• Open Source
• qgis

If you are in Australia and are looking for some QGIS training Digital Mapping Solutions have just announced that they are now providing a  2 day Introduction to QGIS training course.

The course covers such things as:

• User interface and basic tools

• QGIS projects and preferences

• Coordinate Reference Systems and On-The-Fly (OTF) projection

• Map navigation and QGIS tools

• Vector map objects: Adding, deleting & modifying

• Attribute data: Field editing & modification

• Layer manipulation

• Digitizing

• Styles and labelling

• Object manipulation: Combine, split & buffer

• Registering raster imagery

• Creating layouts for printing

• Utilising WMS and WFS Web Services

• Plugins

• Database connectivity

More details and a booking form for the course can be found at http://www.mapsolutions.com.au/training/quantum-gis/introduction-to-qgis.aspx

Training like this is great for QGIS popularity in Australia.  Working in local government I know how hard it can be to get IT to say yes to software unless there is formal training of some sort, and now thanks to DMS there is.

Enjoy :)

• Open Source
• qgis

If you are in Australia and are looking for some QGIS training Digital Mapping Solutions have just announced that they are now providing a  2 day Introduction to QGIS training course.

The course covers such things as:

• User interface and basic tools

• QGIS projects and preferences

• Coordinate Reference Systems and On-The-Fly (OTF) projection

• Map navigation and QGIS tools

• Vector map objects: Adding, deleting & modifying

• Attribute data: Field editing & modification

• Layer manipulation

• Digitizing

• Styles and labelling

• Object manipulation: Combine, split & buffer

• Registering raster imagery

• Creating layouts for printing

• Utilising WMS and WFS Web Services

• Plugins

• Database connectivity

More details and a booking form for the course can be found at http://www.mapsolutions.com.au/training/quantum-gis/introduction-to-qgis.aspx

Training like this is great for QGIS popularity in Australia.  Working in local government I know how hard it can be to get IT to say yes to software unless there is formal training of some sort, and now thanks to DMS there is.

Enjoy :)

Something that I always find interesting is how people are using different open source tools to get their work done.  This post attempts to outline how I/we are using QGIS at work for different projects.

Kerb mapping, condition, and defect pickup

This project is currently being done by a 67 year old foreman who has worked for the council for a very long time and has great knowledge of the town.   QGIS, with the main working layers stored in PostGIS, was setup so that he can:

• Digitize kerb lines from aerial photos.
• Split the existing kerb lines into segments depending on different asset rules.
• Give each segment an overall condition rating.
• Add defect points along the each kerb segment e.g. broken, lifted, etc,

Each defect point is snapped to the underlying  kerb line and chainages (distance along line) is generated using a update statement at the end of the project (could be done using a insert trigger if needed) using ST_line_locate_point(line, point).

Defect points coloured by risk captured against the kerb line

Overall QGIS has been great for this project.  The built in data entry forms have been a great help to allow fast and correct data entry. Each form has four drop downs all with present values and descriptions to aid in data entry.

Flood damaged claim maps

We recently suffered, like the rest of Queensland, some really major flooding which caused large amounts of damage to our road infrastructure. We got off pretty light compared to some places, nevertheless we still had a lot of damaged assets.  And so began the process of collecting data that could be used for state government funding claims.

Anyway, onto the QGIS bit.  QGIS was installed on one of the main engineers computers in order for him to make maps for each claim.  Having the ability for him to have one map window but multiple frames in the composer helped him to create multiple  views of the same data with ease.

In total there are 42 QGIS project files with a main project file which served the base layers to the other projects, using the cool Embed Layers and Groups feature.  This means any change in main base project was reflected up(down?) to the other projects next time they are opened.  The main project file has things like, property layer; normal road layers, with labels; road layer with roads for claims.   The other 42 projects have a filtered, and styled, road layer to only show roads in that batch, and its composers (print layouts).

Normally we would use MapInfo for this kind of thing but consider this: There are at least 3 print layouts per claim, each layout could have more then one map frame.  Now with MapInfo only being able to have a 1:1 ratio between the map window and the map frame in the layout you would need at least 3 map windows per claim.  Quick calc:

42 * 3 =  126+n map windows + 126 print layouts (n = extra map frames in layouts)

Each map window has its own copy of every layer, making change once apply every where changes hard.  This of course doesn’t apply to styles as they are stored in the .map (tab) file, but does for labels, style overrides, etc.   I’ll pass.

QGIS is no means perfect for printing or print layouts but the 1:N map window to map frame ratio worked really well for this project.  The styling options in QGIS also helped to change the display of the map depending on what was needed to be shown quickly, one even used the rule-based rendering.

You get the point.
Moving on.

Processing GPS photos with road chainages

This one I am quite proud of.  It’s nothing fancy but still saves a lot of time.  While not really QGIS only but a combination of QGIS+Spatialite it process GPS photos and assigns them a road name and chainage.

The issue: A large influx of GPS photos for the different flood damage projects and the need to process them quickly so that they got assigned to the correct road and chainage.  Now you can map GPS photos easy enough but then you still have to go to each one and assign a road name, chainage, and move it into the correct folder.  To hell with doing that by hand, this is why we invented GIS.

The result is a little (140 line) python script that:

1. extracts the coordinates from each photos,
2. finds the closest (within tolerance) road distance node (distance nodes are generated at 5m intervals along the road, around 800,000 in total for the whole shire),
3. gets the road name, locality, and chainage for that node,
4. creates a folder with that road name,
5. renames the photo with {name} @ {chainage},
6. moves it into the road name folder it is assign to.
7. inserts a record for that photo into the spatialite database that can be viewed in QGIS.

Porting our planning scheme maps

I have been involved in creating, and maintaining, our planning scheme maps for the council.  It’s been a pretty fun project, apart from the constant moving target that is the state planning specifications, but I digress.

Planning scheme in QGIS

This project was done, and still is, in MapInfo. While there is nothing technically wrong with that, it has become a bit more of a pain to maintain then one would hope.  The planning scheme is not just one map but rather a series of different maps all with different scales and requirements.  I’m sure by now you can start to see the issues that can arise:

1. No dynamic scale bar for layouts (not even a scale bar object rather just text and boxes made to look like a scale bar. With no group items feature moving these around is a pain).
2. 1:1 map window to map frame means excessive map windows when the data is all the same with just different views.
3. Legends don’t support ordering, adding items, or groups.
4. With no embedding base maps feature like in QGIS it’s hard to change one thing and apply it to all the map windows/workspaces.

The specifications also ask for lines with symbols along them to show things like bikeways, footpaths etc, something that can’t be done in MapInfo, well it can by using the line style editor but I would rather stab myself in the eye.

The one thing I haven’t fully worked out how to do in QGIS yet is fully automate the printing process. Currently I open MapInfo using a batch file and pass it a workspace and MBX which prints the layouts and exits. I do this for each map type.    In QGIS I have a few options:

1. Create a plugin that runs though each project and prints off its composers.
2. Create a python script that runs from a batch file using qgis.core and qgis.gui QGIS python bindings.
3. add a –code option to the command line of QGIS so that you could run: qgis.exe –noplugins –code “print.py”, which would open QGIS and run the python code and exit.

I’m yet to explore what option is the best for this project but I’ll get back to you on that.  Once I have the above issue sorted I plan on creating the maps in QGIS to see how it would turn out (time permitting)

• Open Source
• qgis tags:
• case study
• FOSSGIS
• gis
• local gov
• Local government
• mapinfo
• Open Source
• osgeo
• qgis
• Quantum GIS

Something that I always find interesting is how people are using different open source tools to get their work done.  This post attempts to outline how I/we are using QGIS at work for different projects.

Kerb mapping, condition, and defect pickup

This project is currently being done by a 67 year old foreman who has worked for the council for a very long time and has great knowledge of the town.   QGIS, with the main working layers stored in PostGIS, was setup so that he can:

• Digitize kerb lines from aerial photos.

• Split the existing kerb lines into segments depending on different asset rules.

• Give each segment an overall condition rating.

• Add defect points along the each kerb segment e.g. broken, lifted, etc,

Each defect point is snapped to the underlying  kerb line and chainages (distance along line) is generated using a update statement at the end of the project (could be done using a insert trigger if needed) using ST_line_locate_point(line, point).

Overall QGIS has been great for this project.  The built in data entry forms have been a great help to allow fast and correct data entry. Each form has four drop downs all with present values and descriptions to aid in data entry.

Flood damaged claim maps

We recently suffered, like the rest of Queensland, some really major flooding which caused large amounts of damage to our road infrastructure. We got off pretty light compared to some places, nevertheless we still had a lot of damaged assets.  And so began the process of collecting data that could be used for state government funding claims.

Anyway, onto the QGIS bit.  QGIS was installed on one of the main engineers computers in order for him to make maps for each claim.  Having the ability for him to have one map window but multiple frames in the composer helped him to create multiple  views of the same data with ease.

In total there are 42 QGIS project files with a main project file which served the base layers to the other projects, using the cool Embed Layers and Groups feature.  This means any change in main base project was reflected up(down?) to the other projects next time they are opened.  The main project file has things like, property layer; normal road layers, with labels; road layer with roads for claims.   The other 42 projects have a filtered, and styled, road layer to only show roads in that batch, and its composers (print layouts).

Normally we would use MapInfo for this kind of thing but consider this: There are at least 3 print layouts per claim, each layout could have more then one map frame.  Now with MapInfo only being able to have a 1:1 ratio between the map window and the map frame in the layout you would need at least 3 map windows per claim.  Quick calc:

42 * 3 =  126+n map windows + 126 print layouts (n = extra map frames in layouts)

Each map window has its own copy of every layer, making change once apply every where changes hard.  This of course doesn't apply to styles as they are stored in the .map (tab) file, but does for labels, style overrides, etc.   I'll pass.

QGIS is no means perfect for printing or print layouts but the 1:N map window to map frame ratio worked really well for this project.  The styling options in QGIS also helped to change the display of the map depending on what was needed to be shown quickly, one even used the rule-based rendering.

You get the point. Moving on.

Processing GPS photos with road chainages

This one I am quite proud of.  It's nothing fancy but still saves a lot of time.  While not really QGIS only but a combination of QGIS+Spatialite it process GPS photos and assigns them a road name and chainage.

The issue: A large influx of GPS photos for the different flood damage projects and the need to process them quickly so that they got assigned to the correct road and chainage.  Now you can map GPS photos easy enough but then you still have to go to each one and assign a road name, chainage, and move it into the correct folder.  To hell with doing that by hand, this is why we invented GIS.

The result is a little (140 line) python script that_:_

1. extracts the coordinates from each photos,

2. finds the closest (within tolerance) road distance node_ (distance nodes are generated at 5m intervals along the road, around 800,000 in total for the whole shire)_,

3. gets the road name, locality, and chainage for that node,

4. creates a folder with that road name,

5. renames the photo with {name} @ {chainage},

6. moves it into the road name folder it is assign to.

7. inserts a record for that photo into the spatialite database that can be viewed in QGIS.

The Spatialite database has a spatial index on the road distance nodes and with that in place it can process 148 photos in 8 seconds.  Not too bad at all. Now all we have to do to process the photos is stick them into a special folder and run process.bat.

Porting our planning scheme maps

I have been involved in creating, and maintaining, our planning scheme maps for the council.  It's been a pretty fun project, apart from the constant moving target that is the state planning specifications, but I digress.

This project was done, and still is, in MapInfo. While there is nothing technically wrong with that, it has become a bit more of a pain to maintain then one would hope.  The planning scheme is not just one map but rather a series of different maps all with different scales and requirements.  I'm sure by now you can start to see the issues that can arise:

1. No dynamic scale bar for layouts (not even a scale bar object rather just text and boxes made to look like a scale bar. With no group items feature moving these around is a pain).

2. 1:1 map window to map frame means excessive map windows when the data is all the same with just different views.

3. Legends don't support ordering, adding items, or groups.

4. With no embedding base maps feature like in QGIS it's hard to change one thing and apply it to all the map windows/workspaces.

The specifications also ask for lines with symbols along them to show things like bikeways, footpaths etc, something that can't be done in MapInfo, well it can by using the line style editor but I would rather stab myself in the eye.

The one thing I haven't fully worked out how to do in QGIS yet is fully automate the printing process. Currently I open MapInfo using a batch file and pass it a workspace and MBX which prints the layouts and exits. I do this for each map type.    In QGIS I have a few options:

1. Create a plugin that runs though each project and prints off its composers.

2. Create a python script that runs from a batch file using qgis.core and qgis.gui QGIS python bindings.

3. add a --code option to the command line of QGIS so that you could run: qgis.exe --noplugins --code "print.py", which would open QGIS and run the python code and exit.

I'm yet to explore what option is the best for this project but I'll get back to you on that.  Once I have the above issue sorted I plan on creating the maps in QGIS to see how it would turn out (time permitting)

Custom asset data collection program

This one would have to be my favourite.  I really love programming (most days), and being able to create our own data collection program using QGIS and MS SQL 2008 has been great.

While it is only very very young I'm already seeing some great potential.  Using an open source base (apart from MS SQL) has given us a lot of power, power to change stuff that we don't like (which so far has been one minor bug), and the power to get exactly what we need.

I can't talk about this project a lot as it is only very new and still only in design/testing/prototyping stage.

The main things for me are:

• Ease of use. If I get asked how to do something over and over I have failed the users. And no 100 page training manuals.

• Fast

• No menus, or right-click menus! I'm a power user and even I hate navigating menus on a tablet.

• Easy to build custom forms

• Online/Offline syncing

• Ease of use. Oh did I say this already!? Well it's important.

• Easy to configure by admins.

• Limited use of dialogs. It's NOT ok for an app to ask users to confirm 100 dialogs to do one thing.

Overall I think using QGIS and PyQt I can hit all the targets listed above quite well. In fact I know I can because I have already hit most of the them in the last couple of weeks.

Summary

So that is my list of QGIS uses in my local government situation, hopefully it wasn't TL;DR and you found it interesting.  I'm sure there will be plenty more to add at the end of 2012.

Something that I always find interesting is how people are using different open source tools to get their work done.  This post attempts to outline how I/we are using QGIS at work for different projects.

Kerb mapping, condition, and defect pickup

This project is currently being done by a 67 year old foreman who has worked for the council for a very long time and has great knowledge of the town.   QGIS, with the main working layers stored in PostGIS, was setup so that he can:

• Digitize kerb lines from aerial photos.

• Split the existing kerb lines into segments depending on different asset rules.

• Give each segment an overall condition rating.

• Add defect points along the each kerb segment e.g. broken, lifted, etc,

Each defect point is snapped to the underlying  kerb line and chainages (distance along line) is generated using a update statement at the end of the project (could be done using a insert trigger if needed) using STlinelocate_point(line, point).

Overall QGIS has been great for this project.  The built in data entry forms have been a great help to allow fast and correct data entry. Each form has four drop downs all with present values and descriptions to aid in data entry.

Flood damaged claim maps

We recently suffered, like the rest of Queensland, some really major flooding which caused large amounts of damage to our road infrastructure. We got off pretty light compared to some places, nevertheless we still had a lot of damaged assets.  And so began the process of collecting data that could be used for state government funding claims.

Anyway, onto the QGIS bit.  QGIS was installed on one of the main engineers computers in order for him to make maps for each claim.  Having the ability for him to have one map window but multiple frames in the composer helped him to create multiple  views of the same data with ease.

In total there are 42 QGIS project files with a main project file which served the base layers to the other projects, using the cool Embed Layers and Groups feature.  This means any change in main base project was reflected up(down?) to the other projects next time they are opened.  The main project file has things like, property layer; normal road layers, with labels; road layer with roads for claims.   The other 42 projects have a filtered, and styled, road layer to only show roads in that batch, and its composers (print layouts).

Normally we would use MapInfo for this kind of thing but consider this: There are at least 3 print layouts per claim, each layout could have more then one map frame.  Now with MapInfo only being able to have a 1:1 ratio between the map window and the map frame in the layout you would need at least 3 map windows per claim.  Quick calc:

42 * 3 =  126+n map windows + 126 print layouts (n = extra map frames in layouts)

Each map window has its own copy of every layer, making change once apply every where changes hard.  This of course doesn't apply to styles as they are stored in the .map (tab) file, but does for labels, style overrides, etc.   I'll pass.

QGIS is no means perfect for printing or print layouts but the 1:N map window to map frame ratio worked really well for this project.  The styling options in QGIS also helped to change the display of the map depending on what was needed to be shown quickly, one even used the rule-based rendering.

You get the point. Moving on.

Processing GPS photos with road chainages

This one I am quite proud of.  It's nothing fancy but still saves a lot of time.  While not really QGIS only but a combination of QGIS+Spatialite it process GPS photos and assigns them a road name and chainage.

The issue: A large influx of GPS photos for the different flood damage projects and the need to process them quickly so that they got assigned to the correct road and chainage.  Now you can map GPS photos easy enough but then you still have to go to each one and assign a road name, chainage, and move it into the correct folder.  To hell with doing that by hand, this is why we invented GIS.

The result is a little (140 line) python script that:

1. extracts the coordinates from each photos,

2. finds the closest (within tolerance) road distance node_ (distance nodes are generated at 5m intervals along the road, around 800,000 in total for the whole shire)_,

3. gets the road name, locality, and chainage for that node,

4. creates a folder with that road name,

5. renames the photo with {name} @ {chainage},

6. moves it into the road name folder it is assign to.

7. inserts a record for that photo into the spatialite database that can be viewed in QGIS.

The Spatialite database has a spatial index on the road distance nodes and with that in place it can process 148 photos in 8 seconds.  Not too bad at all. Now all we have to do to process the photos is stick them into a special folder and run process.bat.

Porting our planning scheme maps

I have been involved in creating, and maintaining, our planning scheme maps for the council.  It's been a pretty fun project, apart from the constant moving target that is the state planning specifications, but I digress.

This project was done, and still is, in MapInfo. While there is nothing technically wrong with that, it has become a bit more of a pain to maintain then one would hope.  The planning scheme is not just one map but rather a series of different maps all with different scales and requirements.  I'm sure by now you can start to see the issues that can arise:

1. No dynamic scale bar for layouts (not even a scale bar object rather just text and boxes made to look like a scale bar. With no group items feature moving these around is a pain).

2. 1:1 map window to map frame means excessive map windows when the data is all the same with just different views.

3. Legends don't support ordering, adding items, or groups.

4. With no embedding base maps feature like in QGIS it's hard to change one thing and apply it to all the map windows/workspaces.

The specifications also ask for lines with symbols along them to show things like bikeways, footpaths etc, something that can't be done in MapInfo, well it can by using the line style editor but I would rather stab myself in the eye.

The one thing I haven't fully worked out how to do in QGIS yet is fully automate the printing process. Currently I open MapInfo using a batch file and pass it a workspace and MBX which prints the layouts and exits. I do this for each map type.    In QGIS I have a few options:

1. Create a plugin that runs though each project and prints off its composers.

2. Create a python script that runs from a batch file using qgis.core and qgis.gui QGIS python bindings.

3. add a --code option to the command line of QGIS so that you could run: qgis.exe --noplugins --code "print.py", which would open QGIS and run the python code and exit.

I'm yet to explore what option is the best for this project but I'll get back to you on that.  Once I have the above issue sorted I plan on creating the maps in QGIS to see how it would turn out (time permitting)

Custom asset data collection program

This one would have to be my favourite.  I really love programming (most days), and being able to create our own data collection program using QGIS and MS SQL 2008 has been great.

While it is only very very young I'm already seeing some great potential.  Using an open source base (apart from MS SQL) has given us a lot of power, power to change stuff that we don't like (which so far has been one minor bug), and the power to get exactly what we need.

I can't talk about this project a lot as it is only very new and still only in design/testing/prototyping stage.

The main things for me are:

• Ease of use. If I get asked how to do something over and over I have failed the users. And no 100 page training manuals.

• Fast

• No menus, or right-click menus! I'm a power user and even I hate navigating menus on a tablet.

• Easy to build custom forms

• Online/Offline syncing

• Ease of use. Oh did I say this already!? Well it's important.

• Easy to configure by admins.

• Limited use of dialogs. It's NOT ok for an app to ask users to confirm 100 dialogs to do one thing.

Overall I think using QGIS and PyQt I can hit all the targets listed above quite well. In fact I know I can because I have already hit most of the them in the last couple of weeks.

Summary

So that is my list of QGIS uses in my local government situation, hopefully it wasn't TL;DR and you found it interesting.  I'm sure there will be plenty more to add at the end of 2012.

• Open Source
• qgis tags:
• case study
• FOSSGIS
• gis
• local gov
• Local government
• mapinfo
• Open Source
• osgeo
• qgis
• Quantum GIS

Something that I always find interesting is how people are using different open source tools to get their work done.  This post attempts to outline how I/we are using QGIS at work for different projects.

Kerb mapping, condition, and defect pickup

This project is currently being done by a 67 year old foreman who has worked for the council for a very long time and has great knowledge of the town.   QGIS, with the main working layers stored in PostGIS, was setup so that he can:

• Digitize kerb lines from aerial photos.

• Split the existing kerb lines into segments depending on different asset rules.

• Give each segment an overall condition rating.

• Add defect points along the each kerb segment e.g. broken, lifted, etc,

Each defect point is snapped to the underlying  kerb line and chainages (distance along line) is generated using a update statement at the end of the project (could be done using a insert trigger if needed) using ST_line_locate_point(line, point).

Overall QGIS has been great for this project.  The built in data entry forms have been a great help to allow fast and correct data entry. Each form has four drop downs all with present values and descriptions to aid in data entry.

Flood damaged claim maps

We recently suffered, like the rest of Queensland, some really major flooding which caused large amounts of damage to our road infrastructure. We got off pretty light compared to some places, nevertheless we still had a lot of damaged assets.  And so began the process of collecting data that could be used for state government funding claims.

Anyway, onto the QGIS bit.  QGIS was installed on one of the main engineers computers in order for him to make maps for each claim.  Having the ability for him to have one map window but multiple frames in the composer helped him to create multiple  views of the same data with ease.

In total there are 42 QGIS project files with a main project file which served the base layers to the other projects, using the cool Embed Layers and Groups feature.  This means any change in main base project was reflected up(down?) to the other projects next time they are opened.  The main project file has things like, property layer; normal road layers, with labels; road layer with roads for claims.   The other 42 projects have a filtered, and styled, road layer to only show roads in that batch, and its composers (print layouts).

Normally we would use MapInfo for this kind of thing but consider this: There are at least 3 print layouts per claim, each layout could have more then one map frame.  Now with MapInfo only being able to have a 1:1 ratio between the map window and the map frame in the layout you would need at least 3 map windows per claim.  Quick calc:

42 * 3 =  126+n map windows + 126 print layouts (n = extra map frames in layouts)

Each map window has its own copy of every layer, making change once apply every where changes hard.  This of course doesn't apply to styles as they are stored in the .map (tab) file, but does for labels, style overrides, etc.   I'll pass.

QGIS is no means perfect for printing or print layouts but the 1:N map window to map frame ratio worked really well for this project.  The styling options in QGIS also helped to change the display of the map depending on what was needed to be shown quickly, one even used the rule-based rendering.

You get the point. Moving on.

Processing GPS photos with road chainages

This one I am quite proud of.  It's nothing fancy but still saves a lot of time.  While not really QGIS only but a combination of QGIS+Spatialite it process GPS photos and assigns them a road name and chainage.

The issue: A large influx of GPS photos for the different flood damage projects and the need to process them quickly so that they got assigned to the correct road and chainage.  Now you can map GPS photos easy enough but then you still have to go to each one and assign a road name, chainage, and move it into the correct folder.  To hell with doing that by hand, this is why we invented GIS.

The result is a little (140 line) python script that_:_

1. extracts the coordinates from each photos,

2. finds the closest (within tolerance) road distance node_ (distance nodes are generated at 5m intervals along the road, around 800,000 in total for the whole shire)_,

3. gets the road name, locality, and chainage for that node,

4. creates a folder with that road name,

5. renames the photo with {name} @ {chainage},

6. moves it into the road name folder it is assign to.

7. inserts a record for that photo into the spatialite database that can be viewed in QGIS.

The Spatialite database has a spatial index on the road distance nodes and with that in place it can process 148 photos in 8 seconds.  Not too bad at all. Now all we have to do to process the photos is stick them into a special folder and run process.bat.

Porting our planning scheme maps

I have been involved in creating, and maintaining, our planning scheme maps for the council.  It's been a pretty fun project, apart from the constant moving target that is the state planning specifications, but I digress.

This project was done, and still is, in MapInfo. While there is nothing technically wrong with that, it has become a bit more of a pain to maintain then one would hope.  The planning scheme is not just one map but rather a series of different maps all with different scales and requirements.  I'm sure by now you can start to see the issues that can arise:

1. No dynamic scale bar for layouts (not even a scale bar object rather just text and boxes made to look like a scale bar. With no group items feature moving these around is a pain).

2. 1:1 map window to map frame means excessive map windows when the data is all the same with just different views.

3. Legends don't support ordering, adding items, or groups.

4. With no embedding base maps feature like in QGIS it's hard to change one thing and apply it to all the map windows/workspaces.

The specifications also ask for lines with symbols along them to show things like bikeways, footpaths etc, something that can't be done in MapInfo, well it can by using the line style editor but I would rather stab myself in the eye.

The one thing I haven't fully worked out how to do in QGIS yet is fully automate the printing process. Currently I open MapInfo using a batch file and pass it a workspace and MBX which prints the layouts and exits. I do this for each map type.    In QGIS I have a few options:

1. Create a plugin that runs though each project and prints off its composers.

2. Create a python script that runs from a batch file using qgis.core and qgis.gui QGIS python bindings.

3. add a --code option to the command line of QGIS so that you could run: qgis.exe --noplugins --code "print.py", which would open QGIS and run the python code and exit.

I'm yet to explore what option is the best for this project but I'll get back to you on that.  Once I have the above issue sorted I plan on creating the maps in QGIS to see how it would turn out (time permitting)

Custom asset data collection program

This one would have to be my favourite.  I really love programming (most days), and being able to create our own data collection program using QGIS and MS SQL 2008 has been great.

While it is only very very young I'm already seeing some great potential.  Using an open source base (apart from MS SQL) has given us a lot of power, power to change stuff that we don't like (which so far has been one minor bug), and the power to get exactly what we need.

I can't talk about this project a lot as it is only very new and still only in design/testing/prototyping stage.

The main things for me are:

• Ease of use. If I get asked how to do something over and over I have failed the users. And no 100 page training manuals.

• Fast

• No menus, or right-click menus! I'm a power user and even I hate navigating menus on a tablet.

• Easy to build custom forms

• Online/Offline syncing

• Ease of use. Oh did I say this already!? Well it's important.

• Easy to configure by admins.

• Limited use of dialogs. It's NOT ok for an app to ask users to confirm 100 dialogs to do one thing.

Overall I think using QGIS and PyQt I can hit all the targets listed above quite well. In fact I know I can because I have already hit most of the them in the last couple of weeks.

Summary

So that is my list of QGIS uses in my local government situation, hopefully it wasn't TL;DR and you found it interesting.  I'm sure there will be plenty more to add at the end of 2012.

One thing I didn’t explain very well  in my other post was how to correctly set up value binding between your custom form and QGIS.  I didn’t explain it because at the time I didn’t know how.

The other day I was building a custom form QGIS for a project I am working on. I had named all the fields right, set the ui as the edit form for the layer, but only the line edits were getting bound to the correct values.

 So having a dig around in the code I noticed that QGIS uses the same methods to bind the built-in edit forms as it does for the custom forms, meaning that you must set what kind of control you want to use in Layer Properties -> Fields 

Correctly binding values

First create the form with the controls you need, remember to name them the same as your fields.

Custom form with controls using the same name as the fields

Note that here I have a QComboBox with the FeatureCla name, this will bind the combo box to the FeatureCla field in my dataset in QGIS.

Now set the custom form as the Edit UI for the layer

Set the Edit UI to your form

Tip: You can use relative paths if you store the form along side your project file

 Flick to the Fields tab and set up the Edit Widget type for each field that you have used on the custom feature form.

Set the Edit Widget that matches your control

I have set the FeatueCla field to use Unique values widget, this tells QGIS to collect all the unique values from that column and add them to the QComboBox.  There are a range of different edit widgets you can set

Each will map to a different set of control types (Widgets) e.g. If you want to have a checkbox on your form you must select Checkbox in the Edit Widget list to get it to bind correctly.

Save the properties and head back to you map.  Use the Identify Tool to select a feature.

Values bound to form

And that is it. Pretty cool hey!

Final thoughts

This is one feature I really like in QGIS.  The ability to create custom forms for people to do data entry without the need to build a plugin is very cool.  Couple this the built-in GPS module for QGIS and you have yourself a nice simple field data collection program.

I have some ideas to make this feature even more powerful, but more on that later once I get some time to add it in.

• Open Source
• qgis tags:
• FOSSGIS
• gis
• Open Source
• osgeo
• qgis-editing
• Quantum GIS

One thing I didn't explain very well  in my other post was how to correctly set up value binding between your custom form and QGIS.  I didn't explain it because at the time I didn't know how.

The other day I was building a custom form QGIS for a project I am working on. I had named all the fields right, set the ui as the edit form for the layer, but only the line edits were getting bound to the correct values.

So having a dig around in the code I noticed that QGIS uses the same methods to bind the built-in edit forms as it does for the custom forms, meaning that you must set what kind of control you want to use in Layer Properties -> Fields 

Correctly binding values

First create the form with the controls you need, remember to name them the same as your fields.

Note that here I have a QComboBox with the FeatureCla name, this will bind the combo box to the FeatureCla field in my dataset in QGIS.

Now set the custom form as the Edit UI for the layer

Tip: You can use relative paths if you store the form along side your project file

_ _Flick to the Fields tab and set up the Edit Widget type for each field that you have used on the custom feature form.

I have set the FeatueCla field to use Unique values widget, this tells QGIS to collect all the unique values from that column and add them to the QComboBox.  There are a range of different edit widgets you can set

Each will map to a different set of control types (Widgets) e.g. If you want to have a checkbox on your form you must select Checkbox in the Edit Widget list to get it to bind correctly.

Save the properties and head back to you map.  Use the Identify Tool to select a feature.

And that is it. Pretty cool hey!

Final thoughts

This is one feature I really like in QGIS.  The ability to create custom forms for people to do data entry without the need to build a plugin is very cool.  Couple this the built-in GPS module for QGIS and you have yourself a nice simple field data collection program.

I have some ideas to make this feature even more powerful, but more on that later once I get some time to add it in.

• Open Source
• qgis tags:
• FOSSGIS
• gis
• Open Source
• osgeo
• qgis-editing
• Quantum GIS

One thing I didn't explain very well  in my other post was how to correctly set up value binding between your custom form and QGIS.  I didn't explain it because at the time I didn't know how.

The other day I was building a custom form QGIS for a project I am working on. I had named all the fields right, set the ui as the edit form for the layer, but only the line edits were getting bound to the correct values.

So having a dig around in the code I noticed that QGIS uses the same methods to bind the built-in edit forms as it does for the custom forms, meaning that you must set what kind of control you want to use in Layer Properties -> Fields 

Correctly binding values

First create the form with the controls you need, remember to name them the same as your fields.

Note that here I have a QComboBox with the FeatureCla name, this will bind the combo box to the FeatureCla field in my dataset in QGIS.

Now set the custom form as the Edit UI for the layer

Tip: You can use relative paths if you store the form along side your project file

_ _Flick to the Fields tab and set up the Edit Widget type for each field that you have used on the custom feature form.

I have set the FeatueCla field to use Unique values widget, this tells QGIS to collect all the unique values from that column and add them to the QComboBox.  There are a range of different edit widgets you can set

Each will map to a different set of control types (Widgets) e.g. If you want to have a checkbox on your form you must select Checkbox in the Edit Widget list to get it to bind correctly.

Save the properties and head back to you map.  Use the Identify Tool to select a feature.

And that is it. Pretty cool hey!

Final thoughts

This is one feature I really like in QGIS.  The ability to create custom forms for people to do data entry without the need to build a plugin is very cool.  Couple this the built-in GPS module for QGIS and you have yourself a nice simple field data collection program.

I have some ideas to make this feature even more powerful, but more on that later once I get some time to add it in.

One thing I didn't explain very well  in my other post was how to correctly set up value binding between your custom form and QGIS.  I didn't explain it because at the time I didn't know how.

The other day I was building a custom form QGIS for a project I am working on. I had named all the fields right, set the ui as the edit form for the layer, but only the line edits were getting bound to the correct values.

 So having a dig around in the code I noticed that QGIS uses the same methods to bind the built-in edit forms as it does for the custom forms, meaning that you must set what kind of control you want to use in Layer Properties -> Fields 

Correctly binding values

First create the form with the controls you need, remember to name them the same as your fields.

Note that here I have a QComboBox with the FeatureCla name, this will bind the combo box to the FeatureCla field in my dataset in QGIS.

Now set the custom form as the Edit UI for the layer

Tip: You can use relative paths if you store the form along side your project file

 Flick to the Fields tab and set up the Edit Widget type for each field that you have used on the custom feature form.

I have set the FeatueCla field to use Unique values widget, this tells QGIS to collect all the unique values from that column and add them to the QComboBox.  There are a range of different edit widgets you can set

Each will map to a different set of control types (Widgets) e.g. If you want to have a checkbox on your form you must select Checkbox in the Edit Widget list to get it to bind correctly.

Save the properties and head back to you map.  Use the Identify Tool to select a feature.

And that is it. Pretty cool hey!

Final thoughts

This is one feature I really like in QGIS.  The ability to create custom forms for people to do data entry without the need to build a plugin is very cool.  Couple this the built-in GPS module for QGIS and you have yourself a nice simple field data collection program.

I have some ideas to make this feature even more powerful, but more on that later once I get some time to add it in.

Ok the title is a bit of a lie. QGIS did support MS SQL Server 2008 before by using OGR but this is a native provider so it’s a lot more integrated..

Good news everyone!

QGIS now has a native MS SQL 2008 provider. The provider can found using the new toolbar button (purple icon) or in the MS SQL node in the QBrowser tree. The provider also supports drag and drop import.

The work was sponsored by Digital Mapping Solutions (Australia) and completed by Tamas Szekeres

Any bugs can be assigned to “tamas” on hub.qgis.org.

A big thanks to both Digital Mapping Solutions and Tamas.

This addition will open QGIS up to a whole new set of users who have to use MS SQL but love QGIS.

Currently this is only in master but I will be in the 1.8 release when it comes out.

Note: At the moment you have to have a geometry_columns table in the database in order to connect, this table is the same format used by PostGIS and can be made by importing a layer using the ogr2ogr method. There will be a fix coming for this at some stage.

• Open Source
• qgis tags:
• MS SQL Server 2008
• MS SQL Spatial
• Open Source
• osgeo
• qgis
• Quantum GIS

Ok the title is a bit of a lie. QGIS did support MS SQL Server 2008 before by using OGR but this is a native provider so it's a lot more integrated..

Good news everyone!

QGIS now has a native MS SQL 2008 provider. The provider can found using the new toolbar button (purple icon) or in the MS SQL node in the QBrowser tree. The provider also supports drag and drop import.

The work was sponsored by Digital Mapping Solutions (Australia) and completed by Tamas Szekeres

Any bugs can be assigned to "tamas" on hub.qgis.org.

A big thanks to both Digital Mapping Solutions and Tamas.

This addition will open QGIS up to a whole new set of users who have to use MS SQL but love QGIS.

Currently this is only in master but I will be in the 1.8 release when it comes out.

Note: At the moment you have to have a geometry_columns table in the database in order to connect, this table is the same format used by PostGIS and can be made by importing a layer using the ogr2ogr method. There will be a fix coming for this at some stage.

• Open Source
• qgis tags:
• MS SQL Server 2008
• MS SQL Spatial
• Open Source
• osgeo
• qgis
• Quantum GIS

Ok the title is a bit of a lie. QGIS did support MS SQL Server 2008 before by using OGR but this is a native provider so it's a lot more integrated..

Good news everyone!

QGIS now has a native MS SQL 2008 provider. The provider can found using the new toolbar button (purple icon) or in the MS SQL node in the QBrowser tree. The provider also supports drag and drop import.

The work was sponsored by Digital Mapping Solutions (Australia) and completed by Tamas Szekeres

Any bugs can be assigned to "tamas" on hub.qgis.org.

A big thanks to both Digital Mapping Solutions and Tamas.

This addition will open QGIS up to a whole new set of users who have to use MS SQL but love QGIS.

Currently this is only in master but I will be in the 1.8 release when it comes out.

Note: At the moment you have to have a geometry_columns table in the database in order to connect, this table is the same format used by PostGIS and can be made by importing a layer using the ogr2ogr method. There will be a fix coming for this at some stage.

Ok the title is a bit of a lie. QGIS did support MS SQL Server 2008 before by using OGR but this is a native provider so it's a lot more integrated..

Good news everyone!

QGIS now has a native MS SQL 2008 provider. The provider can found using the new toolbar button (purple icon) or in the MS SQL node in the QBrowser tree. The provider also supports drag and drop import.

The work was sponsored by Digital Mapping Solutions (Australia) and completed by Tamas Szekeres

Any bugs can be assigned to "tamas" on hub.qgis.org.

A big thanks to both Digital Mapping Solutions and Tamas.

This addition will open QGIS up to a whole new set of users who have to use MS SQL but love QGIS.

Currently this is only in master but I will be in the 1.8 release when it comes out.

Note: At the moment you have to have a geometrycolumns table in the database in order to connect, this table is the same format used by PostGIS and can be made by importing a layer using the ogr2ogr method. There will be a fix coming for this at some stage._

Did you know QGIS is also on all the major social networking sites?

No?

Well now you do :)

Google+
Facebook
Twitter

Search for QGIS on Twitter
Search for QGIS on Google+

Come join the discussions on your preferred platform. If you prefer not to say much, social networks are still a great way to keep up to date with all the cool stuff happening in QGIS land.

Anita Graser, of underdark.wordpress.com, and myself manage the Google+ and Facebook pages.

If you have something cool that you have done with QGIS and would like to pimp it to the world, free feel to contact me, or even just mention QGIS in the post, Mentioning QGIS will make it show up in the search on Twitter or Google+.  I keep a keen eye on all sites for anything cool that I can reshare on the main QGIS pages.

• Open Source
• qgis tags:
• FOSSGIS
• gis
• Open Source
• qgis
• Quantum GIS
• social networking sites

Did you know QGIS is also on all the major social networking sites?

No?

Well now you do :)

Google+ Facebook Twitter

Search for QGIS on Twitter Search for QGIS on Google+

Come join the discussions on your preferred platform. If you prefer not to say much, social networks are still a great way to keep up to date with all the cool stuff happening in QGIS land.

Anita Graser, of underdark.wordpress.com, and myself manage the Google+ and Facebook pages.

If you have something cool that you have done with QGIS and would like to pimp it to the world, free feel to contact me, or even just mention QGIS in the post, Mentioning QGIS will make it show up in the search on Twitter or Google+.  I keep a keen eye on all sites for anything cool that I can reshare on the main QGIS pages.

• Open Source
• qgis tags:
• FOSSGIS
• gis
• Open Source
• qgis
• Quantum GIS
• social networking sites

Did you know QGIS is also on all the major social networking sites?

No?

Well now you do :)

Google+ Facebook Twitter

Search for QGIS on Twitter Search for QGIS on Google+

Come join the discussions on your preferred platform. If you prefer not to say much, social networks are still a great way to keep up to date with all the cool stuff happening in QGIS land.

Anita Graser, of underdark.wordpress.com, and myself manage the Google+ and Facebook pages.

If you have something cool that you have done with QGIS and would like to pimp it to the world, free feel to contact me, or even just mention QGIS in the post, Mentioning QGIS will make it show up in the search on Twitter or Google+.  I keep a keen eye on all sites for anything cool that I can reshare on the main QGIS pages.

Did you know QGIS is also on all the major social networking sites?

No?

Well now you do :)

Google+ Facebook Twitter

Search for QGIS on Twitter Search for QGIS on Google+

Come join the discussions on your preferred platform. If you prefer not to say much, social networks are still a great way to keep up to date with all the cool stuff happening in QGIS land.

Anita Graser, of underdark.wordpress.com, and myself manage the Google+ and Facebook pages.

If you have something cool that you have done with QGIS and would like to pimp it to the world, free feel to contact me, or even just mention QGIS in the post, Mentioning QGIS will make it show up in the search on Twitter or Google+.  I keep a keen eye on all sites for anything cool that I can reshare on the main QGIS pages.

Just a quick non-technical blog post.

My wife and I would like to introduce Harrison Mark Woodrow. The newest edition to our family.

Nothing has ever come close to how nervous I was yesterday morning, not knowing if Stace would finally be induced and we would have our little man. It was a long 13 hour labour but at 11:53pm (DST) 14/02/12 in Tweed Hospital, Australia little Harrison was born with all his cuteness.

All I can say is thank science for all the handy painkillers that have been created/made/found. That Epidural is one handy analgesia. Seeing my wife in so much pain before the Epidural was one of the hardest things I have ever had to the deal with.  Ripping my heart out, hard.

Both Harrison and Mum are doing well.

Just a quick non-technical blog post.

My wife and I would like to introduce Harrison Mark Woodrow. The newest edition to our family.

Nothing has ever come close to how nervous I was yesterday morning, not knowing if Stace would finally be induced and we would have our little man. It was a long 13 hour labour but at 11:53pm (DST) 14/02/12 in Tweed Hospital, Australia little Harrison was born with all his cuteness.

All I can say is thank science for all the handy painkillers that have been created/made/found. That Epidural is one handy analgesia. Seeing my wife in so much pain before the Epidural was one of the hardest things I have ever had to the deal with.  Ripping my heart out, hard.

Both Harrison and Mum are doing well.