Book Image

Learning QGIS - Third Edition

By : Anita Graser
Book Image

Learning QGIS - Third Edition

By: Anita Graser

Overview of this book

QGIS is a user-friendly open source geographic information system (GIS) that runs on Linux, Unix, Mac OS X, and Windows. The popularity of open source geographic information systems and QGIS in particular has been growing rapidly over the last few years. Learning QGIS Third Edition is a practical, hands-on guide updated for QGIS 2.14 that provides you with clear, step-by-step exercises to help you apply your GIS knowledge to QGIS. Through clear, practical exercises, this book will introduce you to working with QGIS quickly and painlessly. This book takes you from installing and configuring QGIS to handling spatial data to creating great maps. You will learn how to load and visualize existing spatial data and create data from scratch. You will get to know important plugins, perform common geoprocessing and spatial analysis tasks and automate them with Processing. We will cover how to achieve great cartographic output and print maps. Finally, you will learn how to extend QGIS using Python and even create your own plugin.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
Learning QGIS Third Edition
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Designing print maps


In QGIS, print maps are designed in the print composer. A QGIS project can contain multiple composers, so it makes sense to pick descriptive names. Composers are saved automatically whenever we save the project. To see a list of all the compositions available in a project, go to Project | Composer Manager.

We can open a new composer by going to Project | New Print Composer or using Ctrl + P. The composer window consists of the following:

  • A preview area for the map composition displaying a blank page when a new composer is created

  • Panels for configuring Composition, Item properties, and Atlas generation, as well as a Command history panel for quick undo and redo actions

  • Toolbars to manage, save, and export compositions; navigate in the preview area; as well as add and arrange different composer items

Once you have designed your print map the way you want it, you can save the template to a composer template .qpt file by going to Composer | Save as template and reuse it in other...