Tag: opengis.ch

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 !

Oslandia is the main partner of OPENGIS.ch around QField. We are proud today to forward the announcement of the new QField release 3.3 “Darién”. This release introduces a brand new plugin framework that empowers users to customize and add completely new functionalities to their favourite field application.

The plugin framework comes with other new features and improvements for this release, detailed below.

Main highlights

One of the biggest feature additions of this version is a brand new drawing tool that allows users to sketch out important details over captured photos or annotate drawing templates. This was a highly requested feature, which is brought to all supported platforms (Android, iOS, Windows, macOS, and, of course, Linux) with the financial support of the Swiss QGIS user group.

Also landing in this version is support for copying and pasting vector features into and from the clipboard. This comes in handy in multiple ways, from providing a quick and easy way to transfer attributes from one feature to another through matching field names to pasting the details of a captured feature in the field into a third-party messenger, word editing, or email application. Copying and pasting features can be done through the feature form’s menu as well as long pressed over the map canvas. Moreover, a new feature-to-feature attributes transfer shortcut has also been added to the feature form’s menu. Appreciation to Switzerland, Canton of Lucerne, Environment and Energy for providing the funds for this feature.

The feature form continues to gain more functionalities; in this version, the feature form’s value map editor widget has gained a new toggle button interface that can help fasten data entry. The interface replaces the traditional combo box with a series of toggle buttons, lowering the number of taps required to pick a value. The German Archaeological Institut – KulturGutRetter sponsored this feature.

Other improvements in the feature form include support for value relation item grouping and respect for the vector layer attributes’ « reuse last entered value » setting.

Finally, additional features include support for image decoration overlay, a new interface to hop through cameras (front, back, and external devices) for the ‘non-native’ camera, the possibility to disable the 3-finger map rotation gesture, and much more.

User experience improvements

Long-time users of QField will notice the new version restyling of the information panels such as GNSS positioning, navigation, elevation profile, and sensor data. The information is now presented as an overlay sitting on top of the map canvas, which increases the map canvas’ visibility while also achieving better focus and clarity on the provided details. With this new version, all details, including altitude and distance to destination, respect user-configured project distance unit type.

The dashboard’s legend has also received some attention. You can now toggle the visibility of any layer via a quick tap on a new eye icon sitting in the legend tree itself. Similarly, legend groups can be expanded and collapsed directly for the tree. This also permits you to show or hide layers while digitizing a feature, something which was not possible until now. The development of these improvements was supported by Gispo and sponsored by the National Land Survey of Finland.

Plugin framework

QField 3.3 introduces a brand new plugin framework using Qt’s powerful QML and JavaScript engine. With a few lines of code, plugins can be written to tweak QField’s behaviour and add new capabilities. Two types of plugins are possible: app-wide plugins as well as project-scoped plugins. To ensure maximum ease of deployment, plugin distribution has been made possible  through QFieldCloud! Amsa provided the financial contribution that brought this project to life.

Our partner OPENGIS.ch will soon offer a webinar to discover how QField plugins can help your field (and business) workflows by allowing you to be even more efficient in the field.

Users interested in authoring plugins or better understanding the framework, can already visit the dedicated documentation page and a sample plugin implementation sporting a weather forecast integration.

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

We are very happy and enthusiasts at Oslandia to forward the QField 3.0 release announcement, the new major update of this mobile GIS application based on QGIS.

Oslandia is a strategic partner of OPENGIS.ch, the company at the heart of QField development, as well as the QFieldCloud associated SaaS offering. We join OPENGIS.ch to announce all the new features of QField 3.0.

Get QField 3.0 now !

Shipped with many new features and built with the latest generation of Qt’s cross-platform framework, this new chapter marks an important milestone for the most powerful open-source field GIS solution.

Main highlights

Upon launching this new version of QField, users will be greeted by a revamped recent projects list featuring shiny map canvas thumbnails. While this is one of the most obvious UI improvements, countless interface tweaks and harmonization have occurred. From the refreshed dark theme to the further polishing of countless widgets, QField has never looked and felt better.

The top search bar has a new functionality that allows users to look for features within the currently active vector layer by matching any of its attributes against a given search term. Users can also refine their searches by specifying a specific attribute. The new functionality can be triggered by typing the ‘f’ prefix in the search bar followed by a string or number to retrieve a list of matching features. When expanding it, a new list of functionalities appears to help users discover all of the tools available within the search bar.

QField’s tracking has also received some love. A new erroneous distance safeguard setting has been added, which, when enabled, will dictate the tracker not to add a new vertex if the distance between it and the previously added vertex is greater than a user-specified value. This aims at preventing “spikes” of poor position readings during a tracking session. QField is now also capable of resuming a tracking session after being stopped. When resuming, tracking will reuse the last feature used when first starting, allowing sessions interrupted by battery loss or momentary pause to be continued on a single line or polygon geometry.

On the feature form front, QField has gained support for feature form text widgets, a new read-only type introduced in QGIS 3.30, which allows users to create expression-based text labels within complex feature form configurations. In addition, relationship-related form widgets now allow for zooming to children/parent features within the form itself.

To enhance digitizing work in the field, QField now makes it possible to turn snapping on and off through a new snapping button on top of the map canvas when in digitizing mode. When a project has enabled advanced snapping, the dashboard’s legend item now showcases snapping badges, allowing users to toggle snapping for individual vector layers.

In addition, digitizing lines and polygons by using the volume up/down hardware keys on devices such as smartphones is now possible. This can come in handy when digitizing data in harsh conditions where gloves can make it harder to use a touch screen.

While we had to play favorites in describing some of the new functionalities in QField, we’ve barely touched the surface of this feature-packed release. Other major additions include support for Near-Field Communication (NFC) text tag reading and a new geometry editor’s eraser tool to delete part of lines and polygons as you would with a pencil sketch using an eraser.

Thanks to Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Groupements forestiers Québec, Amsa, and Kanton Luzern for sponsoring these enhancements.

Quality of life improvements

Starting with this new version, the scale bar overlay will now respect projects’ distance measurement units, allowing for scale bars in imperial and nautical units.

QField now offers a rendering quality setting which, at the cost of a slightly reduced visual quality, results in faster rendering speeds and lower memory usage. This can be a lifesaver for older devices having difficulty handling large projects and helps save battery life.

Vector tile layer support has been improved with the automated download of missing fonts and the possibility of toggling label visibility. This pair of changes makes this resolution-independent layer type much more appealing.

On iOS, layouts are now printed by QField as PDF documents instead of images. While this was the case for other platforms, it only became possible on iOS recently after work done by one of our ninjas in QGIS itself.

Many thanks to DB Fahrwgdienste for sponsoring stabilization efforts and fixes during this development cycle.

Qt 6, the latest generation of the cross-platform framework powering QField

Last but not least, QField 3.0 is now built against Qt 6. This is a significant technological milestone for the project as this means we can fully leverage the latest technological innovations into this cross-platform framework that has been powering QField since day one.

On top of the new possibilities, QField benefited from years of fixes and improvements, including better integration with Android and iOS platforms. In addition, the positioning framework in Qt 6 has been improved with awareness of the newer GNSS constellations that have emerged over the last decade.

Forest-themed release names

Forests are critical in climate regulation, biodiversity preservation, and economic sustainability. Beginning with QField 3.0 “Amazonia” and throughout the 3.X’s life cycle, we will choose forest names to underscore the importance of and advocate for global forest conservation.

Software with service

OPENGIS.ch and Oslandia provides the full range of services around QField and QGIS : training, consulting, adaptation, specific development and core development, maintenance and assistance. Do not hesitate to contact us and detail your needs, we will be happy to collaborate : infos+qfield@oslandia.com

As always, we hope you enjoy this new release. Happy field mapping!