How to design a catchment map in the print layout of QGIS

hello this is hunts from across senior lecturer at iit Delft Institute for water education in this video I'm going to demonstrate how to use the print layout the steps that I demonstrate are part of Chapter seven of the book qgs for hydrological applications in previous videos I've demonstrated the preparation of the data and the styling of the layers in this video we are going to prepare a map for printing or to save as a figure to include in a document to create a new print layout we go to project new print layout and there we have to give it a name because we can have multiple start in the project this one we call our catchment click OK and it opens another screen and this is where we design our map we see a sheet of paper when we click right on the paper we can change the page properties such as the page size and the orientation in this case we keep it at a4 but we are going to change the orientation from landscape to portrait because our catchment fits better with the portrait orientation now we are going to add the map to the layout if we use this button if you hover over the buttons you can see what they mean you can also find these things in the menu on top of the screen we drag a rectangle we keep a bit of a margin because we're gonna play some other elements and here we see the map from the map canvas on the piece of paper with this button with the arrows we can move the map inside the box and with the scroll we can make steps with alt scroll or control scroll we can make smaller steps and with the skill number we can even find you so here we find unit now we're making it 295,000 and then we can adjust the box to fit the map now we are going to add a frame so there's a nice line around the map make it a little bit thicker now we're going to add a title with this button it's a label button and we can use that to add any kind of text we drag a box and as you see that with the selected items also the item properties menu changes so now we can type here the text that we want in this field which is the title of the map now you can change the font we are going to use Times New Roman bold and the size of 36 you change the horizontal alignment to Center and the vertical alignment to middle so now we can move it a bit around we can nudge it with the arrow buttons you can use the zoom buttons to zoom in on the paper and choose the right position next step is to add a legend we do this with this button you can drag a box and the legend would be taken into that box if you want to change the legend we uncheck the auto Update button and then we can use the buttons below to remove certain items remember that in the legend we only put the things that are not self explainable of the cities and the towns they have the label so we can remove them and the things that we cannot see on the map will remove them we will later make a legend for the elevation model so we end up with these with the arrow up button we can move a legend item to the top with this button we can change the text so let's make it human readable so in legends we don't use underscores we make it really readable so we change this to rule catchment click OK and we see it's replaced and we do the same for rural channels where we remove the underscore and we do the same for the Strada orders like double clicking you can also edit the text now we can go to columns and change that legend to the two columns and split layers then it can also split halfway the layers or somewhere in the layers to make it equal and that looks nice for us next step is to add a scale bar again we track box and in the item properties we can change the settings we keep the skill bar units 2 kilometers we keep the segment's left to 0 and the right to it change the style to and line ticks down I'm going to change the font to a smaller one nine points just consuming on the paper so it scroll and make sure that skill bars okay next we're going to add a North arrow and in this version of qgs you do that by adding a new picture make a little box and then in the item properties of this picture we go to the search directories and there we find North arrows that are installed with qgs we'll use this one you can synchronize the North arrow with the map so if maps are rotated to North it will rotate with the map we change the resize mode to zoom and resize frame and we see now that the frame snaps around North arrow you move it to the right location so we're going to add some text which gives us the data sources and the author so create another text box and item properties we can then add text let's first mention the data sources so srtm for the elevation and OpenStreetMap for the locations we can add the name of the cartographer I'll fill that in later and create it on certain date to go to replace that by an expression with this expression we can generate the current date and put it in the right format so this reads like concatenate and then we have a string in the single quotes and that needs to be concatenated with a function that creates the date so form update that's the function that formats the date in months days years and then the dollar now means the current date and we put it in the two days function and then we have to convert it to a string with the two string function so this makes that there are two strings that go into the form update it is the old date string and it is the format of the date which you can see us on the right of the dialog what choices you have and that's concatenated with the text created on and on the bottom of the screen we see a preview so now we have our expression and we can we'll modify it a bit move some white lines resize the box a bit so it fits and the smaller font move it to the correct position save it to the project and I go to the other screen to create a variable for the cartographer if you go to the settings menu and choose options and go down to the menu for variables you see your all kinds of variables and we can also create our own so I can create a variable called cartographer and then I can add name of the cartographer so chest a largest negatory click ok go back to the other screen and we can insert an expression and choose their variable and we double click on cartographer and then that will be printed now we're going to make a locator map so what we're going to do is create two groups of maps and we use also the map themes for it so all the layers that we have used now let's select them all and you click right and we choose to group to select it and we call the group main map click on the I we can choose a theme and make a kind of a preset for this group and we call this team main map down the other screen we make main map active and we can check under layers follow map theme main map now that preset of layers is linked to this main map go back to the other screen and in the data folder there's a Geo package and there we have a country boundaries file and then click right and I choose move out of group because I want this one in another group we're going to hide all the layers and I'm going to duplicate this boundary because in the end I want this boundary and the country boundaries top of each other to have the reader of the map with a good orientation so now we check the layers that we want for the locator map now we're going to do use the groups to select it and then we call it locator map I'm going to style the country boundaries simple fill for field style we choose no brush and make this stroke 0.46 milli meter I'm going to add the labels single labels and I use the name which are the names of the countries choose Arial and make it a bit smaller and three is a bold font going to change the route catchment boundary which is too simple fill and to change the color with lighter blue and we make it light blue and then we can use the eye again to add theme and recall this on the locator map here you can see what we can do with these map themes we can quickly switch between three sets of layers and layer combinations now we go to the other screen and I'm going to move a bit to the top of the paper and I want to add there the locator map in the upper right because there's enough space outside of our catchment draw box and there I see what I had in a map canvas and I checked there in the item properties follow map theme and then I choose the locator map change its the skill now we're going to add a lesson for the elevation we add a rectangle and change the size with width five and height of 50 and then we go to the colors of the rectangle we click on simple fill and we change the symbol layer type to gradient fill you choose there are color ramp and we're going to choose they're the same as our DM go to create new color ramp and then we select CPT City and we choose their topography and then I choose the elevation ramp the same one that I used for the DM there it is the rectangle is nicer with a border around it and therefore we are creating an extra box around it with plus sign then we change it to no brush now we have to add some values for the legend that the minimum and maximum value let's check the minimum maximum value in the lair in the DM find that an information and there we see that the minimum is nine meters and the maximum is almost 700 meters the print layout we can now change the values nine meter minimum and 700 meters for the maximum we're going to change a few little things to optimize it the labels of the countries when they cross a border they're not so nice so we're going to draw a little text buffer around it and I can update preview and there are see the effect you can also use the refresh button and then we can also add a little frame around our locator map by checking the frame box now the final thing we need to do is to export our map to an image we can choose different file formats here we choose a PNG if needed we can crop to the content in this case we leave it to the whole thing and when it's done with the conversion it will show a little link here when we click on it it will go to the folder and when we double-click we see our final map you can also export the map to a PDF to be printed if we want to include the map in a report such as a Word document then we are going to export it as a PNG or as a diff and what is important is in a report that you insert it as a figure so in that case we don't use the title so you receive your catchment as the title but we put that in the caption and insert the map as a figure with a caption that answers your catchment

Channel: Hans van der Kwast

Views: 17,938

Keywords: QGIS, styling, map design, GIS, catchment, watershed

Id: G0bP4DRpsrc

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 23 2019