QGIS: Creating Map Layouts - Printing and Exporting

This webinar takes participants through the process of creating a new print composer, adding elements, editing them, and saving the whole shebang in QGIS. QGIS is a free and open source GIS software.

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Closed Caption:

hello everyone this is leslie pilch at
the vermont center for geographic
information and we will be starting the
webinar in just a few moments and give
people this another minute or two to
sign on
seconds not probably a full minute or
two
so we're going to start today with and
this webinar by the way is qgis creating
a map layouts printing and exporting and
we're going to start today with this one
slide of information about how to use
the go to webinar interface
I just want to make sure everybody's on
the same page in terms of understanding
how to use it as you can see you can
open and close the panel that you should
have be seeing on the right side of your
screen using this little orange button
so if you find that the panels in your
way can't see stuff on your screen if
you just click on that button it will
make that panel kind of collapse to the
side and then when you want to bring it
back out you'll still see this little
thing here and you can just click on the
orange button to open it back up again
if you want to type in a question for
instance
another thing that you might want to
check just in case anybody is having any
sound issues i want to point out the
fact that you can adjust your audio mode
if you need to if you're not hearing
stuff make sure to open up your audio
panel and check things are set correctly
in there
if for some reason you need to switch
from mic and speakers to telephone the
number to call should be in there as
well don't call the number on your
screen right now call the number that's
in your audio panel you'll notice that
you've got a questions box in your panel
that's where you can type in questions
that will come directly to me
can type them at any time I may not
answer them till the end depending on
the questions but you can type them in
at any time i'll i'll probably take a
look at their periodically to see if
anyone's got questions
like I said probably questions will be
answered it and and then I also want to
point out another little button on your
panel around this part of your panel and
that's the little raise your hand button
which is a certain orange yellow hand
with old green arrow on it
if everybody could click on that button
right now that would give me some
assurance that you can all hear me
I should also tell you okay good
hesitation there is to get all they can
talk into nothing
wait if everybody could click on that
would be really helpful
so I should also tell you you're all
right now muted so you don't have to
worry about any noise going on in the
background at your end being bothered
anybody else because you are muted and
the main way for you to communicate with
me is indeed through this questions box
and and when you type in questions
everyone else doesn't see them they just
come to me
I that's most of what i wanted to say
and then the final thing is that this
this webinar is being recorded and i
will be posting it by the end of this
week probably the latest within a few
days at our YouTube page and i just want
to go there right now to show you
so this is our r.v cgi youtube page
called Vermont geospatial and as you can
see we have some other webinars posted
here one of which is a little bit old
and is going to get replaced after next
week's webinar but you can see that I i
post our most recent one the promise of
reality of free and open-source
introduction the National map
I'm getting better be getting those
posted fairly quickly and yeah so you
can do stuff on the youtube page at our
website you'll see a link to this so you
can always just go to youtube and search
for vcg I Vermont center for geographic
Vermont geospatial anything like that
but if you can't figure out how to find
that on youtube you can go to the events
section of our website by clicking on
this big tab on the left that says
events and then below that if you click
on events archive
you'll end up in this section of our
website and notice that webinars is
linked right there and all of the way
each webinar just has a link that takes
you right to the YouTube page not to
that specific video to be honest but
just YouTube page
so as things and actually i need to add
some things to this page so that's where
that is
that's all I wanted to do 40 and that's
right the final thing is that you will
receive a you will receive an email
about a day after this webinar is over
and it will remind you that the the
recorded webinar will be posted and I
think that actually has the link and get
changed that link so that it does
actually go directly to the YouTube page
so that you can see those videos or this
video or any of the others
so I think that's all we need to do for
intro and so i'm going to close the
stuff down out of our way and open up
quantum so our webinar today is going to
be about using quantum GIS or qgis i use
version 1.7 point for notice or actually
it says it up at the top as well which
is not the most recent version
those of you who have been coming to
these webinars know that I explained
that I did a load the 1.8 version at
some point in the past six months or
three months and there were a couple
things about it that were funky that I
didn't understand and to be honest I
didn't have time to figure them out and
and so I decided to just go back to the
previous version
there's not a huge differences between
the versions so and i will eventually
get catch catch up and become more up to
date on the version but for now i'm
using this version and like I said
there's not a huge differences between
the different versions
Oh actually maybe I'll very briefly talk
about qgis qgis is free open source
software free means free open source
means code
it's and that actually makes it work is
literally open anybody can get the code
download the code change the code
there's a whole kind of community of
people that work on the code and the
nice thing about that is that it means
that it's never going to be
it's never going to cost money because
it's just out there anybody lots of
people have copies of the software and
it means there's a lot of people always
working on it trying to improve it which
is why they do have a new versions
fairly often and there's a fair amount
of support and there's some forms and
stuff on the QGIS web page but if you
would like to get to Jace if you don't
already have it you can just come to
this website and download it and there's
a fairly good user manual as well and
then like I said there are some forums
that I think her linked right from here
maybe the chat page and in the community
page
so a lot of the people who are using it
up our conduct a key so some of the
discussions are a little bit above my
level for instance and possibly above
yours but I'm but there's also some
stuff that that can give you answers to
questions that you have about
functionality and plugins different
issues
so just throw that out there so here it
is here's qgis looks a lot like arcview
for any of you who have used are you
somewhat similar to arcgis a little bit
less intimidating my friend in my
opinion it's a little bit simpler but
and again for anyone who hasn't
participated in these before i should
mention that i'm not starting this
webinar assuming that you know nothing
i'm not going to go through everything
about how to use the software I'm kind
of starting at the point of assuming
you've at least used it a little bit
played with it no the basic
functionality and what today we're just
going to focus on the really creating
maps creating the types of maps that you
might want to print and publish in a
variety of ways and and it's not a
cartography lesson or so my focus here
is not not excellent design and that
kind of thing it's really just the basic
functionality of how to create a map
layout with the various elements that
you would include a map layout and I
feel like there's something else was
going to say that I lost but
so I want to start off by just opening
an existing project so in order to open
an existing project there's a number of
different ways but i'm just going to
click on this icon up in the upper left
corner looks kind of like a blue folder
with something in it and for some reason
it's not 100 generally when your cursor
hovers over an icon it tells you what it
does and it's not doing that right at
the moment
well if it doesn't start doing that
might actually shut it down turn it back
on
so here's an existing exercise an
existing project map project that i've
created in the past
it's it's an exercise i use in the
training that I do during the summer so
that just means the information that
saved within this project
it includes the data layers that I
included in it and really what it
includes is pathways that lead to you
can see there are pathways that lead to
wear this data layer is on my computer
in this case
so for each of these you can see that
that's kind of what pops up is the just
the path to where this data is shape
file data
it also saves the information about
symbology that I've chosen you know the
towns are pale yellow with great about
borders the watershed boundaries are
blue
the leak is blue it also saves things
like the fact that not all of these
layers are showing right now even though
they're all turned on and that's because
they are set to only show at certain
scales so it retains that information
seems that the project
ok so let's say I want to make an actual
map layout
I don't want to just do a screenshot or
just an image of the map itself i want
full on map as a title and everything
my first step is has to do these two
buttons appear that kind of look like
printers one of them has a little star
burst on it
one of them does not the one that has
little starburst is basically the new
print composer
button little starburst is supposed to
meet new brand new
I'm be print the one that doesn't have a
little star brush will will come back to
a little bit later but that's just the
print composer button so that would mean
if you had existing layouts already set
up
they would be listed in here and you can
pick out which one you want it since
we're starting from scratch
we're going to click on the new print
composer button and just to show you
what has happened if you look down at
the bottom of my screen you can see that
but when I put my cursor over the QGIS
icon i now have two different quantum
windows that are open one is my i can
just go back to my map window and the
other is my composure window which is
currently just by default called
composer one I want to point out that
the way this works so this obviously is
our map layout over here is this our
imaginary piece of paper and we haven't
added anything to it yet nothing gets
put in there automatically as we start
adding things you're going to see that
so right now the item tab there's
nothing there the general tab always
refers the general tab up here at the
top and this is an important distinction
because it gets a little bit confusing
but this general tab up at the top
refers to information and settings that
have to do with the layout as a whole it
as you can see it mostly has to do with
things like the size of your page so i
can this by default is some crazy metric
thing and i'm going to change it to in
half by 11
i'm also going to change my orientation
to portrait
just because i know for montes vertical
and I prefer to have a portrait
orientation going to change the quality
of the the dots per inch which
is the resolution of the image that i'm
going to be making basically i'm going
to lower it a little bit if you were
doing an image if you're creating a map
that you wanted to print out on paper
and have it be really good quality want
to keep it high DPI if you're creating a
map image or a layout that you want to
post on a website
on the other hand looking for creating a
map a full map with a title and
everything but what it's really going to
be used for is on a website make it a
lower DPI because the lower DPI means a
smaller digital image in my smaller mean
number of white higher DPI s has more
resolution therefore its takes up a
little bit more digital space and then
there's some good stuff that we don't
care about so we're not going to do
great but you can play with all those
things if you have QGIS yourself
so just remember this general tab
applies to the whole layout as we start
adding items you'll see that the item
tab is going to be changed depending on
what item were more active with the
first thing we want to do obviously is
add a map and notice that you've got all
these pretty icons up here and now
think of this as I put my cursor over
them you get a little little description
of what did it so if you can't remember
what things are you can always just
hover your cursor over them
you also can always access all the same
things using the Layout tab
so all exactly the same options are
listed here but they actually have the
name next
so maybe that's a little bit easier so
if I want to add a map click that
nothing happens but if I now use my
cursor to draw a box
there's my map so something to keep in
mind is that for this one and delete
that this one
you don't just click on the map so i
just did a left single click that
doesn't do anything i need to actually
draw the spot where i want that map to
go in order to make it show up
you can see these little little boxes in
the corners
it's a fairly standard way of showing
that this is the element that is
selected right now
also notice that you can change the size
of the element by dragging almost
corners if you just want to move the
whole thing around just make sure you're
not on one of those corner boxes
anywhere else on that element you can
just left click drag it around to move
it so I'm just doing left click hold my
left button down drag it around
something that's what I found slightly
confusing
it took me a little while to figure this
out is that right now
the type of selection tool I'm using
remove item tool perhaps is the one on
the Left that's called select move
item that's the blue hand with the
little arrow and that as as the name
implies means i can select remove a
whole
I the one just to the right of it on the
other hand which has the hand on the
little globe you the name of it actually
is very meaningful move
item content and what that allows me to
do is actually within this map frame it
allows me to move my map which can which
is nice because if you'll see that as we
adjust things things change and you
might just you know this might end up
like this and you just want to drag it
back up
so there you go just have to remember
which hand you're using occasionally
your forget which hand you're using and
then when you try to go
you know move this like what's happening
it's not working
just remember you need to go back and
change to the other the other selection
tool you'll also probably notice that
that the degree to which our Maps fills
up our map element box probably isn't
right at the moment and i will show you
in just a second how to change that
something to keep in mind though is that
sometimes it might actually be better to
wait till closer to the end of your
process to change this just because as
you continue to mess with it change
things you may find every time you
resize this box / you know that your
your scale your level of zoomed in this
is not going to be right
and you're going to have to keep
adjusting it so might actually make
sense to wait until the end to do that
it's think think in terms of elements
right now that's the most important
thing
so we have a map element and it's
highlighted which is important because
if it was there and it wasn't
highlighted don't know was so can I
guess because it's the only thing
they're right
generally it needs to be highlighted
especially when there are multiple
elements the item tab is now always
going to refer to which every element is
highlighted
so here's our map element in the item
area I'm tab
we have four different sections so right
now it by default goes to the map
section but look down below a little bit
and you'll see there's an extents
section a grid section and a general
options section section
so if we're in general options you can
see all of them listed here so these are
just within the item tab so general
options has to do with the frame which
you can see it even when it's not
highlighted the frame is showing we can
turn that off if we want to or we can
change the color and we can change the
thickness we can give it back on color
which is going to fill in that map
element that hideous we go
yeah maybe not and generally well not
always but i like to get rid of the
frame
there we go grid again we're not going
to do anything with the grid so we're
not i'm not going to go into that right
here but if you need a grid you can see
that you can show it then you have
control over all sorts of
characteristics of it
extent also i'm not really gonna mess
with this
I think this is just more of a different
way to move the map around in there so
I'm not going to mess with texas i can
just drag it around
in the math section this is where we
have control of the few important things
if we change the preview to rectangle
that turns that map element into just a
a placeholder
so we don't need to worry about the map
looks like if it if you find it
distracting to have the map there when
you're really just working on the layout
you can do this
I personally find that a little bit
weird because I'm you can see your mouth
your other two options are cash and
render i usually even on cash because
what that does is it gives you your map
it will change the way your map looks as
you change things like your scale but it
won't necessarily draw the map to the
highest possible resolution so it's a
little bit faster
sometimes the render option slows you
down because then every time it redraw
the map it's drawing it perfectly and
there's not really any reason for that I
don't think so that's our map item is
anything else i want to say about that
we'll go back to resizing it or changing
the scale in a moment
ok so basically you've got a map on
there you can move it around you can you
can do things to it
other elements that we want to add all
access to be these buttons and not so
obvious one is the add new label so
label really just need to add text to
this layout so that's what we will use
to do a title can see you just all you
all i did was left click on the map and
it just stuck in this little text thing
automatically puts in quantum GIS i'll
have to do is go over here automatically
opens up the item tab for this item
label or text box and I have to do is go
ahead and highlight and Sarah I want to
get the title to type in watershed
boundaries
I can
immediately change the font to something
the ANC or i can change the size
notice that the little box does not
automatically resize so i need to drag
that out
change it can change the color i can
change the alignment both horizontal and
vertical and this is just the margin
I guess the mark how big of a marginal
well it doesn't seem to be doing
anything automatic so i'm not sure what
the margin the point of marches
so again notice the in our item tab
we're in the label section but there's
also always a general options special
section within any particular item tab
so again this is for the frame the
background of this item and whether we
want to frame it all which i don't know
i'm going to make Nick away
oh and i didn't mention this but you can
see that there's this third tab called
command history and it literally keeps
track of every single thing you've done
just lists at all so if you're
interested going back and figure out
what you did wrong
I suppose that would be very handy I
would find this this would drive me
crazy if I looked at this too much to go
back here
alright so we have a title we have a map
that's too small
let's make our element bigger here
so other things we might want to add
probably a legend
so again we just click and notice that
mostly what I'm doing with these buttons
up here nothing happens when i click on
the button the icon
all I'm doing is sort of turning my
cursor into a tool that can now do that
can now add that particular element
so I've clicked on the add new vector
legend and now i just have to do a left
click on the map layout and it just
automatically creates and sticks a
legend in there which is nice but
luckily we can edit this legend quite a
bit because you'll notice that since I'm
zoomed out in my map on my map to full
extent a lot of these data layers are
not actually showing they're not visible
at the scale so i don't really want them
in my in my legend
so that means i'm going to go into my
item tab my legend and i'm going to
start changing things now the general
section of the item tab for the legend
is where you do things like fonts and
you kind of have to play this little bit
to figure out which of these applies to
which thing
the title font is fairly obvious that
this indeed the title which we can get
rid of the title of we want to we can
change it
a group font in this case there is no
there are no groupings
so if you were to change group fun you
would find nothing happened these are
layers however and we can change the
layer font to something just to make
sure you can see
ok
so we change the layer font and then
again there aren't any items in here
that have fun to associate with them so
we don't need to change the item . if
you had a very complicated legend you
would find that you could have these
three different layers in addition to
the title symbol with similar height all
this stuff
this is going to change the sizes of
your order they called swatches your
little swatches that represent the
colors and the textures of your map
items map layers the symbology so if you
want to change any of those you do have
control over those select in the general
section we go into the legend items
section this is where we actually see
the list of all the items have shown up
it's the same so the first thing that I
ask myself is do I really want all of
these in here and I think now i want to
get rid of the ones that are not
actually represented on the map at the
scale
so for instance water dlg lake Polly is
a data layer that you would be seeing if
we resumed in quite a bit more but it's
not showing at this level so I'm
actually just going to delete it and I
do that by highlighting it just a left
click on it to highlight it and click on
the minus button down at the bottom so
the way we do stuff to the elements that
are listed in the legend as we highlight
it go down to the bottom and we can just
get rid of it by clicking on negative
roads also not not showing at this level
so going to get rid of those tourism
wreck sites boating . also not showing
going to get rid of those national cons
pub is conserved lands also not showing
at this
the scales get rid of that so now i have
three things left and indeed if i look
at this map i know that i have three
things showing here i have the watershed
boundaries
the blue I have town boundaries and then
I have Lake Champlain
now the other thing about my legend that
I don't like very much as the fact that
the names of data layers are the
original names of the data layers which
means that kind of cryptic they're not
very good for a map that I might want to
hand to someone
so i can actually edit what my legend
says now keep in mind that that right
now
this legend was created by the
information from the actual map being
automatically fed into it
that's that's why it had when it had on
it that's why the names are as they are
but i can now edit it and I'm not
changing anything on my original map
I'm not changing the names of my data
layers not changing what I see on that
real map just in the in this composer
this layout
I can change this i can edit this so i
highlight this first layer water w bd8
VT underscore Polly and I go down here
to the icon that has a little pencil
that's the Edit course it's not showing
with the hover thing right now so i
click on that and it gives me the
ability to edit this and i'm just going
to change this to a watershed boundaries
and I might want to be more specific
than that I believe these are the hunky
watershed boundaries
I could include that in the title i want
to but i'm just going to washing powders
the second thing listed here is the
layer that shows Lake Champlain just
going to call that Lake Champlain and
the third one is the town boundaries
pipe down okay so there we go
I've got slightly more logical
understandable legend
oh the other thing that I can do is
change the order of items in this legend
so I think I want town boundaries to be
above Lake Champlain in this list again
it's not changing anything about the map
or the order things appear on the map or
the way things are drawn on the map this
is just within the legend at this point
it's just a relatively dumb element that
just has some text in it and some
symbols we can change them so i'm going
to highlight Lake Champlain and now i
can use the little arrows down at the
bottom and by clicking on the down arrow
that just pushes it down one
below the town boundaries something else
to know is that if I did all this and
then I realize oh I did this wrong
I took out one of the data layers that
is showing I wanted to come back
there's a not perfect option but and
that's certainly an option that allows
you to recover which is if you click on
the Update button which i'm not going to
do right now
well actually maybe it will stop that
people oh no it didn't do
ok so that's interesting when i click on
update i believe it just undid the one
thing that let me just check that out
no i'm not sure what that to do so
notice that clicking on all brought back
the original the the original layers
that was shown and the names of the
layer so you can see all that did was go
back to like put it back the way it was
originally when it all got sucked in
in terms of content not in terms of
fonts obviously so basically if you if
you do it too many things and you just
want to bring them all back
you can click on all and it'll bring
them all back I'm not honestly sure what
update it updated something but i think
i missed it
yeah
and the reason that auto update is here
I believe it means that the changes we
make over here automatically show up
over here
oh maybe that's the update is an auto
updates off
no no not sure
I'm blanking on what would update and
auto update - all right so we'll just
not worry about the fact that my legend
has now gone back to the way it was
before work , and remember that we can
move that around we can resize that
although notice that the contents don't
really get changed their sizes don't get
changed because we control those
directly in the item
sorry the general areas where we change
the font so item options right item
options in this particular for this
particular item item options is where we
go to do things like the frame we could
leave a frame and give it a background
color if we wanted or we can say never
mind actually
gender is afraid to believe that I'm ah
there's anything else about the legend
like I said if we don't even want it to
say legend the top we just delete that
ok so we
the legend
so i'll mention this and all apologize
for the fact that this is the one thing
about this that i think is a little bit
lame and i swear i had a student in a
class last summer
who helped me figure out how to change
the way the skill bar works or rather
the units on the scale bar but just now
today I was trying to remember how we
did that and it didn't seem to work so
the thing that's a little bit lame about
the scale bar we click on scale bar
right here
click on the map it appears you can see
that the units are probably not
something that is useful and and
intuitive - I believe that the units
this is showing our meters because those
are the actual coordinates
those are the units that the coordinates
in the mapping system that this data was
created in uses so the the coordinates
that are inherent to the data are
actually meters and therefore this is
just using meters having having a skill
bar meters is just not helpful to most
of us I think because we don't do metric
even if we did we would walk kilometers
so I'm not going to talk a lot about
scale bar cause I don't find it that
useful until I can figure out whether i
can configure it more to my own use
I'm not that impressed by this caliber
if anybody has any tips that they want
to give me because they've played around
this
I would be happy to hear them and passed
them on all warn you that this little
and arrow thing is not a North arrow
it's just if you want to add arrows to
your layout that involve . of .
ding yeah come up all right let's try
that again
you have to do is cut down the number
two there
yeah ok so if you wanted to put an arrow
on your layout and actually . something
and perhaps put some text on here - you
know I light something on your map you
can put an arrow on here if we look at
change which . our no no I guess I don't
know how to do the arrow but i really
don't seem to have done the arrow in the
past but not recently so again i'm sorry
i was pretty sure that there was a thing
that allowed us to change the direction
that points there does not seem to be so
we're going to make the arrow go away as
well so that is not a North arrow and
i'll show you how to put northera on
this little camera icon right here and
i'll just remind you that all of these
are in the layout menu and it actually
says what they're so the camera is an ad
image tool
and we just click on the map and
sometimes it takes a minute so all that
was actually quite quick but often i
click on the map in it and it seems to
take 30 seconds before anything shows up
on the right so don't don't assume that
nothing has happened just wait a minute
nothing's going to show up in your
actual image box because you haven't
picked anything yet
you can see that there are a bunch of
little icons to choose from and among
them are some North arrows
so we could pick something in here as in
North this is also what would you would
use if you actually wanted to add a
photograph a logo
I any other kind of image besides just
all these these icons jobs that you can
use these
but if you had your own logo or image or
photo that you wanted to add you would
click on ADD and you navigate to it and
you would say once you picked it you
would put it in here
oh this is to add am this is actually to
add a folder of images
so if you had a folder of images you
could add them in here and they would
actually show up down in this in this
box and you just choose it and add it in
you can see that you have some options
here in terms of width and height this
just changes the width and height of
variable image box which you can also do
but just dragging the corners
ok
and you can see that this is
automatically going to this particular
directory
ok so that
adding either in North her or some other
kind of image oh you may have noticed
that i use the zoom in and zoom out tool
it just sort of automatically zooms you
in a set amount to out a set amount can
always presumed in NYC them out to full
extent by clicking on the one that has
the little red arrows the magnifying
glass and as with everything at it when
you hover over it tells you what it is
the two arrows just to the left of the
add new map are the kind of undue back
and forth we can
add basic shapes
there's no no maybe takes a second
so by default to try that again
yeah by default it put in an ellipse
you can change it I guess it's just an
ellipse triangle
obviously you have a little bit of
control over what it looks like
so if you need a shape
here's an interesting things so I seem
to put my little little tiny dot on here
by accident and it's actually kind of
behind the map element which makes it
hard for me to choose it because now it
just thinks that I'm clicking on the the
map there's actually an icon repair tool
up here that's going to let us hopefully
so this
this tool is called the Rays selected
item but we can actually also lower and
raise and lower has to do with the
layering of the various elements of the
map so if you have a fairly busy map
that has elements that that overlap each
other at least in terms of their their
kind of virtual boundaries not
necessarily like the map in the legend
but you can see that the box that the
map is in actually does overlap with the
legend and in this case the little .
that i added is tucked behind
so if I lower the map i should be able
to no it's not work send to back
well so much for that
another
option is just to have the way it
doesn't want to highlight
that's interesting yeah
Suman
no it doesn't want to let me get rid of
my little tiny lips
sure what that is
all right i'm giving up on that sorry
not sure what that's not letting me
choose that one other thing I wanted to
show about kind of the overall overall
management of items on your page is that
one
once you get a number of different
elements on here and you kind of start
to feel like oh ok i like that i like
the way they're all they are in relation
to one another
you might want to go ahead and group
them
so I've got my map element highlighted
if I hold down my shift key
I can also highlight the watershed
boundaries
the North arrow and the legends now i
notice that they all have their little
boxes around the edges of them that show
that they are highlighted and if I now
go over here and click on my group items
button
they now become one group the item which
just means i can't accidentally change
oh I guess I didn't get there we go
I can't accidentally change their
orientation to each other which is just
convenient if you've gotten to the point
where you think you kind of have it laid
out the way you wanted to you can always
ungroup them so it's not a permanent
thing
just remember that once you one group
and just click somewhere off away from
all of them and then nothing is
highlighted
I just got to take a look i have a
couple of questions if I can undo what
I've done
I did too many things before
- suggestion to use undo to get rid of
my . i think i think i've already done
too many things by then
just ok i noticed that somebody else has
the little hand raised thing and i just
want to point out that if you do have a
specific question
go ahead and use the question box to
type in your question that will get sent
directly to me
ok so grouping grouping and one grouping
or up arrow and then notice that this
final icon allows you to align things so
if say you wanted to align things like
the North arrow and the and the legend
Oh
one of the things that you can add which
is kind of nice just because it's easy
to add is the attribute table
so if for some reason that's something
that you needed to do is add an
attribute table
the attribute table you just click on
add an attribute table click on your map
and there it is now keep in mind that
this particular attribute table is this
going the towns and that's actually an
interesting question it does not ask you
which attribute table
so how did you pick that one
forgot to check that out for him
Oh might be picking the one on the
bottom two
try something
no stop in town it
I'm just trying to see if there's any
option for it to choose a different
attribute table
no not sure how it's picking up
oh no Chuck let's make that go back to
the way it was
so no
I'm I'm refreshing my map so that it
reflects what's actually going on in my
mind map view
ok attribute ability that was the last
thing I wanted to show
adding to your map and then we talked
about editing all of these things using
the item so again the first time I
started the first few times I tried
using the composer I was a little bit
confused by how much there is over here
on the right axis so i encourage you to
just play with this to where it becomes
fairly logical that that general tab is
always about your whole layout the item
tab
obviously always relate so whichever
item you have highlighted chosen within
that item tablet is often more than you
realize because there are multiple
sections within the item tab and item
types can be different for every item
because for instance when we're looking
at our image we just have lots and lots
of little icons try anything else i want
to point out just about these features
yeah all right so let me go back to
something that I said I would go back to
in your map item which I sort of just
created and said oh don't worry about
the fact that looks a little bit stupid
we're going to go back and and fiddle
with a little bit now
so in the map section of the item tab
for the map element notice that in this
section right here we have scale
so right now it is set to one
the scale is one to two million 508 her
and thirty five hundred thousand eight
hundred thirty-five
so I'm going to try changing that scale
to just two million
Oh what happens
so you can
that by changing the scale it changed
how much my my map image my map actually
fills up the map element
I can fiddle with a little bit more to
make it a little bit bigger
now eventually if i were to drastically
change this so what I'm doing is I'm
making this number smaller which is a
way of doing in essentially so let me
just change a lot 50,000 I've just gone
from your 12 million
now i'm going to want to 50,000 which if
you start thinking about scales that
makes sense when the two million means
you're zoomed way out 150 thousand
things are starting to zoom in
so if i do that suddenly i'm i'm just in
one little part of the state which is
what i want to do and you can see that
i'm starting to see now other data
layers in here
ah so that's not what i want to i want
to get to a point in this particular map
where I can see my whole my full extent
so i'm going to go back to about stroke
1 million seven fifty thousand books
there
well let's see I'm going to get a little
bit and notice that I can move my map
around a little bit but now i'm a little
bit outside of what I can fit
almost there
so now
that fits within the area that i have
decided is going to be my map and my
software school ah ah there's nothing so
I just experienced what I always warning
people about if you have your move
item content as your selected tool when
you try to click outside of your map
element and kind of highlight a
different map element doesn't work we
need to switch my tool my cursor back
over to the select move
item tool and that will allow me to move
different items
I could make this figure
so like
that not a beautiful map not perfect
cartography but the point here is just
to show you how
what you have control over and how to
control it so that you can make it as
perfect as you want to
alright so let's say i'm done i've done
what I'm going to do I like this
I have a variety of options in terms of
what i want to do at this point one
thing i should do actually as I should
well not gonna save I'm going to do it
differently
I'm it does automatically save
everything you doing here actually even
if you don't save it if you just are
working on you do something a shut it
down shut it down
it does automatically save it so we're
going to go back to our composure
manager
remember we're not going to create a new
print composer we're just going to go to
the manager there is the default one
default name for the one that I just
worked on going to rename it to say
watershed boundaries and then
show means I want to get back in their
work on it
there it is
at this point i can choose to export it
as an image export it as a PDF export it
as an SVG and to be honest I don't know
what that means
or i could just print it print obviously
just going to take me to whatever
printers i have access to PDF
this gives me a save as box image
notice that you get to choose what image
format we go to do this
you don't just have one option of many
options so i can do any of those things
at this point or I don't have to do
anything I can just leave it as a
digital layout essentially and close
that up
and so remember that the point of this
composer manager is that I could do
multiple layouts of this map
you know i might do one male this layout
the statewide and i might do some other
regional layouts or layouts that show
different data layer so you can use one
map to do multiple map layouts and each
of them will be saved separately and I
think that was pretty much everything I
needed to cover so I'm going to take a
look at what questions are in here and i
encourage all of you who have been
listening quietly if you have questions
at this point this is the good time to
get to ask them open this back up and
i'll see if we have any questions
open up my question box be able to read
them
ok how do i get other data layers such
as personal information or dear yards ok
that's it that's a separate question
from what we're covering today but i
will talk about that when we're done
oh all right Valerie put it out there
when I put the table in the map it looks
like there was a spot to change
oh good . item
hold on a second
this is I'm glad Valerie pointed this
out this silly of me not to remember
this
so when I have the attribute table as my
element over on the right in the item
tab
remember the item tab is what controls
that particular item is where we choose
which which data which layer want for
that particular attribute table which
attribute table essentially we want to
show here and again we could do this
multiple times we get you a bunch if we
wanted to if there is some value to have
an attribute table there which I know
there is on some maps
Thank You Valerie for pointing that out
and it looks like we can even choose
which attributes we show so we don't
have to show all of them
we can just show whichever 13 want to
and we can change the order
so this up just point out that although
this is not most people would feel that
that qgis is not nearly as powerful in
terms of making map latest arcgis it
does give you a lot of control
I think I'm impressed by the fact that
again for a free software program
it's really not designed to be
production about making it nonetheless
you quite a bit of control over stuff
ok go back to the other other questions
we have
ok so it
asking me to to zoom in on one town how
do i get other data layer such as
partial information so i think maybe is
what you're asking add that if I just
get rid of this
if i zoom in on on something on this map
and actually i'm just going to go back
to my real map that if i zoom in on this
that i'm going to see other day layers
and that's true but remember I'm still
only going to see the data layers i have
here so I don't have partial data work
dear wintering arts in this particular
map project so i can zoom in and we will
indeed see some different layers start
to appear become visible
so what we have here the green lines are
road
you're starting to see these smaller
lakes and ponds and this little black
dot here is the tourism wreck sites and
i'll just briefly to a quick identify on
that so that
so that you can see what that is so
that's a day later that all sorts of
attributes to go down a little bit
so this is more popular high school and
what this data layer shows is different
types of recreational options here and
the address in the contact information
so in this particular map I don't have
that type of data i can very briefly go
back to our website at the end here and
just show people how to get other data
so again this was just a project that i
had created previously that i am
choosing to use to demonstrate how to
how to do the map composition stuff
okay does anybody have any other
questions
we're getting to the end some people may
be getting ready to leave rather than
ask questions
ok I'm not seeing any other questions so
i think i'm going to quickly go back
over to our website and
and
just quickly show everyone so actually
what one thing I'll do is point out the
fact that down it and under the upcoming
events here
this is today's webinar next week we
have a webinar that is a tour of our
website and all and i want to emphasize
that it's not just a tour of the website
it's actually toward the website which
is going to include a focus on
downloading data and also some of the
things that have changed in our recent
to Bob changes we had some some fairly
major recent changes that have mostly
been background stuff but also included
the website and also have included some
changes to how you can access and
download imagery
so we're going to go through that next
week in next week's webinar
the women are after that is actually a
repeat webinar of mapping for emergency
management we're going to redo that live
so it's not just replaying an existing
but now we're going to actually do it
over again because the first time we did
it
well first I'm pretend it didn't happen
on the data was scheduled and then when
we did do it
the recording didn't work and i would
really like to have that recorded so
we're going to offer it again
it was a fair amount of interest in it
so if anybody has any other questions
feel free to email them to me directly
oops we just provide contact info on
here
oh my contact info is right there it's
on the front page of the website over
here so you can just email me or call me
if you have any questions that come up
after the webinar and OH
keep in mind that back at that youtube
page we do have most not quite all the
most of the previously recorded qgis
webinars so we have understanding and
using attribute data layer properties
maybe just those two and then we'll have
this one posted as well
eventually i will have all of the all of
the QGIS related webinars posted here so
if you're interested in qgis he should
be available soon
this is this winter and spring anyway
so i think i will probably stop there
and hope that everybody has a good day
thanks for joining me and please do take
a moment to fill out the very very brief
feedback survey that you will get a link
to as you exit
it helps me a lot of people answer those
questions and give me feedback so thanks
have a good day