Starting up with QGIS (Part 1)

Note: This is a beginner, level tutorial and is intended for new users of GIS.

QGIS is one exceptional GIS utility. Particularly when the "no cost on the user" factor is considered. The system works seamlessly both on 微软 Windows and Linux machines as well as 苹果 MacOSx.

For this exercise, you can work in several ways.

1. Install Quantum GIS directly on your machine
2. Install OSGeo (OS Geo for Windows )
3. Install and configure a linux #OSGeoLive virtual machine

The Quantum GIS set of functionalities available on an OSGeo Live machine are far more numerous than a stand alone Quantum GIS installation.

In the main window you will see several sub windows which you can explore at ease. He is a general outline of them all together. To view these windows you need click right on your mouse button at the top and enable these one at a time or altogether.

You can now proceed to processing your GIS data. The data can be downloaded from any website of your choice, or created. In my case I downloaded my sample data from the United Nations OCHA , humanitarian data exchange portal.

The dataset is of the administrative division and districts of Pakistan. This data is in Esri shapefile format. And is easily usable in a variety of GIS software. Here I will also encourage you to explore the menu at the top of the software. The file, the plugins and the Processing tabs at this stage.

You can now use the add layer menu to add a shape file to your work bench.

The following dialogue will appear where you can pick the kind of file you want to open and click ok.

Once your layer is loaded you can fiddle with the options available on how it renders on your screen using, its properties. Just right click on the file and go to the properties part of your file. Also, you can right click and check the attribute table of the particular GIS file there.

You can change the raster, and vector files, properties and change the way they appear. For the attribute table (simply put the data associated with your maps) You can select the attribute table and it will show an excel like file to you.

Following is how my attribute table looked like

The funnel icon at the top helps you filter your records, as you desire. For instance, you might be interested in looking for a district, or a district with a particular area in sq km etc. The filter menu helps you do just that. There are complex calculations that you can also do on your attribute table, but we shall be looking into that later.

You can also try clicking on a row and zooming to that row, or alternatively select the feature on the map, copy/cut/paste etc. that feature.

You can now start creating a new shape file first you need to zoom into a district of choice for you. To do this, you can right click on one of the selected rows, from the filter operations and click the magnifying glass icon at the top of your attribute table menu to zoom into the row associated feature.

Once you have done, so you are zoned into a region of your choice, and will be creating a new drawing for that area only. Now you might additionally like to change the layer's appearance and convert it into a transparent layer for easy tracing/drawing over underlying map.

For the basemap or reference map you can use the open street maps, data. This data is available to you on QGIS with an active internet connection in the browser tab.

The open street map data will now serve as your reference source. You can add google imagery to your maps too. For that however, you will need to add the xyz tile reference for each of them. All that you need to do is right click and add one of the following URLs in the space provided. You can assign them respective names, at the top in the section provided for names.

The options for basemaps can be one of the following.

1. Roadmap https://mt0.google.com/vt/lyrs=m&hl=en&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}?
2. Terrain https://mt0.google.com/vt/lyrs=p&hl=en&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}
3. Altered roadmap https://mt0.google.com/vt/lyrs=r&hl=en&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}
4. Satellite only https://mt0.google.com/vt/lyrs=s&hl=en&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}
5. Terrain only https://mt0.google.com/vt/lyrs=t&hl=en&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}
6. Hybrid https://mt0.google.com/vt/lyrs=y&hl=en&x={x}&y={y}&z={z}

Once, you have come this far. You now need to add a new vector layer. Click on the layer > create layer > new geo package layer menu

You will have to answer a few questions, and fill in a new dialogue based form. Here for roads you will select line, for houses, or areas you will select polygons and for spots you can select points.

Once, the layer is added, you will right click on it and toggle editing by making it editable. Then you can draw lines using the editing toolbar the top.

All you need to do is keep clicking and tracing over a feature, unless you reach an end point. There you can right click and a dialogue will appear, prompting you to choose the feature with a name of your choice, or autogenerated.