Because I had this GPS dongle laying on my table, I figured I had to find out how to connect this via usb or bluetooth to my Debian Laptop so I could use it with QGIS.
Read the full article here www.zuidt.nl.
PDOK-servicesplugin 0.7
This post is about a new release of the dutch pdokservices-plugin which can be used to easily add WMS, WFS can WCS service layers from our national data-agency PDOK.
Read the dutch version here.
QGIS in de klas onder Windows
Somebody in my neighbourhood is Windows Administrator on a ‘Middelbare School’ here in Haarlem, my hometown.
The school, het Mendelcollege, received a (Q)GIS intro by Margit Stapel of GisWijzer who is doing introductions for 10 – 14 year old childer with GIS. The school received this course from a GIS professional as part of the ‘national geo week‘.
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Het Nationaal Georegister bevragen en services laden in QGIS met MetaSearch
We (mostly Tom Kralidis, Angelos Tzotsos with some additions by me) just released the MetaSearch Catalogue Client plugin for QGIS. The new plugin is an update of the CSWClient plugin from NextGIS. This new MetaSearch plugin makes searching metadata and using the services peanuts!
A Catalog Service for the Web (CSW), for example provided by the Dutch clearinghouse Nationaal Georegister, contains metadata about geographic data and services. The metadata not only provide descriptions, but can also contain hyperlinks to the services to directly view (e.g. WMS) or load (e.g. WFS and WCS) the geographic information.
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IMRO data opmaken in QGIS
If you have to use IMRO data, you want to use the same legend as the one used on www.ruimtelijkeplannen.nl. Unfortunatly there is no standard IMRO legend file for QGIS. Luckily B3Partners uploaded an SLD file onto GitHub which you can use to create the legend in QGIS.
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Serie kaarten maken met Python script
Sometimes you need to produce a series of similar thematic maps. The only difference is the field used to colour areas or show graduated symbols. Classifications or maximal symbol sizes are identical. For large numbers of maps it is quite annoying to repeat the same actions in QGIS over and over again. Moreover, mistakes are easily made this way. This article explains how the production of large numbers of maps can be automated with a Python script. All files needed to try this method are available in a ZIP file. This is a modified version of a previous article. This new method works better and faster than the previous one en works the same for Windows and Linux.
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Een serie kaarten genereren 2 (Linux)
In a previous article I described how you can let QGIS generate a series of thematic maps with a batch file. This method was meant for the Windows version of QGIS. Now I have written a similar shell script for Linux (‘projectsnapshots’). You can find it in the ZIP file included with this article. It also contains all other files you need to test the script and an example of the result. The result consist of a series of images and a HTML showing all maps. The content could be copied and pasted in a word processing file. Before the script can be run, you have to make it executable. For further instructions I refer to the previous article. The script was tested with openSUSE 12.3. It works with QGIS 1.9.0-Master, but unfortunately not with QGIS 1.8.
(English) Temporary Fix for OpenLayers Plugin
Current development version of QGIS ( upcoming QVIS 2.0 ) has undergone a nessecary upgrade of the Python-Cpp glue (SIP) which temporarily broke almost all python plugins. Currently plugin devs are busy fixing their plugins to be usable on time for the real launch of QGIS 2.0.
One plugin notably missing plugin is the OpenLayers-plugin, which is very usefull to use Openstreetmap (or Google or Bing) as a quick reference underground in QGIS. In the mailinglist the OpenLayers-plugin made it clear that there was currently no time available to fix this in a way they want it to be fixed (that is in a way that the plugin keeps working in both 1.8 and 2.0) and that there will be time to work on it during the QGIS hackfest in Brighton in september.
The good news is that the code of the plugins is available on Github. Because it was just easier to fix it only for QGIS 2.0 I did a quick fix to be able to use the plugin on my own build of QGIS (users of QGIS 1.8 should use the official version). The fixes you can find in my Github repo.
This fixed plugins is available for download here, but note that you can only use it by downloading it and unpacking it in the right plugin directory. On Linux this is ~/.qgis2/python/plugins and on Windows somewhere near C:\Documents and Settings\you\.qgis2\python\plugins. Note also that this is a temporary hack and that in time there will be an offical ( better 🙂 ) fix from the original authors.
Het beste uit Top10NL, BAG en OSM combineren in QGIS
For some time now I’ve been using the BAG buildings in QGIS as an alternative to the Top10NL buildings. The BAG buildings are more accurate, after all. This is not to disqualify the Top10NL, on the contrary: each geo data set has its own merits. The Top10NL is unbeatable regarding terrain details. As for the Open Street Map (OSM), that would of course be the road lines, which is updated daily by a community of enthusiasts. As the Top10NL usually lags behind a few years, it is tempting to use the OSM roads as an alternative to the Top10NL roads. But can the OSM roads be rendered just as if they look like the Top10NL roads? The answer is: yes, if you keep using a few specific lines of the Top10NL. Here’s a sample of Highway junction Raasdorp near Haarlem-Amsterdam, where the brand new A5 highway is already available in OSM but not yet in the Top10NL (made in QGIS 1.8)
Top10NL (april 2013/from aerial photo 2011), OSM (22 june 2013) and BAG (april 2013) to render an actual map.
The Dutch OSM roads are downloadable als shapefiles from http://download.geofabrik.de/europe.html. When using Top10NL, you do need to convert the OSM roads to the RD coordinate system, which is easy in QGIS 1.8. Add the OSM vector layer “Roads”, select it with right mouse button and choose “Save as…”. Choose ESRI Shapefile and select the correct CRS (Amersfoort / RD New, EPSG:28992). This results in a shapefile of 264Mb. Add that layer to the Top10NL layers and off we go.
The Top10NL roads are polygons, allowing the exact width of each road to be rendered. OSM roads are lines, so all roads have the same width. This may sound like a disadvantage, but in practice this is no nuisance. The example above uses a scale of 1:25000, and roads that seem to be wider are actually double rendered lines in the data (for both sides of the road). The colouring of the roads is easy thanks to the attribute “type” that allows the colouring on values such as “trunk”, “motorway”, “primary”, “secondary”, etc. The Top10NL and OSM differ on occasion on wheter a road is a primary road or secondary road, but that only goes to show the subjectivity of such labeling. Of course, the dark grey lining below the roads is easily done by adding the same map layer just below the coloured roads and making it slightly broader.
The Top10NL ‘problem’ of lining roads at non-level crossings is easily solved using OSM thanks to the attributes “Tunnel” and “Bridge”. For roads crossing above other roads of the same type, add that piece of road (filtered on “Bridge > 0”) plus another copy of that layer with dark grey lining slightly off-bias to both sides.
So no drawbacks? One obvious argument could be that OSM doesn’t guarantee a complete and correct map because it’s updated by so many different people. But as is well known these days, the quality of (at least the Dutch OSM) is astoundingly high. When zooming in, you can see some OSM lines not exactly following the actual line compared to the aerial photograph (a deviation of a meter is no exception), but on a scale such as 1:25000 that’s barely noticeable.
The great thing about all this newly available open source geodata is that QGIS offers such a wonderful vehicle to make the most out of these datasets and render a meaningful map image. The Top10NL is unbeatable regarding terrain image, the BAG on buildings, and the OSM on roads. I’m really looking forward to QGIS 2.0.
Jan-Willem van Aalst, www.imergis.nl
Kleurinstellingen voor WMS- en WMTS-kaartlagen
An advantage of using map services like WMS and WMTS is that your styling has been done by someone else. But this can turn into a disadvantage as well in case the colours of your overlay are similar to the colours in your remote base layer.
To show this I created an example using the Dutch Top10NL topographic map (WMTS) with my own random polygon layer in random colours on top of it. Because of the bright and colourful Top10NL my own features are hard to distinguish.
In QGIS master (soon QGIS 2.0) I discovered a new feature. For WMS and WMTS layers it is possible to adjust the colours. You can change brightness, saturation and contrast. It is also possible to display the layer in grayscale or adjust the colour (hue), for example to purples. (It’s still a matter of taste…)
Some examples:
adjusted brightness and contrast
grayscale
purples Continue reading “Kleurinstellingen voor WMS- en WMTS-kaartlagen”