I am getting started as a solo survey operation and I had my last day with my old company last week. I'm trying to get things set up for when some jobs come in. I have found that QGIS has a lot of features that surveyors could use to research property and keep jobs organized.?ÿ I made a video about how to map a job spreadsheet with QGIS and thought some might find it interesting on here.?ÿ Does anyone else in here use QGIS to manage their projects? I would like to connect with other surveyors who are using it
Sean
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I have done something similar but I ended up putting it into autocad.?ÿ
Essentially I have a autocad file with county wide data for street linework, street names, section linework, section names, Lidar index for contour shape files, building outlines, stream linework, stream labels, lake linework, lake names, tax parcel lines, tax parcel labels, etc... Then I also have a layer that has the boundary of all of our past projects along with a job number (and a hyperlink to the file location).
I used QGIS to compile and parse through a lot of the gis data. It took a while to catch on to QGIS coming from a vague background in ArcMap but once I caught on to a few of the basic concepts and differences between the 2 programs its been pretty smooth sailing. Cant beat the price of QGIS!
I ended up putting everything in autocad since there is no way I could get any of my coworkers to download a GIS program as that is a dirty word. I must say it is pretty handy just to copy/paste any of the objects I need into my new project drawing.
With all that data in autocad I can very quickly:
- create vicinity maps
- plop building outlines in my drawing (for general reference of adjacent sites)
- plop tax parcel lines in my drawings (depending on the area these lines are +- a foot or so and I have used them for search coords in the field)
- have very quick and easy access to index of contour files
- see at a glance what projects were done nearby, when and by whom.
The hardest part is keeping it updated
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QGIS has a lot of features that surveyors could use to research property and keep jobs organized
I??m really impressed by your video - you showed how attractive QGIS is, you covered a lot of ground and I learned a lot (I consider myself an intermediate QGIS user).
I ended up putting everything in autocad
I??m also really impressed by doing all that in Autocad, although I am wondering if it??s even possible to make Autocad look half as attractive as QGIS (both in presentation and workflow). As a daily user of both programs for all levels of surveying applications, I pretty much loathe Autocad for everything except labeling things. As a minion, I have to use it, but I generally think it??s awful (can??t wait for an open source software that does what QGIS did to ArcMap - IMHO, QGIS completely replaces ArcMap).
Anyway, I like both of the posts above.?ÿ Here??s my attempt at adding some hot-tips to this thread:
Want to make a georeferenced PDF in Autocad? You can??t without Autocad??s RASTER-whatever, and you still have to rubbersheet it.?ÿ Want to do it in QGIS and keep your precisions? Export a 2013 version of your DWG and import that into QGIS. ?ÿSet up and export a QGIS layout with the Geospatial PDF selection checked and your client can use Avenza to find the lath you set on their new boundary survey (??so long as the client understands the limitations of consumer grade GPS devices and that Avenza is transforming your SPCS into WGS84 and therefor looses ~4m accuracy there as well).
Want to find out how far Autocad has inexplicably translated the surface you defined with your *.tif file??ÿ Import your *.tif into QGIS with the correct projection settings and export the *.tif??s extent to a shapefile.?ÿ Make sure your CRS setting in Autocad match your *.tif??s projection and MAPIMPORT the correctly projected extent you just made.?ÿ You??ll quickly discover why people think publicly available LiDAR is so bad.
Want to export a *.jpeg/*.jpw so you can bring imagery into the field in your data collector? Use QGIS and export your layout to a jpg/jpw. (Or use OnX??s offline maps on your phone, but QGIS can export KML??s of your search coordinates and calculated boundaries so you can bring those into OnX).
Thanks QGIS!
All that said about Autocad, I would love for someone to show me how to use Autocad??s Survey-Tab and GIS functionality properly.?ÿ Regarding Autocad??s GIS functionality (i.e. thru MAPWSPACE), I have found that Autocad takes unacceptably long times to render files that QGIS can render instantly (e.g. polylines, points or imagery).?ÿ This may be because I??m not utilitizing the QUERY commands properly, but I haven??t seen anywhere that really explains Autocad QUERIES for an application like Vicinity Maps.?ÿ Control over presentation of MAPWSPACE items is also unacceptable IMO - holy cow it??s bad.?ÿ Regarding Autocad??s Survey-Tab, I??m similarly not seeing anyone explain how to use Autocad??s survey databases for anything but description keys and f2f - I would love to see someone explain how to competently manage an actual database of all their company??s surveys, including managing the different updates to survey networks and figures, turning their linework into surfaces, plats and electronic-transmittals.. also, how to use the scale factors etc for points.