Book Image

Learning QGIS 2.0

By : Anita Graser
Book Image

Learning QGIS 2.0

By: Anita Graser

Overview of this book

QGIS is a user friendly open source geographic information system (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OSX, and Windows. The popularity of open source geographic information systems and QGIS in particular has been growing rapidly over the last few years. More and more companies and institutions are adopting QGIS and even switching to QGIS as their main GIS. Learning QGIS 2.0 is a practical, hands-on guide that provides you with clear, step-by-step exercises that will help you to apply your GIS knowledge to QGIS. Containing a number of clear, practical exercises, this book will introduce you to working with QGIS, quickly and painlessly. If you want to take advantage of the wide range of functionalities that QGIS offers, then this is the book for you. This book takes you from installing and configuring QGIS, through handling spatial data to creating great maps. You will learn how to load and visualize existing spatial data and how to create data from scratch. You will perform common geoprocessing and spatial analysis tasks and automate them. We will cover how to achieve great cartographic output and print maps. You will learn everything you need to know to handle spatial data management, processing, and visualization tasks in QGIS.
Table of Contents (12 chapters)

Editing vector geometries


Now that we know how to create and select features, we can have a closer look at the other tools in the Digitizing and Advanced Digitizing toolbars. The Digitizing toolbar will look like the following screenshot:

The basic Digitizing toolbar contains tools for creating and moving features and nodes, as well as for deleting, copying, cutting, and pasting features, as follows:

  • With the Move Feature(s) tool, it is easy to move one or more features at once by dragging them to the new location.

  • Similarly, the Node Tool feature allows us to move one or more nodes of the same feature. The first click activates the feature, while the second click selects the node. Hold the mouse key down to drag the node to its new location. Instead of moving only one node, we can also move an edge by clicking and dragging the line. And finally, we can select and move multiple nodes by holding down Ctrl.

  • Delete Selected, Cut Features, and Copy Features are only active if one or more layer...