Tag: en_gb

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Oslandia is the main partner of OPENGIS.ch around QField. We are proud today to forward the announcement of the new QField release 3.4 “Ebo”.

Main highlights

A new geofencing framework has landed, enabling users to configure QField behaviors in relation to geofenced areas and user positioning. Geofenced areas are defined at the project-level and shaped by polygons from a chosen vector layer. The three available geofencing behaviours in this new release are:

• Alert user when inside an area polygon;
• Alert user when outside all defined area polygons and
• Inform the user when entering and leaving an area polygons.

In addition to being alerted or informed, users can also prevent digitizing of features when being alerted by the first or second behaviour. The configuration of this functionality is done in QGIS using QFieldSync.

Pro tip: geofencing settings are embedded within projects, which means it is easy to deploy these constraints to a team of field workers through QFieldCloud. Thanks Terrex Seismic for sponsoring this functionality.

QField now offers users access to a brand new processing toolbox containing over a dozen algorithms for manipulating digitized geometries directly in the field. As with many parts of QField, this feature relies on QGIS’ core library, namely its processing framework and the numerous, well-maintained algorithms it comes with.

The algorithms exposed in QField unlock many useful functionalities for refining geometries, including orthogonalization, smoothing, buffering, rotation, affine transformation, etc. As users configure algorithms’ parameters, a grey preview of the output will be visible as an overlay on top of the map canvas.

To reach the processing toolbox in QField, select one or more features by long-pressing on them in the features list, open the 3-dot menu and click on the process selected feature(s) action. Are you excited about this one? Send your thanks to the National Land Survey of Finland, who’s support made this a reality.

QField’s camera has gained support for customized ratio and resolution of photos, as well as the ability to stamp details – date and time as well as location details – onto captured photos. In fact, QField’s own camera has received so much attention in the last few releases that it was decided to make it the default one. On supported platforms, users can switch to their OS camera by disabling the native camera option found at the bottom of the QField settings’ general tab.

Wait, there’s more

There are plenty more improvements packed into this release from project variables editing using a revamped variables editor through to integration of QField documentation help in the search bar and the ability to search cloud project lists. Read the full 3.4 changelog to know more, and enjoy the release!

Contact us !

A question concerning QField ? Interested in QField deployment ? Do not hesitate to contact Oslandia to discuss your project !

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Sorry, this entry is only available in French.

Swiss elevation profiles

Get high-precision elevation profiles in QGIS right from Swisstopo’s official profile service, based on swissALTI3D data!

Thanks to this integration, you can take advantage of existing QGIS features, such as exporting 2d/3d features or distance/elevation tables, as well as displaying profiles directly in QGIS layouts.

Tip: Swiss elevation profiles will be available as long as the Swiss Locator plugin is installed and active. Should you need to turn Swiss elevation profiles off to create other profiles with your own data, go to the Plugin manager and deactivate the plugin in the meantime.

For developers

We’re paving the way for adding custom elevation profiles to QGIS. For that, we’ve added a QGIS profile source registry so that plugin developers can register their own profile sources (e.g., based on profile web services, just like we did here) and make them available for QGIS end users. The registry is available from QGIS 3.38. It’s your turn!

Thanks to the QGIS user group Switzerland for funding this feature!

Swiss vector tiles base maps

Loading Swiss vector tiles is now easier than ever. Just go to the locator bar, type the prefix “chb” (add a white space after that) and you’ll get a list of available and already styled Swiss vector tiles layers. Some of them will even load grouped auxiliary imagery for reference.

Vector tiles will be loaded at the bottom of the QGIS layer tree as base maps, so you will see all your data on top of them.

Vector tiles are optimized for local caching and scale-independent rendering. This also makes it a perfect fit for adding it to your QField project.

There are a couple of different vector tile sets available:

leichte-basiskarte

Light base map

Similar to the leichte-basiskarte layer, but using an older version of the data source and adjusted styles.

leichte-basiskarte-imagery (with WMTS sublayer)

Imagery base map (with WMTS sublayer)

This layer is similar to the leichte-basiskarte-imagery layer, but it uses an older version of the data source and adjusted styles.

Base map

See the official services documentation for details on data sources and styles.

Fixes

Thanks to your feedback, we’ve also fixed some issues. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us at GitHub if you’d like to suggest or report something related to the Swiss Locator plugin.

Happy (and now more powerful) mapping!

During the pandemic, people noticed how well they could work remotely, how productive meetings via video call could be, and how well webinars worked. At OPENGIS.ch, this wasn’t news because we have always been 100% remote. However, we missed the unplanned, in-person interactions that occur during meetups with a or . That’s why we’re very pleased that last week we could join the Swiss QGIS user day for the second time after the pandemic.

OPENGIS.ch has been invested in QGIS since its inception in 2014, actually even before; our CEO Marco started working with QGIS 0.6 in 2004 and our CTO Matthias with version 1.7 in 2012. Since 2019, we have also been the company with the most core committers. We can definitely say that OPENGIS.ch has been one of the main driving forces behind the large adoption of QGIS in Switzerland and worldwide. 

Looking at the work done in the QGIS code we’re by far the most prolific company in Switzerland and second worldwide only to North Road Consulting. On top of it, we were the first – and still only one of two- companies to sustain QGIS.org at a Large level since 2021.

This makes us very proud and it is why we’re even happier to see how much that is happening around QGIS in Switzerland aligns with the visions and goals we set out to reach years ago.

The morning started with a presentation by our CTO Matthias “What’s new in QGIS” featuring plenty of work sponsored by the Anwendergruppe CH.

DXF Improvements, the release of SwissLocator 3.0 with swissalti3d and vector tiles integration, and an update on the advances towards solid curve handling in QGIS, a prerequisite for properly handling AV data in Switzerland, were only some of the many noteworthy points he touched.

The highlight of Matthias’ presentation was the better OGC API Features support in QGIS, which was also highlighted in a subsequent talk about Kablo, showing how the next generation of industry solutions (Fachschalen) will be implemented.

Slides: Neues aus der QGIS Welt - QGIS Anwendertag 2024

Following was a short presentation on the project DMAV, Christoph Lauber introduced a project that aims to implement an industry solution for official cadastral surveying with QGIS.

Adrian Wicki of the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) and Isabel presented how OPENGIS.ch and the partners Puzzle and Zeilenwerk help the FOEN with the SAM project with assess the hazards of flood, forest fire, or landslides, and warn authorities and the population. With an agile project organisation, the complex project succeeds in fulfilling requirements by applying user-centred development concepts. QGIS is used for visualizing and analyzing data and helping forecasters gain insights into the current situation.

Slides: BAFU_SAM

Andreas Neumann from ETH Zurich and Michael presented the qgis-js project. QGIS-js is an effort to port QGIS core to WebAssembly so that it can be run in a web browser. Although still in the early experimentation phase, this project has great potential to leverage interesting new use cases that weren’t even thinkable before.

Slides: https://boardend.github.io/qgis-js-demo/ 

Olivier Monod from the City of Yverdon presented Kablo, an electricity management proof of concept of the next generation implementation for industry solutions developed in collaboration with OPENGIS.ch.

By applying a middleware based on OGC API Features and Django, Kablo shows how common limitations of current industry solutions (like permission management and atomic operations) can be overcome and how the future brings desktop and web closer together.

Slides: kablo-qgis-user-days

Obviously, it wasn’t just OPENGIS.ch. Sandro Mani from Sourcepole presented the latest and greatest improvements on QWC2, like street view integration and cool QGIS features brought to a beautiful web gis. Andreas Schmid from Kt. Solothurn presented how cool cloud-optimized geotiff (COG) is and what challenges come with it. Interested in the topic? Read more in our report about cloud optimized formats. Mattia Panduri from Canton Ticino explained how they used QGIS to harmonise the cantonal building datasets and Timothée Produit from IG Group SA presented how pic2map helps bring photos to maps. 

To round up the morning, Nyall Dawson from North Road Consulting did a live session around the world to show the latest developments around elevation filtering in QGIS.

In the afternoon, workshops followed. Claas Leiner led a QGIS expression one while Matthias and Michael showed how to leverage QGIS processing for building geospatial data processing workflows. 

The first QGIS model baker user meeting took place in the third room. The participants discussed this fantastic tool we developed to make INTERLIS work smarter and more productive.

It was a very rich and constructive QGIS user day. We came home with plenty of new ideas and a sense of fulfilment, seeing how great the community we observed and helped grow has become.

A big thanks go to the organisers and everyone involved in making such a great event happen. Only the beer in the sunshine was literally watered by the rain. Nevertheless, there were exciting discussions in the station bistro or in the restaurant coaches on the way home.

See you next time and keep contributing