Posts by QField

Get fieldwork smoothly and nimbly done despite the ice and snow outside. Collect accurate data with freehand digitizing and improved form widgets, use the data from your external GNSS receivers without any third-party apps and enjoy the pleasant usability of QField 1.8 Selma.

This year started off hi-speed for us. There’s been already a lot of coding, designing and teaching, and we’ve thrown ourselves into these things we love to do. And we published another QField release last week that I completely forgot to announce in this blog. But here it is. It’s QField 1.8, Selma. And it’s packed with cool features.

Let’s have a look.

Freehand drawing

This might be a feature that brings a lot of fun and professionalism to your work. The freehand digitizing mode allows the user to “draw” lines and polygons with the stylus pen. The mode is available for adding line/polygon features as well as for the ring tool of the geometry editor.

Together with the powerful options in the topological editing where you can snap to existing features and avoid overlaps, it’s very convenient to digitize complex shapes.

Zoom in and out

Speaking of fun. One day, a guy from the QGIS community asked us if we could implement the functionality to zoom in and zoom out like he is able to do with an app called Maps from a company named Google. I didn’t know what he meant, but he explained: Single finger double tap-and-hold zoom gesture (which allows you to zoom smoothly from anywhere on the screen). Wow! Didn’t know it before, but it’s super neat! So we made it available in QField as well.

If you are used to it, it’s quite easy. But for beginners it can be a bit difficult. So for people who are not that deft - and to keep the UX self-explanatory and simple - we also added two buttons + / - to zoom in and zoom out with just one finger. So now even a clumsy pirate with a hook instead of a hand can collect data with QField :-)

Powerful Relation Reference Widget

Let’s be a little bit more serious and talk about how powerful the relation reference widget has become.

View and Edit selected feature

The intuitive eye icon next to the widget lets you open the form of the referenced parent feature to view and edit it.

Autocomplete mode

When auto-complete is enabled, you can easily perform a search in all available parent features.

With space-separated input, you can search for the beginning of multiple words in the display name of the parent features. So in this example searching for “Ma” will find the name “Mae” and “Marie” and using the second word “buck” it finds the Buckfast bees - so the entries containing both values will be listed on top.

Integration of external GNSS receivers

In case you wondered, why we did not release 1.8 Selma earlier? Because we wanted to have it feature loaded and rocket proof. And one of this cool feature is the integration of external GNSS receivers.

QField can receive and decode NMEA sentences received via Bluetooth from an external GNSS receiver (such as an EMLID Reach RS2) without the need for any third party app.

Search for paired Bluetooth devices in the device settings, connect to the external device and receive the GNSS information.

Select vertical grid shift files

In the QField settings, you can select a grid file on your mobile device by placing it in a directory named QField/proj in the main folder of the internal storage to increase the vertical location accuracy.

Postgres Config File

If you once started using PostgreSQL configuration files, you don’t want to live without them anymore. And when you use it on your PC, I’m sure you want to use it on your mobile device as well.

Define Postgresql services in a pg_service.conf file and use it on QField by placing it directly in a directory named QField in the main folder of the internal storage.

Add reload data button

The layer properties have been polished and in addition, you will find a button to reload the layer data. This is especially useful if you use WFS layers from which you need to get updates.

Register extra fonts

Also, you can add TTF and OTF font files into a directory named QField/fonts at the main folder of the internal storage to use the nice fonts you like.

How beautiful is that!

Support of new raster file formats

By the way: Many new raster file formats are supported - most notably COG. While not yet supported as remote format streamed directly from the web, it is also a high performance format if used locally

What about the cloud?

You might be one of these people eagerly waiting and always receiving the same message: Keep calm, it’s coming soon. Sorry for that. But when we do something, we do it right. And we prefer to have a stable solution than to publish half baked stuff. We are still highly busy coding, testing and promoting QFieldCloud. It’s announced for this spring / early summer.

Also, keep an eye on the @QFieldForQgis and @QFieldCloud twitter accounts to stay updated.

We ♥ our Beta Testers

The Beta Testers are our secret heroes. They report bugs and inconveniences before the normal users are bothered with them. Thanks to the Beta Testers QField is so stable. And at this point we would like to say: Thank you, test heroes!

And what do the beta testers get in return? Well, they can be the very first to try out the great new features. This is exciting and fun. So don’t hesitate. Join the beta.

In the Play Store you should find this section under the “QField for QGIS” app listing. Enjoy the feature frenzy and report the problems at qfield.org/issues

And if you wondered…

… why this release is called “Selma”. It’s of course because of the Mount Selma in Australia… And because it’s the name of my beloved cat. That’s her - Selma Eulenkopf - staring at me while I’m coding QField.

Be ready for the cold weather with a smooth coordinate search, filters in the value relation widget, fancy new QML and HTML widgets, enhanced geometry editing functionalities and an expandable legend. Right when Autumn starts, QField 1.7 Rockies hits the stage.

As usual get it now on the play store or on github!

The days are getting shorter and the wind blows colder. It’s always good to be in a good company outside while getting your mapping work done. QField will be your reliable companion.

We know, QField 1.6 Qinling has only been out two months and with its amount of new features and stability improvements, it would have deserved a longer primetime. But we just couldn’t withhold you all the new great stuff we’ve been building lately.

So let’s welcome QField 1.7 Rockies. And yes, we mean THE Rockies, where QField is looking for plenty of new buddies.

Let’s have a look.

Merging features

Splitting of a feature has been possible for quite some time. Now the merging of features of multipolygon-layer is possible as well. Select them and merge them - easy like that. The first selected feature gets the new geometry and keeps its attributes.

Filters in the Value Relation Widget

The value relation widgets provide an easy selection of a related feature. Often it’s used for lookup tables but sometimes the related tables contain a lot of entries and the list of the possible values is long.

Using filters in the value relation drop-down can increase the efficiency in selecting the correct value. It can be configured by expressions in QGIS, so it’s possible to have the content of the drop down depend on the values entered previously in other fields.

In the screenshot above there is a Map Value Widget with “forest” and “meadow” as values. On selecting “forest”, only the trees appear in the Field “Plant Species”. On selecting “meadow” there would be listed flowers instead.

Go to coordinates in the Search

The search has not only been improved in its appearance, but it’s handling is much more comfortable with a button to clear the text and easy opening and closing.

Additionally, we added the possibility to jump to coordinates. Searching a place you know the coordinates of is now super simple. And this means that digitizing that precise geometry with known coordinates is finally possible.

QML and HTML Widget

You might remember when we introduced the QML widget in QGIS. Now it’s in QField as well. And it’s not alone. HTML widgets are supported too.

This provides a lot of possibilities to display information with texts, images and charts and it even allows you interaction.
Do you need help setting up complex forms? Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us!

Expandable legend icons

The legend items are now expandable and collapsible.

Wait a minute… Wasn’t this possible before? Yes. It was possible in earlier versions. But why it’s announced here as a new feature?

Because now it is built in a future proof manner thanks to all the people and organisations who care for QField and bought a support contract with the sustainability initiative or committed to a recurring sponsorship.

Some technical background: As you may be aware QField uses QGIS under the hood and QGIS uses Qt under the hood. Qt is currently used in version 5. Qt 5 is not that young any more and has a lot of functionality which is no longer supported by Qt. The old legend was based on the tree view, a deprecated module. Using it had some implications like the suboptimal support of HiDPI. Furthermore, these deprecated modules will disappear in the soon-to-come Qt 6.

As you can see, keeping QField at the quality we and you expect requires a lot of maintenance work. It is of utmost importance and only possible thanks to sponsoring since paying for fixing already existing features is less attractive for most people.

What will the future bring

In the last weeks, we have been highly busy on coding, testing and promoting QFieldCloud and we are very happy to be able to announce it very soon. So be prepared.

Also, keep an eye on the @QFieldForQgis and @QFieldCloud twitter accounts to stay updated.

Open Source

QField is an open source project. This means that whatever is produced is available free of charge. To anyone. Forever. This also means that everyone has the chance to contribute. You can write code, but you don’t need to. You can also help translating the app to your language or help out writing documentation or case studies or by sponsoring a new feature.

And now…

… enjoy QField 1.7 Rockies and have a nice autumn!

Editing multiple features at the same time, support for stylus pens, dynamic configuration of image names and much more.
QField 1.6 Qinling 秦岭 comes packed with awesome new features and an improved user experience.

We have been very busy over the last few months working on a new and shiny QField release. We have added many new features that increase efficiency on the field or allow for new workflows. In parallel, we have also been working on ironing out a series of issues and improving the overall user experience to make the app as pleasurable to use as possible. The result is QField 1.6 which has been published now.

Enough of the highlevel talking, let’s see what has been done.

Multi editing

Do you recall Geography lesson 101, Toblers first law? Everything is related to everything else. But near things are more related than distant things.

Very often there are similar objects nearby which share a property, tree species tend to group, human created objects like street light types or street paint markings tend to be of the same type at the same location.

With QField 1.6 it is now much easier to select a couple of features and change an attribute with very few taps. Identify a feature, long press an identify results, select more features and click the edit attributes button.

Stylus support

Sometimes it is just too cold to be working with fingers (although of course you can get capacitive gloves too). Or you just prefer to be working with a pen. QField 1.6 comes with support for stylus pens. If your device ships with one, give it a try.

Lock geometries

For some scenarios, especially in asset management, you only need to change attributes of existing objects and never add new features, delete features or change geometries. This can be configured through QFieldSync and set in the layer properties.

Image name configuration

Did you ever want to have the file names of your pictures to match the feature id, the layer name or any free text? The expression based configuration in QFieldSync offers now complete freedom in naming your images.

Legend and UX and legacy code

Didn’t expect to read UX and legacy code in one single title?

QML is the technology on which the QField user interface is built. QML ships a lot of user interface elements in a library called “Quick Controls”. A long time ago already it received an update from version 1 to version 2. Up to recently we still have been using some elements from version 1, which had an effect on high resolution displays not being able to properly display everything. To workaround that we introduced a lot of band aids, to improve the situation. We are very happy, that by migrating the legend and few other remaining elements to Quick Controls 2 in version 1.6, we have been able to completely drop this code.

Topological editing

QGIS can detect shared boundary by the features, so you only have to move a common vertex once, and QGIS will take care of updating the neighboring ones. So does his little college QField since this release.

Fast editing mode

For the real adventurers who know what they are doing this release brings the fast editing mode. In this mode, the features will automatically be stored on every change. The user interface is lighter and it combines perfectly with the topological editing.

Unter the hood

We have brought the whole technology stack up to speed with modern requirements. Proj and GDAL have been updated to recent versions. This helped to mitigate a couple of issues with coordinate transformations that were completely misplaced. It also paves the path for a future with datum corrections and always more important high precision measurements.

Known Issues

Unfortunately, we are experiencing a crash on startup with 32 bit devices. These devices are not that common any more, but if you have a device that is already a couple of years old it’s very well possible that it comes with a 32 bit cpu builtin. Despite the team’s hard efforts to isolate the reason, we were not able to find out what it was yet. Because of this we will not be able to update to 1.6 for these devices at the moment. We still hope that we will find a solution for this but don’t know yet when this will be.

We have updated proj to version 6. This brings plenty of bug fixes with coordinate handling. Among other things it adds support for using datum grids (gsb files) for very precise transformations, it is not yet possible to install those on the device. You will get an information message in the about dialog if your project happens to fall into this category. In this case, as a workaround switch the CRS of the project to a CRS with a known conversion that works without grid files.

What will the future bring

You guessed it already, we are not tired and have plenty of things stacked for the future. Prepare for more exciting updates for attribute forms and also for QFieldCloud which is right now being tested in our R&D labs.

Also keep an eye on the @QFieldForQgis Twitter account to stay updated.

Open Source

QField is an open source project. This means that whatever is produced is available free of charge. To anyone. Forever. This also means that everyone has the chance to contribute. You can write code, but you don’t need to. You can also help translating the app to your language or help out writing documentation or case studies or by sponsoring a new feature.

Thanks to sponsors

Various organisations have helped to make this new release become a reality. Without the support of people in organisations who believe in the future of QField and open source tool for geospatial in general. The whole team behind QField would like to thank you with a big applause!

What are we looking for?

We would like to use WMS offline on QField. For that, we need to figure out what is the best way to get a raster from a WMS and which format is the most efficient (size and performance).

In this post we’ll show you is how to generate the ideal raster file from a WMS and the results of our efficiency tests for the the different raster formats.

WMS to GPKG

The simple way

If there is no limitation on the WMS or you need only a small region, here is the easiest process.

1. Request the WMS and store a description file in XML:

gdal_translate "WMS:url" file.xml -of WMS

1. Create a Geopackage from the information in the description file.

gdal_translate -of GPKG file.xml file.gpkg -co TILE_FORMAT=JPEG

That was quite simple, right?

The larger datasets way

If the command takes too much time, it means that it is trying to download too much data and could be caused by downloading higher resolution data than required.
The command might even completely fail if it contains a request for bigger data blocks thant the server allows.

Here is the process to get larger datasets in a simple way. Let’s use a real example:

1. Use gdal_translate "WMS:https://www.gebco.net/data_and_products/gebco_web_services/web_map_service/mapserv?request=getmap&service=wms&crs=EPSG:4326&format=image/jpeg&layers=gebco_latest&version=1.1.0" test.xml -of WMS
2. Open the test.xml file for editing, here you’ll find the parameters of the WMS. We change the “SizeX” to 3600 and “SizeY” to 1800. By changing these parameters we lower the resolution. It is important to keep proportionality.
3. Another thing we need to change are “BlockSizeX” and “BlockSizeY” that define the size of the tiles. We change both to 2048.
4. Finally, use gdal_translate -of GPKG test.xml test.gpkg -co TILE_FORMAT=JPEG
5. To make a Geopackage pyramid use gdaladdo GPKG:test.gpkg:gebco_latest. It will replace the Geopackage, if you want to keep the original one, you need to copy it first.

Now you have a raster Geopackage that you can use in QField.

Testing raster formats

Preparing the files

As first step we exported our test orthophoto WMS to a plain GeoTIFF using QGIS’ default behaviour.

Formatgdal_translategdaladdogpkg JPEGgdal_translate -of GPKG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_JPEG.gpkg” -co TILE_FORMAT=JPEG gpkg PNGgdal_translate -of GPKG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_PNG.gpkg” -co TILE_FORMAT=PNGgpkg PNG_JPEGgdal_translate -of GPKG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_PNG_JPEG.gpkg” -co TILE_FORMAT=PNG_JPEGgpkg PNG8gdal_translate -of GPKG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_PNG8.gpkg” -co TILE_FORMAT=PNG8gpkg WEBPgdal_translate -of GPKG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_WEBP.gpkg” -co TILE_FORMAT=WEBPgpkg pyramid_JPEGgdal_translate -of GPKG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_JPEG.gpkg” -co TILE_FORMAT=JPEGgdaladdo GPKG:C:\test\test_JPEG.gpkg:test_gpkg_JPEG gpkg pyramid_PNGgdal_translate -of GPKG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_PNG.gpkg” -co TILE_FORMAT=PNGgdaladdo GPKG:C:\test\test_PNG.gpkg:test_gpkg_PNGgpkg pyramid_PNG_JPEGgdal_translate -of GPKG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_PNG_JPEG.gpkg” -co TILE_FORMAT=PNG_JPEGgdaladdo GPKG:C:\test\test_PNG_JPEG.gpkg:test_gpkg_PNG_JPEGgpkg pyramid_PNG8gdal_translate -of GPKG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_PNG8.gpkg” -co TILE_FORMAT=PNG8gdaladdo GPKG:C:\test\test_PNG8.gpkg:test_gpkg_PNG8gpkg pyramid_WEBPgdal_translate -of GPKG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_WEBP.gpkg” -co TILE_FORMAT=WEBPgdaladdo GPKG:C:\test\test_WEBP.gpkg:test_gpkg_WEBPJPEG2000gdal_translate -of JP2OpenJPEG “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_jpeg_2000.jpg"COG DEFLATEgdal_translate “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_cog.tif” -co TILED=YES -co COPY_SRC_OVERVIEWS=YES -co COMPRESS=DEFLATECOG_JPEGgdal_translate “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_cog_JPEG.tif” -co TILED=YES -co COPY_SRC_OVERVIEWS=YES -co COMPRESS=JPEGtifIn QGIS right click on the layer > export > save as > (see the details in the picture under the table)MBTgdal_translate -of MBTILES “C:\test\ortho_test.tif” “C:\test\test_mbt.mbtiles"Creation commands for all the tested formats

Rendering test results

We have tested many formats, here is a table with the results of the size and rendering speed in QGIS and QField.
To analyze the speed we used qgis_bench.exe -i 10 -p "C:\test\test.qgs" >> "C:\test\test.log.
Qgis_bench is a tool that renders a QGIS project a number of times to get performance measurements. The parameter -i is to define the iterations and -p is the project used which contains only the generated raster.

FormatExtent [m]File size [GB]Total_avgTotal_maxdevTotal_minTotal_stdevgpkg JPEG52'880/29'2300.4250.242255.7815.539244.984gpkg PNG52'880/29'2302.9412.002490.328152.142259.859gpkg PNG_JPEG52'880/29'2300.4250.125256.8756.750245.172gpkg PNG852'880/29'2301.4283.875296.40612.625271.250gpkg WEBP52'880/29'2300.3330.238348.10973.534256.703gpkg pyramid_JPEG52'880/29'2300.51.0093.4062.3970.688gpkg pyramid_PNG52'880/29'2303.01.2083.2812.0730.688gpkg pyramid_PNG_JPEG52'880/29'2300.61.4914.3442.8531.016gpkg pyramid_PNG852'880/29'2301.61.5084.3752.8670.969gpkg pyramid_WEBP52'880/29'2300.41.3334.9063.5730.766JPEG200052'880/29'2301.113.888136.109122.2220.219COG DEFLATE52'880/29'2303.6264.427273.09425.411239.016COG_JPEG52'880/29'2301.014.778131.172116.3941.734tif52'880/29'2306.42.3676.7344.3671.672MBT52'880/29'2304.40.4694.6414.1710Comparison of file size and rendering speed of different raster formats. “Total” columns are rendering times in [s]. Lower file size is more storage friendly, lower Total_avg is more performant.

Analysis

File size

The Geopackage WEBP (with and without pyramid) has the best result for file size, but it is not _yet_supported by QField (from 1.6) and is only slightly smaller than the JPEG variant.

Plain GeoTiff, MBTiles, Cloud Optimized GeoTIFF (COG - DEFLATE mode) and Geopackages with PNG generate by far the largest file sizes (up to 20x larger) and are thus not recommended.

Rendering speed

MBTiles are on average double as fast as JPEG Geopackages with pyramids which in turn are more than double as fast as GeoTIFF and 15x faster than COG.
Geopackages without pyramids are 200 to 400 times slower.

Conclusion

Even though MBTiles render faster than the Geopackage pyramid JPEG, they come with an almost 10x bigger storage requirement which makes us say that the best offline raster format supported by QField is Geopackage pyramid JPEG or if you need transparency and slightly smaller files Geopackage pyramid WebP.

If you need transparency before QField 1.6, the best results are achieved with Geopackage pyramid PNG_JPEG.

What a year’s start! After a very packed December publishing all the QGIS on the road videos and quietly releasing QField 1.3 - Ben Nevis we could have gone and relaxed over the holidays. But since we love QField so much we immediately started working on the next iteration. Now, after an intensive testing period, we are proud to announce the release of QField 1.4 - Olavtoppen.

Olavtoppen!? yes, the highest point of Bouvet Island, the remotest island on Earth. And sure enough, QField would follow you there!

As usual, get it on play store or download it from GitHub.

QField Crowdfunding Campaign

Before digging into all the new goodness that you will find in QField 1.4, let’s get a big “Thanks” out to everybody who supported our crowdfunding campaign for improved camera support and all our customers that agreed to open source the work we did for them.

If you like QField, want a new feature or would like to support the project, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

Usability enhancements

In QField 1.2 we started to improve on the usability of the user interface. We are constantly working on this with a usability expert to get the user interface to be even more appealing and user-friendly.

Besides lots of clean-up and polishing, QField received two major improvements, a portrait mode and a new welcome screen with recent projects.

Welcome screen with recent projects

QField is all about efficiency. While favourites folders in the file selector already give a great productivity boost, very often we work with the same 3-4 projects. This is why we redesigned the welcome screen to list the last five project used. And if you look carefully you might get a hint of what will be coming soon…

Portrait mode

QField now flawlessly works in portrait mode. We heard you say you needed a comfortable way to work in portrait mode, especially on smartphones. QField forms and button placements are now optimized to be easy to use with your thumbs.

New features

We keep on listening to your feedback and prioritize new features based on it. We did implement some minor features like allowing hiding legend nodes and printing to PDF using the current extent. But this time’s superstars are three highly expected features: Splitting of geometries, compass integration and, yes you guessed right, native camera and gallery app support!

Split Features

A new editing tool is available that allows for splitting existing features. This adds an even more powerful operation to an already impressive geometry editing tools set.

Compass integration

A long-awaited feature! QField now shows you on-screen in which direction you are looking, walking, driving, flying or warping direction. This makes it much easier and more pleasant to navigate in the field.

Native Camera and Gallery

It is now possible to use your favourite camera app so that you have more control over how pictures are taken. It is also possible to select pictures which are already on your device by using the new gallery selector.

Pro Tip: You can use any camera app. For example, you can use the open camera app to create geotagged photos if your preinstalled system camera doesn’t save positioning information in EXIF data.

Pro Tip 2: You can use an image annotation app to add notes, sketches, drawings and so on to your images and then choose them from QField via the add from gallery button.

Antenna Height Correction

For high precision measurements, it’s possible to compensate your altitude by a fixed antenna height. This will then automatically adjust all the digitised altitude values.

JPEG 2000

Support for JPEG 2000 raster datasets was added. This lossy format offers a compression rate at par with proprietary formats like ECW or Mr SID.

Pro Tip: save your base maps in JPEG 2000 to save storage.

New Languages

Thanks to the hard work of our community, QField is now also available in Turkish and Japanese.

New packages

You say: wow that’s a lot! We say: there is more :)
We have upgraded our whole building infrastructure so that you can comfortably get even more QField goodness without having to uninstall your production ready QField.

Automated master builds

After each pull request is merged into our master code, a new package is created and automatically published on the playstore in a dedicated app called QField for QGIS - Unstable (Early Access). Installing this app will allow you to always have the latest build of QField for testing and giving feedback. On your device, this app is completely separated from the production-ready QField and has a distinctive black icon so that you do not confuse it.

Pull request builds

QField is an extremely active project, and as you see we develop multiple functionalities and fixes at the same time. If you’re particularly interested in one of this, our continuous integration fairy builds and publishes new packages automatically at each commit directly to the pull request you are interested in. To see what we are currently working on, have a look at the pull request overview page.

Experimental Windows builds

Last but definitely not least, we’ve set up an Azure CI infrastructure to build QField for windows. For now, we still consider this experimental but we already had some very successful testing. If you are interested in testing out QField for windows you can get it here, remember it is experimental so don’t use it in production yet and give us as much feedback as possible :)

What’s next?

As you can imagine we’ve had a very busy start of 2020, but even more is to come soon with the next releases of QField. We’d like to thank again all companies and individuals that actively use QField and that invest in making QField even better. If you feel QField misses something you need or would like to support the project, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.

After an intensive testing period, we are proud to announce the release of QField 1.2

As usual, get it on play store or download it from GitHub.

QField Crowdfunding Campaign

Before digging into all the new goodness that you will find in QField 1.2, let’s get some big “Thanks” out. What QField currently is was mostly possible thanks to customer projects of which the outcome could be mutualized. Thanks a lot to all of you that agreed open source is all about making things possible together!

Over the years at OPENGIS.ch we have also donated an unimaginable amount of hours to make QField the project you have grown to love and this makes us very proud!

To keep the momentum we now rely on all QField users to help us move one step further. Therefore we created a crowdfunding campaign for improved camera support. As well as another round of general polishing and bug-fixing.

If you like QField, now is the time to show some love and support our crowdfunding campaign.

New features

This new release comes with exciting new features and also contains some first usability enhancements. More of that later.

Value relation widget

If you need to choose the type of a material of the manhole you are inspecting or to select the owner of the parcel which you are drawing, that’s when you want a combo box with available values. This has been possible in QField for a long time, but was hard to set up. Since this release it’s much easier thanks to the integration of value relation widgets.

Not only do they make configuration easier, they also allow for a completely new functionality: managing multiple selections. This will offer a checkbox for every possible value from the list and you are free to save any combination of values.

Authentication dialog for protected services

Just as well as we love open source, we love open data. But not all data are meant for public and some deserve protection. Even more you don’t want to allow everyone to edit your data.

QField will now show an authentication dialog, whenever one of your WMS, WFS, WFS-T or Postgres layers requires a login.

Improved snapping support in expressions

One of the main reasons for QField’s incredible versatility is the use of expressions everywhere. We have just added yet another piece to that: when you snap to a feature, all the snapping details are available for your new feature. With this in place, if you add a new signpost on a street, you can fill in the street_id attribute automatically.

As a nice little extra, the Z (and M) values of snapping results are automatically applied to the new vertices and points.

Usability enhancements and Bugfixes

We also started to improve on the usability of the user interface. We are working on this with a usability expert to get the user interface to be even more appealing and user-friendly.

This is just the start, stay tuned for more usability improvements which are inbound.

As usual, a number of additional bugs have also been corrected, most notably the checkbox widget is now behaving as expected.

Latest Qt 5.13 and Arm64-v8a support

According to Google guidelines, we added support for the Arm64-v8a architecture and while we were at it, we also migrated to the shiny new Qt 5.13 and it’s next-gen menu system.

For this release, we did not upload any x86 packages to the play store since it would have forced us to also have to upload an x86_64 package. If you need the x86 package, you can find it on Github. Obviously, in future releases we’ll add those to the play store as well.

Do you want to win a QField jump-start package worth 550€?

We are launching the # MyQField challenge. Follow us on Twitter and show us how you use @ QFieldForQGIS by tagging your tweets with # MyQField and # dataisoutside. The tweet with most likes and retweets by 24.4.19 wins the training!

Rules

• You need to follow @ OPENGISch and @ QFieldForQGIS
• Likes count single, retweet count double
• You can participate multiple times
• We will count on 24.4.19 at 20:00 CET
• The prize is a half day jump-start package worth 550€

Fine boring prints:

• Recourse to the courts is not permitted
• There will be no correspondence regarding the competition
• No cash payouts can be made
• Participants have no enforceable claims to the transfer, payment or exchange of winnings

https://twitter.com/OPENGISch/status/1115978883759837184

Let’s get straight to the point

It’s official, QField for QGIS 1.0 is out!

Get it while it’s hot on the Playstore ( qfield.org/get) or on GitHub

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.

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 the 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.

Let’s see what makes QField probably[su_tooltip style=“bootstrap” rounded=“yes” position=“top” content=“We might be biased, but we do believe it”]*[/su_tooltip] the best mobile GIS in the world.

Work efficiently

QField focuses on efficiently getting GIS field work done and combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to get data from the field to the office in a comfortable and easy way.

Fast and reactive

Thanks to the underlying QGIS engine and a lot of optimizations, QField is powerful and snappy. Even with complex projects, QField is a joy to work with.

Easy handling

Conscious design choices and a continuous focus on a minimal user interface drive QField’s development. This allows us to deliver a product wich is uncluttered and extremly user-friendly

Quickly digitise

Allowing a seamless digitizing experience is a paramount goal of QField. Thanks to a cleverly designed adaptive user interface and specific features like real-time attribute checks and snapping support, QField allows its users to be extremely time efficient.

Unmatched feature set

To be the best, you need to be clever but also skillful.

QField’s efficiency is matched only by its featureset that allows its users to make the most out of their fieldwork time.

Powerful cartography combined with full text search

The beauty of GIS is that maps are dynamic. Layers can individually be shown and hidden and information can be presented more or less prominently based on the task at hand. QField supports the endless styling possibilities offered by QGIS and thanks to a well placed theme switcher you can change the looks of the entire project with a single click. For even more customizability, QField allows hiding and showing layers by simply long-pressing on the layer name.

Furthermore, QField boasts a fully configurable attribute text search that will allow you to geolocate and edit that exact object you were looking for.

Geometry editing

Editing Geometries on the field is probably the most complex task an operator has to deal with. QField simplifies this process through an adaptive toolbar that appears only when necessary, snapping support and a crosshair digitizer.

Thanks to these enhancements, QField allows reducing the error rate significantly.

Support for high precision GNSS

Simple internal GPS accuracy might be enough for basic projects but cadastral surveying and other high accuracy digitizations have much higher requirements. QFields natively listens to the Android location services so it can take advantage of the best location provided by external devices.

Generate PDF

Thanks to QField’s native support for generating PDFs based on QGIS’s print layouts, your on the fly daily report map is just one click away.

Intuitive project chooser

When dealing with multiple projects, quickly being able to switch between them is key. QField comes with a beautiful file selector with favorite directories (long press on a folder to add it to the favorites and long press on the favorites list to remove it) and an automatic list of the last three opened projects that will save you heaps of time while looking for your projects.

Your data - Your decisions

QField does not impose any constraint on the data model, it is your data and you decide what they should look like and what values are acceptable. QField can enforce constraints for you and you can choose among various type of widgets to represent your data. QGIS will preconfigure some field types automatically, all you’ll have then to do is tweak the settings if you want and your project is ready for mobile prime time. Our documentation has all the information you need.

Extends your Geo Data Infrastructure seamlessly

QField uses QGIS to set up maps and forms so it automatically supports a wide variety of data formats. Thanks to this, you can comfortably prepare your project once and then deploy it everywhere. And since QGIS also has a server component, your project can be served on a WebGIS with the very same beautiful looks.

In fact you can see this exact infrastructure up and running under demo.qfield.org and with the “online_survey.qgs” project included in the QField demo projects.

Synchronize with WiFi, Cable or Network

You can synchronize your project and data (in case you are not using a centralized online database) using various methods thanks to our QFieldSync plugin.

Future cloud integration

In the near future we will add a cloud synchronization functionality, so that you will be able to seamlessly manage your project online and have them automatically deployed to your devices.

Installing and contributing

You can easily install QField using the Playstore ( qfield.org/get), find out more on the documentation site ( qfield.org), watch some demo videos on our channel ( qfield.org/demo) and report problems to our issues tracking system ( qfield.org/issues). Please note that the Playstore update can take some hours to roll out and if you had installed a version directly from GitHub, you might have to uninstall it to get the latest Playstore update.

QField, like QGIS, is an open source project. Everyone is welcome to contribute to making the product even better – whether it is with financial support, translation, documentation work, enthusiastic programming or visionary ideas.

We would like to thank our fantastic community for all the great translations, documentations, bug reports and general feedback they gave us. Thanks to all this, we were able to fix plenty of bugs, address performance issues and even add some super cool new features.

Development and deployment services

As masterminds behind QField and core contributor to QGIS, we are the perfect partner for your project. If you want to help us build a better QField or QGIS, or if you need any services related to the whole QGIS stack, don’t hesitate to contact us.

OPENGIS.ch

OPENGIS.ch helps you setting up your spatial data infrastructure based on seamlessly integrated desktop, web, and mobile components.
We support your team in planning, developing, deploying and running your infrastructure. Thanks to several senior geodata infrastructure experts, QGIS core developers and the makers of the mobile data acquisition solution QField, OPENGIS.ch has all it takes to make your project a success. OPENGIS.ch is known for its commitment to high-quality products and its continuous efforts to improve the open source ecosystem.

\* We might be biased, but we do believe it

We are really happy to announce the fifth and (hopefully) last 1.0 release candidate in QField’s history! This means that QField 1.0 is closer than ever.

Get it while it’s hot on the Playstore ( https://qfield.org/get) or on GitHub

Thanks to all the feedback by the fantastic community we were able to fix plenty of bugs, address performance issues and even add some super cool new features.

Among the new features, the most important is the flashy new file selector with favorite directories (long press on a folder to add it to the favorites and longpress on the favorites list to remove it) and an automatic list of the last three opened projects that will save you heaps of time while looking for your projects.

Another lifesaver is the newly added support for pasting text from the clipboard in the search bar. Finally, we added a smart and unobtrusive “rate this app” dialog to make it easier for you to give QField the ★★★★★ you always wanted to give it :)

https://vimeo.com/323697787

List of improvements since RC3

• New Custom file selector ( #476)
• Favorite directories in file selector ( #507)
• Recent projects in file selector ( #499)
• Ripple effect in file selector ( #505)
• Smart unobtrusive “rate this app” dialog ( #510)
• clear value in date/time if invalid when losing focus ( #464)
• fix crash when switching layer ( #498)
• Respect DPI in multiline fontsize
• Value Map compatibility with QGIS 2 and lazy loading for performance improvements
• Use external valuemap model
• allow to copy text from clipboard in search bar
• respect keep scale option in locator
• optimize scale when searching points ( #472)
• add frame to search results
• Update to Qt 5.12.1 (for android 6+)

You can easily install QField using the Playstore ( https://qfield.org/get), find out more on the documentation site ( https://qfield.org), watch some demo videos on our channel ( https://qfield.org/demo) and report problems to our issues tracking system ( https://qfield.org/issues). Please note that the Playstore update can take some hours to roll out and if you had installed a version directly from GitHub, you might have to uninstall it to get the latest playstore update.

QField, like QGIS, is an open source project. Everyone is welcome to contribute making the product even better – whether it is with financial support, enthusiastic programming, translation and documentation work or visionary ideas.

If you want to help us build a better QField or QGIS, or need any services related to the whole QGIS stack don’t hesitate to contact us.

We are really happy to announce the release a new great milestone in QField’s history, QField 1.0 Release Candidate 3! (Yes, you might have got a glimpse of the broken RC2 if you where very attentive)

Thanks to the great feedback we received since releasing RC1 we were able to fix plenty of issues and add some more goodies.

We would like to invite everybody to install this Release Candidate and help us test it as much as possible so that we can iron out as many bugs as possible before the final release of QField 1.0.

List of fixes since RC1:
• fixed bad synchronization / geopackage files not written) (PR #455)
• fix glitches in portrait mode (PR #423 and #439)
• fix highlighting of points (search and feature selection) (PR #443)
• fix GPS info window overlapping search icon (PR #438)
• redesign of scale bar (PR #438)
• fix crash in feature form (with invalid relations) (PR #440)
• fix date/time field editing (PR #421 and #458)
• fix project not loading the correct map theme (fix #459)
• fix QGS or QGZ does not exist (PR #453)

Unfortunately, due to necessary updates in the SDK we target, we had to drop support for Android 4.4. The minimum Android requirement as of this RC is Android 5.0 (SDK version 21).

In case playstore does not suggest an update to QField Lucendro 0.11.90, the last working version for Android 4.4, we suggest all Android 4.4 users to uninstall QField 1.0 RC 1 (which was broken on android 4.4) and reinstall QField from the store. This way you should get If you don’t use play store, you can find all QField releases under https://qfield.org/releases

You can easily install QField using the playstore ( https://qfield.org/get), find out more on the documentation site ( https://qfield.org) and report problems to our issues tracking system ( https://qfield.org/issues)

QField, like QGIS, is an open source project. Everyone is welcome to contribute to make the product even better – whether it is with financial support, enthusiastic programming, translation and documentation work or visionary ideas.

If you want to help us build a better QField or QGIS, or need any services related to the whole QGIS stack don’t hesitate to contact us.