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When you need help on a specific topic, you can access context help via the [Help] button available in most dialogs — please note that third-party plugins can point to dedicated web pages.
QGIS provides by default many panels to work with. Some of these panels are described below while others may be found in different parts of the document. A complete list of default panels provided by QGIS is available at Painéis.
The layers Panel lists all the layers in the project and helps you manage their visibility. A layer can be selected and dragged up or down in the legend to change the Z-ordering. Z-ordering means that layers listed nearer the top of the legend are drawn over layers listed lower down in the legend.
Note
The Z-ordering behavior can be overridden by the Layer Order panel.
At the top of the Layers panel, a toolbar allows you to:
Note
Tools to manage the layers panel are also available to layout the map and legend items of the print composer
The button allows you to add Presets views in the legend. Presets are a way to save and easily restore a combination of layers with their current style. To add a preset view, just set visible the layers you want, with their desired symbology, and click on button. Choose Add Preset... from the drop-down menu and give a name to the preset. The added preset is listed at the bottom of the drop-down menu and is recalled by clicking on it.
The Replace Preset ‣ option helps you overwrite a preset content with the current map view while the Remove Current Preset button deletes the active preset.
All the added presets are also present in the map composer in order to allow you to create a map layout based on your specific views (see Main properties).
Layers in the legend window can be organized into groups. There are two ways to do this:
To bring a layer out of a group, you can drag it out, or right click on it and choose Move to top-level; the layer is placed at the same level than the group it was inside. Groups can also be nested inside other groups.
The checkbox for a group will show or hide all the layers in the group with one click.
Enabling the Mutually Exclusive Group option you can make a group have only one layer visible at the same time. Whenever a layer within the group is set visible the others will be toggled not visible.
It is possible to select more than one layer or group at the same time by holding down the Ctrl key while selecting the layers with the left mouse button. You can then move all selected layers to a new group at the same time.
You may also delete more than one layer or group at once by selecting several items with the Ctrl key and pressing Ctrl+D afterwards. This way, all selected layers or groups will be removed from the layers list.
From the Layers panel, you have shortcuts to easily and quickly edit the layer rendering. Right-click on a vector layer and select Styles ‣ in the list in order to:
Note
The previous options are also available for raster layer.
Whether the features in the vector layer have all the same unique symbol or they are classified (in that case, the layer is displayed in a tree structure with each class as sub-item), the following options are available at layer level or class level:
Tip
Quickly share a layer style
From the context menu, copy the style of a layer and paste it to a group or a selection of layers: the style is applied to all the layers that are of the same type (vector vs raster) as the original layer and, in case of vector, have the same geometry type (point, line or polygon).
There is a panel that allows you to define an independent drawing order for the layers panel. You can activate it in the menu Settings ‣ Panels ‣ Layer Order Panel. This feature allows you to, for instance, order your layers in order of importance, but still display them in the correct order (see figure_layer_order; you can notice that the airports features are displayed over the alaska polygon despite their layers placement in the Layers panel). Unchecking the Control rendering order box underneath the list of layers will cause a revert to default behavior.
This panel is somehow a shortcut to some of the features of the layer properties dialog. It indeed offers you a quick and handy way to define the rendering and the behavior of a layer, and to visualize its effects without opening the layer properties dialog.
Besides avoiding you dealing with the modal and blocking dialog of the layer properties, it also avoids you cluttering the screen with features dialogs given that it embeds most of them (color selector, effects properties, rule edit, label substitution...): e.g., clicking color buttons inside the layer style panel causes the color selector dialog to be opened inside the layer style panel itself rather than as a separate dialog.
From a drop-down list of current layers in the layer panel, select an item and:
Another powerful feature of this panel is the Live update checkbox. Tick it and your changes are automatically rendered in the map canvas as you go on. You no longer need to hit the [Apply] button.
Tip
Add custom tabs to the Layer Styling panel
Using PyQGIS, you can set new tabs to manage layer properties in the Layer Styling Panel. See https://nathanw.net/2016/06/29/qgis-style-dock-part-2-plugin-panels/ for an example.
This panel can show some statistics on a specific vector layers. The panel allows users to choose:
Statistic information available are (depending on the field’s type):
Table: Statistics available for each field type
In QGIS, you can use an overview panel that provides a full extent view of layers added to it. Within the view is a rectangle showing the current map extent. This allows you to quickly determine which area of the map you are currently viewing. Note that labels are not rendered to the map overview even if the layers in the map overview have been set up for labelling. If you click and drag the red rectangle in the overview that shows your current extent, the main map view will update accordingly.
When loading or processing some operations, you can track and follow messages that appear in different tabs using the Log Messages Panel. It can be activated using the most right icon in the bottom status bar.
For each layer being edited, this panel shows the list of actions done, allowing to quickly undo a set of actions by simply selecting the action listed above. More details at Undo and Redo edits.
By default, QGIS renders all visible layers whenever the map canvas is refreshed. The events that trigger a refresh of the map canvas include:
QGIS allows you to control the rendering process in a number of ways.
Scale-dependent rendering allows you to specify the minimum and maximum scales at which a layer (raster or vector) will be visible. To set scale-dependent rendering, open the Properties dialog by double-clicking on the layer in the legend. On the General tab, tick the Scale dependent visibility checkbox and enter the Minimum (exclusive) and Maximum (inclusive) scale values.
You can also activate the scale dependent visibility on a layer from the Layers panel. Right-click on the layer and in the context menu, select Set Layer Scale Visibility.
The Set to current canvas scale button helps you use the current map canvas scale as boundary of the range visibility.
Note
When a layer is not rendered in the map canvas due to the map scale out of its visibility scale range, the layer is greyed in the Layers panel and a new option Zoom to Visible Scale appears in the layer context menu. Select it and the map is zoomed to the layer’s nearest visibility scale.
Map rendering can be controlled in various ways, as described below.
To suspend rendering, click the Render checkbox in the lower right corner of the status bar. When the Render checkbox is not checked, QGIS does not redraw the canvas in response to any of the events described in section Renderização. Examples of when you might want to suspend rendering include:
A activação da caixa de verificação Renderização permite a renderização e actualização imediata do enquadramento do mapa.
You can set an option to always load new layers without drawing them. This means the layer will be added to the map, but its visibility checkbox in the legend will be unchecked by default. To set this option, choose menu option Settings ‣ Options and click on the Rendering tab. Uncheck the By default new layers added to the map should be displayed checkbox. Any layer subsequently added to the map will be off (invisible) by default.
To stop the map drawing, press the ESC key. This will halt the refresh of the map canvas and leave the map partially drawn. It may take a bit of time between pressing ESC and the time the map drawing is halted.
Note
It is currently not possible to stop rendering — this was disabled in the Qt4 port because of User Interface (UI) problems and crashes.
QGIS has an option to influence the rendering quality of the map. Choose menu option Settings ‣ Options, click on the Rendering tab and select or deselect Make lines appear less jagged at the expense of some drawing performance.
There are some settings that allow you to improve rendering speed. Open the QGIS options dialog using Settings ‣ Options, go to the Rendering tab and select or deselect the following checkboxes:
The select color dialog will appear whenever you push the icon to choose a color. The features of this dialog depends on the state of the Use native color chooser dialogs parameter checkbox in Settings ‣ Options ‣ General menu. When checked, the color dialog used is the one of the OS being used. Otherwise, QGIS custom color chooser is used.
Tip
Dynamically change the color with the live-updating option
Check the Use live-updating color chooser dialogs option in the Settings ‣ Options ‣ General menu to have the color applied to your items as soon as you pick it in the color chooser dialog.
The custom color chooser dialog has four different tabs which allow you to select colors by color ramp, color wheel, color swatches or color picker (not available under ).
Whatever method you use, the selected color is always described through color sliders for HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) and RGB (Red, Green, Blue) values. The color is also identifiable as a HTML notation. Finally, there is an opacity slider to set transparency level.
Modifying a color is as simple as clicking in the color wheel or ramp or in any of the color parameters sliders. You can adjust such parameters with the spinbox beside or, handy, scrolling the mouse wheel over the corresponding slider. You can also typeset the color html notation.
The dialog also provides a visual comparison between the current (applied to widget) and the new (being selected) colors. Thanks to drag-and-drop, any of these colors can be saved in a slot for an easy access.
With color ramp or color wheel tab, you can browse to all possible color combinations and apply it to the item. In the color swatches tab, you can choose from a preselected list of color palettes:
The latest palettes can be modified thanks to the and buttons at the bottom of the frame. The ... button nearby the palette combobox also offers several options to:
Another option is to use the color picker which allows you to sample a color from under your mouse pointer at any part of QGIS or even from another application by pressing the space bar. Please note that the color picker is OS dependent and is currently not supported by macOS.
Tip
Quick color modification
Click the drop-down arrow at the right of the color box button to display a widget for a quick color selection, either in the color wheel or from existing color palettes. You can also use it to copy or paste a color.
QGIS offers different options for special rendering effects with these tools that you may previously only know from graphics programs. Blending modes can be applied on layers, on features but also on print composer items:
QGIS provides tools to zoom and pan to your area of interest.
Apart from using the pan and zoom-in / zoom-out icons on the toolbar with the mouse, navigating can also be done with the mouse wheel, spacebar and the arrow keys. A Zoom factor can be set under the Settings ‣ Options ‣ Map tools menu to define the scale behavior while zooming.
You can press the mouse wheel to pan inside of the main window (on macOS, you may need to hold cmd key). You can roll the mouse wheel to zoom in and out on the map; the mouse cursor position will be the center of the zoomed area of interest. Holding down Ctrl while rolling the mouse wheel results in a finer zoom.
Panning the map is possible with the arrow keys. Place the mouse cursor inside the map area, and click on the right arrow key to pan east, left arrow key to pan west, up arrow key to pan north, and down arrow key to pan south.
You can also use the space bar to temporarily cause mouse movements to pan the map. The PgUp and PgDown keys on your keyboard will cause the map display to zoom in or out following the zoom factor set. Pressing Ctrl + or Ctrl - also performs an immediate zoom in/out on the map canvas.
When certain map tools are active (Identify, Measure...), you can perform a zoom by holding down Shift and dragging a rectangle on the map to zoom to that area. This is enabled for the map tools which are not selection tools (since they use Shift for adding to selection) nor edit tools.
QGIS provides four means of measuring geometries:
Measuring works within projected coordinate systems (e.g., UTM) and unprojected data. The first three measuring tools behave equally to global project settings:
However, neither the identify tool nor the field calculator will transform your data to the project CRS before measuring. If you want to achieve this, you have to use the vector analysis tool: Vector ‣ Geometry Tools ‣ Export/Add Geometry Columns. Here, measurement is by default planimetric except if you choose the ellipsoidal measure.
Click the icon in the Attribute toolbar to begin measurements. The downward arrow near the icon helps you switch to the convenient tool to measure length, area or angle. The default unit used in the dialog is the one set in Project ‣ Project Properties ‣ General menu.
Note
Configuring the measure tool
While measuring length or area, clicking the Configuration button at the bottom of the widget helps you define in menu Settings ‣ Options ‣ Map Tools the rubberband color, the precision of the measurements and the unit behavior. You can also choose your preferred measurement or angle units but keep in mind that those values are superseded in the current project by options made in Project ‣ Project Properties ‣ General menu.
All measuring modules use the snapping settings from the digitizing module (see section Configurando a Tolerância de Atracção e Raio de Pesquisa). So, if you want to measure exactly along a line feature, or around a polygon feature, first set its layer snapping tolerance. Now, when using the measuring tools, each mouse click (within the tolerance setting) will snap to that layer.
By default, Measure Line: QGIS measures real distances between given points according to a defined ellipsoid. The tool then allows you to click points on the map. Each segment length, as well as the total, shows up in the measure window. To stop measuring, click your right mouse button.
Note that you can use the drop-down list near the total to interactively change the measurement units while measuring. This unit is kept for the widget until a new or another project is opened.
The Info section in the dialog explains how calculations are made according to CRS settings available.
Measure Area: Areas can also be measured. In the measure window, the accumulated area size appears. Right-click to stop drawing. The Info section is also available as well as the ability to switch between different area units.
Measure Angle: You can also measure angles. The cursor becomes cross-shaped. Click to draw the first segment of the angle you wish to measure, then move the cursor to draw the desired angle. The measure is displayed in a pop-up dialog.
QGIS provides several tools to select features in the map canvas. Selection tools are available in View ‣ Select menu or in the Attributes toolbar.
Note
Selection tools work with the currently active layer.
To select one or several features with the mouse, you can use one of the following tools:
Note
Except the Select Features by Polygon tool, these manual selection tools allow you to select feature(s) in the map canvas with a single click.
While using the Select Feature(s) tool, holding Shift or Ctrl toggles whether feature is selected (ie either adds to the current selection or remove from it).
For the other tools, different behaviors can be performed holding:
The other selection tools, also available from the Attribute table, perform a selection based on feature’s attribute or its selection state (note that attribute table and map canvas show the same information, so if you select one feature in attribute table, it will be selected in map canvas also):
For example, if you want to find regions that are boroughs from regions.shp of the QGIS sample data, you can use the Select features using an Expression icon. Then, you open the Fields and Values menu and choose the field that you want to query. Double-click the field ‘TYPE_2’ and also click [Load all unique values] in the right panel. From the list, choose and double-click ‘Borough’. In the Expression field, then you’d write the following query:
"TYPE_2" = 'Borough'
From the expression builder dialog, you can also use the Function list ‣ Recent (Selection) to make a selection that you used before. The dialog remembers the last 20 used expressions. See Expressões chapter for more information and some example.
Tip
Save your selection into a new file
Users can save selected features into a New Temporary Scratch Layer or a New Vector Layer using Edit ‣ Copy Features and Edit ‣ Paste Features as in the wanted format.
This selection tool opens the layer’s feature form allowing the user to choose, for each field, which value to look for, if the search should be case sensitive, and the operation that should be used.
Alongside each field, there is a drop-down list with the operation options to control the search behaviour. The common options are:
For numeric and datetime fields, the additional options are:
For text fields, the additional options are:
For the text options above, it is also possible to use the Case sensitive option.
After setting all search options, you can use the Select features button to select the matching features. The drop-down options are:
You can also clean all search options using the Reset form button.
Beside many options in the vector layer properties dialog or settings in the print composer, you can find a Data defined override icon. Thanks to expressions based on layer attributes or item settings, prebuild or custom functions and variables, this tool allows you to set dynamic value for the concerned parameter. When enabled, the value returned by this widget is applied to the parameter regardless its normal value (checkbox, textbox, slider...).
Clicking the Data defined override icon shows following entries:
Parameters that can be used with data-defined tools are:
The Identify tool allows you to interact with the map canvas and get information on features in a pop-up window. To identify features, use:
QGIS offers two ways to identify features with the Identify Features tool:
Tip
Filter the layers to query with the Identify Features tool
Uncheck the Identifiable column in Project ‣ (or Settings ‣), Project Properties ‣ Identify layers menu in front of a layer to avoid it being queried when using the Identify Features in a mode other than Current Layer. This is a handy way to return features from only layers that are of interest for you.
If you click on feature(s), the Identify Results dialog will list information about the clicked feature(s). The default view is a tree view where the first item is the name of the layer and its children are its identified feature(s). Each feature is described by the name of a field along with its value. This field is the one set in Layer Properties ‣ Display. Then follows all the other information about the feature.
The Identify Results dialog can be customized to display custom fields, but by default it will display three kinds of information:
Note
Links in feature’s attributes are clickable from the Identify Results panel and will open in your default web browser.
At the top of the window, you have seven icons:
At the bottom of the window, you have the Mode and View comboboxes. With the Mode combobox you can define from which layers features should be identified:
Note
Identify tool configuration
You can configure the identify feature in Project ‣ Project Properties in the Identify layers tab. The table allows user to select layer(s) that can be used by this tool to identify features (column Identifiable). You can also put this layer in read-only mode with the checkbox in the last column.
The View can be set as Tree, Table or Graph. ‘Table’ and ‘Graph’ views can only be set for raster layers.
The identify tool allows you to Auto open a form. If checked, each time a single feature is identified QGIS will open a form showing its attributes. This is a handy way to quickly edit a feature’s attributes.
Outras funções podem ser encontradas no menu de contexto do item identificado. Por exemplo, a partir do menu de contexto poderá:
Ver o formulário do elemento
Aproximar ao elemento
Copiar elemento:Copiar todas as geometrias do elemento e atributos
Copiar o valor do atributo: Copia apenas o valor do atributo que clicou
Limpar resultado: remove os resultados na janela
Destacar todos
Destacar camada
Propriedades da camada: Abre a janela das propriedades da camada
Expandir todos
Fechar todos
The Text Annotation tool in the attribute toolbar provides the possibility to place formatted text in a balloon on the QGIS map canvas. Use the Text Annotation tool and click into the map canvas.
Double clicking on the item opens a dialog with various options. There is the text editor to enter the formatted text and other item settings. For instance, there is the choice of having the item placed on a map position (displayed by a marker symbol) or to have the item on a screen position (not related to the map). The item can be moved by map position (by dragging the map marker) or by moving only the balloon. The icons are part of the GIS theme, and they are used by default in the other themes, too.
The Move Annotation tool allows you to move the annotation on the map canvas.
The Html Annotation tools in the attribute toolbar provides the possibility to place the content of an html file in a balloon on the QGIS map canvas. Using the Html Annotation tool, click into the map canvas and add the path to the html file into the dialog.
The SVG Annotation tool in the attribute toolbar provides the possibility to place an SVG symbol in a balloon on the QGIS map canvas. Using the SVG Annotation tool, click into the map canvas and add the path to the SVG file into the dialog.
Additionally, you can also create your own annotation forms. The Form Annotation tool is useful to display attributes of a vector layer in a customized Qt Designer form (see figure_custom_annotation). This is similar to the designer forms for the Identify features tool, but displayed in an annotation item. Also see this video https://youtu.be/0pDBuSbQ02o?t=2m25s from Tim Sutton for more information.
Note
If you press Ctrl+T while an Annotation tool is active (move annotation, text annotation, form annotation), the visibility states of the items are inverted.
Spatial Bookmarks allow you to “bookmark” a geographic location and return to it later. By default, bookmarks are saved on the computer, meaning that they are available from any project in the same computer. If you wish to store the bookmark in the project file (.qgs) then you can do this by selecting the In Project checkbox.
Para criar um marcador:
Aproximar ou mover para uma área de interesse.
Introduza um nome descritivo para o marcador (até 255 caracteres).
Repare que tem múltiplos marcadores com o mesmo nome.
To use or manage bookmarks, select the menu option View ‣ Show Bookmarks. The Spatial Bookmarks panel allows you to:
Sometimes, you’d like to keep in different projects a bunch of layers with the same style. You can either create a default style for these layers or embed them from another project to save you tons of work.
Embed layers and groups from an existing project has some advantages over styling:
If you want to embed content from other project files into your project, select Layer ‣ Embed Layers and Groups and:
Like any other layer, an embedded layer can be removed from the project by right-click on the layer and choose Remove.
Tip
Change rendering of an embedded layer
It’s not possible to change rendering of an embedded layer, unless you make the changes in the original project file. However, right-click on a layer and select Duplicate creates a layer which is fully-featured and not dependent to the original project. You can then safely remove the linked layer.
The Decorations of QGIS include the Grid, the Copyright Label, the North Arrow and the Scale Bar. They are used to ‘decorate’ the map by adding cartographic elements.
Grid allows you to add a coordinate grid and coordinate annotations to the map canvas.
Copyright label adds a copyright label using the text you prefer to the map.
In the example above, which is the default, QGIS places a copyright symbol followed by the date in the lower right-hand corner of the map canvas.
North Arrow places a simple north arrow on the map canvas. Currently, there is only one style available. You can adjust the angle of the arrow or let QGIS set the direction automatically. If you choose to let QGIS determine the direction, it makes its best guess as to how the arrow should be oriented. For placement of the arrow, you have four options, corresponding to the four corners of the map canvas. You can refine the placement of the arrow by setting a Horizontal and/or Vertical Marging from (Canvas) Edge. These values can be a distance in Millimeter or Pixels or set as Percentage of the width or height of the map canvas.
Scale Bar adds a simple scale bar to the map canvas. You can control the style and placement, as well as the labelling of the bar.
QGIS only supports displaying the scale in the same units as your map frame. So if the units of your layers are in meters, you can’t create a scale bar in feet. Likewise, if you are using decimal degrees, you can’t create a scale bar to display distance in meters.
Para adicionar a barra de escala:
Tip
Settings of Decorations
When you save a .qgs project, any changes you have made to Grid, North Arrow, Scale Bar and Copyright will be saved in the project and restored the next time you load the project.
QGIS has facility to store/retrieve authentication credentials in a secure manner. Users can securely save credentials into authentication configurations, which are stored in a portable database, can be applied to server or database connections, and safely referenced by their ID tokens in project or settings files. For more information see Sistema de Autenticação.
A master password needs to be set up when initializing the authentication system and its portable database.
In QGIS, you can use variables to store useful recurrent values (e.g. the project’s title, or the user’s full name) that can be used in expressions. Variables can be defined at the application’s global level, project level, layer level, composition level, and composer’s item level. Just like CSS cascading rules, variables can be overwritten - e.g., a project level variable will overwrite any application’s global level variables set with the same name. You can use these variables to build text strings or other custom expressions using the @ character before the variable name. For example in composer creating a label with this content:
This map was made using QGIS [% @qgis_version %]. The project file for this
map is: [% @project_path %]
Will render the label like this:
This map was made using QGIS 2.14. The project file for this map is:
/gis/qgis-user-conference-2015.qgs
Besides the preset read-only variables, you can define your own custom variables for any of the levels mentioned above. You can manage:
To differentiate from editable variables, read-only variable’s names and values are emphasized in italic. On the other hand, higher level variables overwritten by lower level ones are strike through.
Note
You can read more about variables and find some examples in Nyall Dawson’s Exploring variables in QGIS 2.12, part 1, part 2 and part 3 blog posts.