QGIS Planet

Array nel field calc

Array nel field calc

Introduzione

Il gruppo Array è stato introdotto in QGIS nella prima versione di QGIS 3.0 Girona nel lontano 2018, nella descrizione leggiamo:

!!! Abstract "GRUPPO ARRAY" Nuovo gruppo che contiene funzioni di espressione per la creazione e la manipolazione di array (noti anche come strutture di dati di elenco). L'ordine dei valori all'interno dell'array è importante, contrariamente alla struttura dei dati "mappa", dove l'ordine delle coppie chiave-valore è irrilevante e i valori sono identificati dalle rispettive chiavi.

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Impostazioni di progetto influenzano alcune funzioni

Impostazioni di progetto influenzano alcune funzioni

Introduzione

Alcune funzioni di QGIS dipendono dalle impostazioni di progetto, questo significa che le stesse funzioni in progetti diversi possono restituire valori diversi. In questo post vedremo le principali funzioni di QGIS da attenzionare.

!!! Abstract "esempio" $area <> area(@geometry)

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Come cercare un valore in funzione di un altro

Come cercare un valore in funzione di un altro

Introduzione

Alcune volte nasce l'esigenza di cercare un valore in una tabella in funzione di un altro valore presente nella stessa tabella, un po' come fa la funzione cerca verticale di Excel, e utilizzarlo in un altro layer.

!!! Abstract "Funzione" La funzione che permette di fare questa magia è la funzione get_feature

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HfcQGIS e la sezione Blog

HfcQGIS e la sezione Blog

Introduzione

Benvenuti nel nuovo blog di HfcQGIS!

HfcQGIS è la guida al calcolatore di campi di QGIS per la condivisione di conoscenze ed ora ha il suo Blog!!!.

HfcQGIS è un sito web nato nel 2018 da un'idea di Totò Fiandaca e realizzato con la comunità OpenDataSicilia, un particolare grazie va a Giovan Battista Vitrano che mantiene sempre aggiornato il tema del sito alle ultime novità. L'obiettivo iniziale del sito era quello di fornire una guida completa al calcolatore di campi, un potente strumento che consente di eseguire calcoli sui dati geografici.

Negli anni, HfcQGIS si è evoluto in una piattaforma di condivisione di contenuti per la comunità QGIS. Il sito offre ora una serie di risorse, tra cui:

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Soar.Earth Digital Atlas QGIS Plugin

Soar banner

Growing up, I would spend hours lost in National Geographic maps. The feeling of discovering new regions and new ways to view the world was addictive! It’s this same feeling of discovery and exploration which has made me super excited about Soar’s Digital Atlas. Soar is the brainchild of Australian, Amir Farhand, and is fuelled by the talents of staff located across the globe to build a comprehensive digital atlas of the world’s maps and images. Soar has been designed to be an easy to use, expansive collection of diverse maps from all over the Earth. A great aspect of Soar is that it has implemented Strong Community Guidelines and moderation to ensure the maps are fit for purpose.

Recently, North Road collaborated with Soar to help facilitate their digital atlas goals by creating a QGIS plugin for Soar. The Soar plugin allows QGIS users to directly:

  • Export their QGIS maps and images straight to Soar
  • Browse and load maps from the entire Soar public catalogue into their QGIS projects

There’s lots of extra tweaks we’ve added to help make the plugin user friendly, whilst offering tons of functionality that power users want. For instance, users can:

  • Filter Soar maps by their current project extent and/or by category
  • Export raw or rendered raster data directly to Soar via a Processing tool
  • Batch upload multiple maps to Soar
  • Incorporate Soar map publishing into a Processing model or Python based workflow

Soar will be presenting their new plugin at the QGIS Open Day in August so check out the details here and tune in at 2300 AEST or 1300 HR UTC. You can follow along via either YouTube or Jitsi.

Browsing Soar maps from QGIS

One of the main goals of the Soar QGIS plugin was to make it very easy to find new datasets and add them to your QGIS projects. There’s two ways users can explore the Soar catalog from QGIS:

You can open the Soar Browser Panel via the Soar toolbar button  Soar browser . This opens a floating catalog browser panel which allows you to interactively search Soar’s content while working on your map.

Soar browser panel

Alternatively, you can also access the Soar catalog and maps from the standard QGIS Data Source Manager dialog. Just open the “Soar” tab and search away!

When you’ve found an interesting map, hit the “Add to Map” button and the map will be added as a new layer into your current project. After the layer is loaded you can freely modify the layer’s style (such as the opacity, colorization, contrast etc) just like any other raster dataset using the standard QGIS Layer Style controls.

Sharing your maps

Before you can share your maps on Soar, you’ll need to first sign up for a free Soar account.

We’ve designed the Soar plugin with two specific use cases in mind for sharing maps. The first use case is when you want to share an entire map (i.e. QGIS project) to Soar. This will publish all the visible content from your map onto Soar, including all the custom styling, labeling, decorations and other content you’ve carefully designed. To do this, just select the Project menu, Import/Export -> Export map to Soar option.

Upload via Project to Soar

You’ll have a chance to enter all the metadata and descriptive text explaining your map, and then the map will be rendered and uploaded directly to Soar.

Soar Metadata

All content on the Soar atlas is moderated, so your shared maps get added to the moderation queue ready for review by the Soar team. (You’ll be notified as soon as the review is complete and your map is publicly available).

Alternatively, you might have a specific raster layer which you want to publish on Soar. For instance, you’ve completed some flood modelling or vegetation analysis and want to share the outcome widely. To do this, you can use the “Publish dataset to Soar” tool available from the QGIS Processing toolbox:

Upload product to Soar via processing tools

Just pick the raster layer you want to upload, enter the metadata information, and let the plugin do the rest! Since this tool is made available through QGIS’ Processing framework, it also allows you to run it as a batch process (eg uploading a whole folder of raster data to Soar), or as a step in your QGIS Graphical Models!

Some helpful hints

All maps uploaded to Soar require the following information:

  • Map Title
  • Description
  • Tags
  • Categories
  • Permission to publish

This helps other users to find your maps with ease, and also gives the Soar moderation team the information required for their review process.

We’ve a few other tips to keep in mind to successfully share your maps on Soar:

  • The Soar catalog currently works with raster image formats including GeoTIFF / ECW / JP2 / JPEG / PNG
  • All data uploaded to Soar must be in the WGS84 Pseudo-Mercator (EPSG: 3857) projection
  • Check the size of your data before sharing it, as a large size dataset may take a long time to upload

So there you have it! So simple to start building up your contribution to Soar’s Digital Atlas. Those who might find this useful to upload maps include:

  • Community groups
  • Hobbyists
  • Building a cartographic/geospatial portfolio
  • Education/research
  • Contributing to world events (some of the biggest news agencies already use this service i.e. BBC)

You can find out more about the QGIS Soar plugin at the QGIS Open Day on August 23rd, 2023 at 2300 HR AEST or 1300 HR UTC. Check here for more information or to watch back after.

If you’re interested in exploring how a QGIS plugin can make your service easily accessible to the millions of daily QGIS users, contact us to discuss how we can help!

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QField background tracking

Years ago, the QField community and its users showed their love for their favourite field app by supporting a successful crowdfunding to improve camera handling.

Since then, OPENGIS.ch has continued to lead the development of QField with the regular support of sponsors. We couldn’t be prouder of the progress we have made, with plenty of new features added in every major release. This includes major improvements to positioning including location tracking, integration of external GNSS receivers through not only Bluetooth but TCP/UDP and serial port connections, accuracy indicator and constraints, and most recently sensors reading to list a few.

We are now calling for the community to help further better QField and unlock an important milestone: background location tracking service.

Pledge now

Main goal: background location tracking on Android – 25'000€

Currently, QField requires users to keep their devices’ screen on and have the app in the foreground to keep track of the device’s positioning location. On mobile devices, this can drain batteries faster than many would want to, in environments where charging options are limited.

This crowdfunding aims at removing this constraint and allow QField - via a background service - to constantly keep tracking location even while the device is suspended (i.e., when the screen is turned off / locked).

To achieve this, a significant amount of work is required as the positioning framework on Android will need to be relocated to a dedicated background service. Recent work we’ve done adding a background service to synchronize captured image attachments in QFieldCloud projects armed us with the assurances that we can achieve our goal while giving us an appreciation of the large amount of work needed.

Some of the benefits

Running out of battery is the nightmare of most field surveyors. By moving location tracking to a background service, users will be able to improve their battery life considerably and keep focusing on their tasks even if it involves switching to a different app.

Furthermore, while OPENGIS.ch ninjas remain busy squashing reported QField crashes all year long, there will always be unexpected scenarios leading to abrupt app shutdowns, such as third-party apps, systems running out of battery, etc. To address this, the background service framework will also act as a safeguard to avoid location data loss when QField unexpectedly shuts down and offer users means to recover that data upon re-opening QField.

Stretch goal 1: background navigation audio feedback 5'000€

The second stretch goal builds onto QField’s nice fly-to-point navigation system. If the QField community meets this threshold, a new background navigation audio feedback informing users in the field of their proximity to their target will be implemented.

The audio feedback will use text-to-speech technology to state the distance to target in meters for a given time or distance interval.

Stretch goal 2: iOS 15'000€

The main goal will cover the Android implementation only. Due to being a very low level work we will have to replicate the work for each platform we support. If we reach stretch goal 2 we will also implement this for iOS.

Pledge now:

In case you do not see the embedded form you can open it directly here.

Thanks for supporting our crowdfunding and keep an eye on our blog for updates on the status.

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[Case Study] Mapping ground points in Senegal for imagery stereo-preparation

Valentin was overseeing a large-scale stereo-preparation project in Senegal in order to adjust aerial imagery and LiDAR with recognizable ground control points
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‘Add to Felt’ QGIS Plugin

The gift economy of Open Source is community driven and filled by folks with ideas that just go for it!

We at North Road are blessed that we get to join these creatives on their journey in order to get their products to you. Recently, the first QGIS flagship sponsor, Felt, engaged us to further strengthen their support for the up to 600,000 daily QGIS users to integrate their workflows between QGIS and Felt.

The result is the “Add to Felt” QGIS Plugin, which makes it super-simple to publish your QGIS maps to the Felt platform.

To get started, install the Add to Felt Plugin from the QGIS Plugin manager.

If you don’t have a free Felt account, you’ll need to sign up for one online (or from the Add to Felt plugin itself once you have installed it).

Within QGIS, users can easily publish their maps and layers to Felt. You can either:

  • Publish a single layer by right-clicking the layer and selecting “Share Layer to Felt” from the Export sub-menu
  • Publish your whole QGIS project/map by selecting the Project Menu, Export, “Add to Felt” action

Whilst Felt is loading up your map, you can continue working and it will let you know once your map is ready to open on Felt and share with others.

We are happy to let you know that the collaboration does not stop there! As with our SLYR tool, there is ongoing development as the requirements of the community and technology grow.  So install the Add to Felt Plugin via the QGIS Plugin manager, and let us know where you want it to go via the Add to Felt GitHub page.

Read more about it here:

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Cesium Ecosystem Grant Win for QGIS 3D Tiles!

Success! Lutra and North Road have been rewarded a Cesium Ecosystem Grant to provide access to 3D tiles within QGIS. We will be creating the ability for users to visualise 3D Tiles in QGIS alongside other standard geospatial sources in both 3D and 2D map views.
3D Tiles Cesium integration ecosystem diagram
3D Tiles Cesium integration ecosystem
We are very excited about it, but to be included in the first cohort of awardees is also an added honour! We share this distinction with 3 other recipients:
The opportunity was brought to our attention by our friends over at Nearmap, which, along with the existence of this grant, shows how the geospatial community is working together by evolving the Open Source Economy. A movement close to our hearts and our core business. Working between commercial software and open-source, Cesium’s business model recognises the legitimacy of Open Source Software for use as a geospatial standard operating procedure by promoting openness and interoperability.
Our team of Nyall Dawson and Martin Dobias will create a new layer type, QgsTiledMeshLayer, allowing for direct access to Cesium 3D tile sources alongside the other supported geospatial layer types within QGIS. This will include visualisation of the tile data in both 3D and 2D map views (feature footprints). It will fulfill a critical need for QGIS users, permitting access to 3d data provided by their respective government agencies to work alongside all their other standard geospatial layers (vector, raster, point clouds). By making 3D Tiles a first class citizen in QGIS we help strengthen the case that those agencies should be providing their data in the Cesium format (as opposed to any proprietary alternatives).
Proposed Technical Architecture Cesium QGIS
Proposed Technical Architecture for Cesium 3D Tiles in QGIS
Here’s a breakdown of what we will be doing:
  • Develop a new QGIS layer type “QgsTiledMeshLayer”
  • Develop a parser for 3D Tiles format, supporting Batched 3D Model (with a reasonable set of glTF 2.0 features)
  • Develop a 3D renderer which dynamically loads and displays features from 3D Tiles based on appropriate 3D view level of detail. (A similar approach has already been implemented in QGIS for optimised viewing of point cloud data).
  • Develop a 2D renderer for 3D Tiles, which will display the footprints of 3D tile features in 2D QGIS map views. Just like the 3D renderer, the 2D renderer will utilise map scale information to dynamically load 3D tiles and display a suitable level of detail for the footprints.
  • Users will have full control over the appearance of the 2D footprints, with support for all of QGIS’ extensive polygon symbology options.
  • By permitting users to view the 2D footprints of features, we will promote use of Cesium 3D Tiles as a suitable source of cartographic data, eg display of authoritative building footprints supplied by government agencies in the Cesium 3D Tile format.

Through past partnerships, North Road and Lutra Consulting have developed and extended the 3D mapping functionality of QGIS. To date, all the framework for mature, performant 3D scenes including vector, mesh, raster and point cloud sources are in place. We are now ready to extend the existing functionality with Cesium 3D tiles support as QGIS 3D engine already implements most of the required concepts, such as out of core rendering and hierarchical level of detail (tested with point clouds with billions of points).

So there we go! Working together collaboratively with Lutra Consulting on another great addition to QGIS 3D Functionality thanks to Cesium Ecosystem Grants. Stay tuned on our social channels to find out when it will be released in QGIS.

Cesium Ecosystem grant Badge

 

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SLYR Update — June 2023

Welcome back, SLYR enthusiasts! We’re thrilled to share the latest updates and enhancements for our SLYR ESRI to QGIS Compatibility Suite that will dramatically streamline the use of ESRI documents within QGIS (and vice versa!). Our team has been hard at work, expanding the capabilities of SLYR to ensure seamless compatibility between the latest QGIS and ArcGIS releases. We’ve also got some exciting news for users of the Community Edition of SLYR! Let’s dive right in and explore the exciting new features that have been added to SLYR since our previous update

Converting Raster Layers in Geodatabases

We’re pleased to announce that SLYR now offers support for converting raster layers within Geodatabases. With this update, users can effortlessly migrate their raster data from ESRI’s Geodatabases to QGIS, enabling more efficient data management and analysis.

This enhancement is only possible thanks to work in the fantastic GDAL library which underpins QGIS’ raster data support. Please ensure that you have the latest version of QGIS (3.30.3 or 3.28.7 at a minimum) to make the most of this feature.

Annotation and Graphic Layer Improvements

Text Annotations along Curves

For those working with curved annotations, we’ve got you covered! SLYR now supports the conversion of text annotations along curves in QGIS. With this enhancement, you’ll get accurate conversion of any curved text and text-along-line annotations from MXD and APRX documents. This has been a long-requested feature which we can now introduce thanks to enhancements coming in QGIS 3.32.

ArcGIS Pro Graphics Layer Support

SLYR now supports the conversion of ArcGIS Pro graphics layers, converting all graphic elements to their QGIS “Annotation Layer” equivalents. If you’ve spent hours carefully designing cartographic markup on your maps, you can be sure that SLYR will allow you to re-use this work within QGIS!

Curved text graphic conversion

Enhanced Page Layout Support

We’ve further improved the results of converting ArcGIS Pro page layouts to QGIS print layouts, with dozens of refinements to the conversion results. The highlights here include:

  • Support for converting measured grids and graticules to QGIS map grids
  • Enhanced dynamic text conversions:  Now, when migrating your projects, you can expect a smoother transition for dynamic text ensuring your layouts correctly show generated metadata and text correctly
  • Support for north arrows, grouped elements, legends and table frames.

Rest assured that your carefully crafted map layouts will retain their visual appeal and functionality when transitioning to QGIS!

Improved QGIS to ArcGIS Pro Conversions

SVG Marker Exports and Symbology Size

SLYR has introduced initial support for exporting SVG markers from QGIS to ArcGIS Pro formats. SVG graphics are a component of QGIS’ cartography, and are frequently used to create custom marker symbols. Unfortunately, ArcGIS Pro doesn’t have any native support for SVG graphics for marker symbols, instead relying on a one-off conversion from SVG to multiple separate marker graphics whenever an SVG is imported into ArcGIS Pro. Accordingly, we’ve implemented a similar logic in SLYR in order to convert SVG graphics to ArcGIS Pro marker graphics transparently whenever QGIS symbology is exported to ArcGIS. This enhancement allows for a seamless transfer of symbology from QGIS, ensuring that your converted maps retain their visual integrity.

Furthermore, the update includes support for exporting QGIS symbology sizes based on “map unit” measurements to ArcGIS Pro, resulting in ArcGIS Pro symbology which more accurately matches the original QGIS versions.

Rule-Based Renderer Conversion

The “Rule Based Renderer” is QGIS’ ultimate powerhouse for advanced layer styling. It’s extremely flexible, thanks to its support for nested rules and filtering using QGIS expressions. However, this flexibility comes with a cost — there’s just no way to reproduce the same results within ArcGIS Pro’s symbology options! Newer SLYR releases will now attempt to work around this by implementing basic conversion of QGIS rule-based renderers to ArcGIS Pro layers with “display filters” attached. This allows us to convert some basic rule-based configuration to ArcGIS Pro formats.

There’s some limitations to be aware of:

  1. Only “flat” rule structures can be converted. It’s not possible to convert a nested rule structure into something representable by ArcGIS Pro.
  2. While the QGIS expression language is very rich and offers hundreds of functions for use in expressions, only basic QGIS filter expressions can be converted to ArcGIS Pro rules.

Improved Conversion of Raster and Mesh Layers

Based on user feedback, we’ve made significant improvements to the conversion of QGIS rasters and mesh layers to ArcGIS Pro formats. Expect enhanced accuracy when migrating these types of data, ensuring a closer match between your QGIS projects and their ArcGIS Pro equivalents.

New tools

The latest SLYR release introduces some brand new tools for automating your conversion workflows:

Convert LYR/LYRX Files Directly to SLD

To facilitate interoperability, SLYR has introduced algorithms that directly convert ESRI LYR or LYRX files to the “SLD” format (Styled Layer Descriptor). This feature simplifies the process of sharing and utilizing symbology between different GIS software, allowing for direct conversion of ESRI symbology for use in Geoserver or Mapserver.

Convert File Geodatabases to Geopackage

We’re thrilled to introduce a powerful new tool in SLYR that enables a comprehensive conversion of a File Geodatabase to the Geopackage format. With this feature, you can seamlessly migrate your data from ESRI’s File Geodatabase format to the versatile and widely supported GeoPackage format. As well as the raw data conversion, this tool also ensures the conversion of field domains and other advanced Geodatabase functionality to their GeoPackage equivalent, preserving valuable metadata and maintaining data integrity throughout the transition. (Please note that this tool requires QGIS version 3.28 or later.)

 

All these exciting additions to SLYR are available today to SLYR license holders. If you’re after one-click, accurate conversion of projects from ESRI to QGIS, contact us to discuss your licensing needs.

As described on our SLYR page, we also provide some of the conversion tools for free use via the SLYR “Community Edition”. We’re proud to announce that we’ve just hit the next milestone in the Community Edition funding, and will now be releasing all of SLYR’s support for raster LYR files to the community edition! This complements the existing support for vector LYR files and ESRI style files available in the community edition. For more details on the differences between the licensed and community editions, see our product comparison.

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