Map-making with QGIS
Have you ever wondered how maps are made? In this article, we will take our first step towards making maps from spatial data using Quantum Geographic Information System (QGIS).
QGIS is one of the most widely used open source desktop tools for mapmaking and basic GIS analysis. You can download it from http:// download. qgis. org. QGIS is useful for visualising and editing spatial data, and for querying its features. Features are the geographical objects in the layer, e. g., each individual airport is a feature in the airports layer. A feature will have attributes describing it, such as the geometry, name, category, etc.
QGIS has a Map Composer, which allows you to add the essential map elements and get the map printready. QGIS comes with dozens of handy plug- ins, and a Python console, just in case developers want to interact with the data through the command interface. For this tutorial, we will be using version 1.7.3 with the Alaska dataset available at http:// download. osgeo. org/ qgis/ data/ qgis_ sample_ data. zip.
Visualise shapefiles
QGIS supports most common vector file formats— Shapefile, KML, GML, GPX, etc. The procedure to open the files is the same for all formats: 1. On the menu, click Add Vector
Layer.
2. Browse to the source (for our example, the qgis_sample_data/ shape les directory). alaska. shp and airports.shp). Figure 1 shows the Map Canvas with the Alaska and Airports layers.