a frozen QField frame.
Significant attention was paid to improve the visual consistency of the feature form widgets, and users will be pleased to see project-set background colours for attributes are now reflected in the QField interface.
QField Cloud
We have also been working hard on improved methods for synchronizing data from field to the office. QField Cloud is looming around the corner to help you simplify processes and data integration. Don’t miss out and join the waiting list if you haven’t done so already!
That’s it! Thanks for reading and check out the complete changelog on our repository.
Everyone knows QGIS is on the desktop and mobile devices. Many know QGIS is on the web with QGIS server through OGC services. Some know QGIS server has its own extension to generate PDFs. But did you know that QGIS server can also produce DXF files?
DXF
DXF files are mainly used for interchanging CAD drawings, vector geometries with styles and attributes. With a couple of compromises, these files can be imported and exported to and from QGIS.
Due to their heavy use of CAD software, architects work a lot with DXF files. For example, for the Swiss Cadastral Survey (Amtliche Vermessung, Mensuration Officielle) there is a standard with the name GEOBAU-DXF that defines layer names and structure of this file. Architects often request this format from cantonal government agencies when planning construction work.
In the canton of Schaffhausen, there are over 100 downloads per month and it’s by far the most demanded format. These files were produced semi-automatically through a separate application and the customers got the data by mail with a link to a zip file. The time between order and delivery was about 20 minutes. With the renewal of the cantonal SDI, including QGIS server for handling OGC services, the situation changed and an update to this process was required.
Optimize the process
For the canton of Schaffhausen, the goal was to find a solution with existing components of the new SDI, completely based on machine-to-machine communication and to make the turnaround time for the customer as fast as possible. As soon as they realized QGIS server is also able to deliver DXF, this seemed to be the best approach to fulfil their needs concerning the download of GEOBAU-DXF. And, with the help of OPENGIS.ch, it was a full success.
In the cantonal infrastructure, the data is available in a Postgres database, which is regularly filled through an ETL workflow. On top of this database, the canton created a QGIS project with symbology, labelling and layers that reflect the GEOBAU-DXF standard.
With this project published on a QGIS server, it was quickly possible to generate a DXF file, but some improvements were still required in QGIS 3.10.
Label alignment was not preserved
Altitudes (Z values) of coordinates were not properly exported
Symbols were defined inline and not in blocks
When a layer could have mixed geometry types (points, lines and polygons) there were problems with missing objects and wrong symbology
The Canton Shaffausen already had a support and maintenance contract in place with us and used this contract to kick off the development as well as requesting an additional dedicated development contract with specific goals. A couple of iterations later these enhancements were released with the next QGIS versions and are now available for everyone.
As a side effect, the DXF code has been cleaned up. This is now in a much more solid and modular state (it would, for example, be straightforward to expose it as processing algorithm now). Another nice improvement was that QGIS WMS server is now able to handle multiple layers with the same name, merging them to a single layer. This can be interesting if you have to expose the same layer multiple times with points, lines and polygons.
Meanwhile in Schaffhausen, the service is running in production and architects can happily obtain DXF-GEOBAU files by choosing the area of interest on the web map and download the file in no time.
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we currently have 100’000 active users and we’re getting around 500 new users every day.
