Hi folks. I'm a newbie to the QGIS software, as well as CAD in general. I'm fairly tech and art savvy and am eager to dig into this to create fictional, precise, scalable maps for table-top roleplaying games. I'm wondering if anybody has any links for useful tutorials or tips and tricks to that end; I'm of course consulting YouTube University to educate myself, but I don't know what I don't know and I always love to consult communities for help and stand upon the shoulders of giants who've come before, so to speak.

What I'm interested in creating specifically is a modern-ish (think 1930's) city map, including roads, buildings, parks, tram lines, and canals/waterways, all to scale and built from scratch. I want to use this program specifically to create something that could be a serviceable artefact from a city that *could* have existed, and most of the map-making software I've seen that's geared towards gaming is more of the fantastical variety, or battle maps, for which I presently have no use.

Any advice or assistance is appreciated, and I thank you in advance!

From what I know, only FABDEM and ANADEM exist. I am trying to make a contour map for farm planning. I read that both of these are only accurate for 10m contour lines. Is that good enough, or will it throw everything off if you don't have a 1m contour map? It is for my own use, not for a professional map.

Hi there, I hope you are all well. I am trying to create a map to show the abundance of plastic particles so from online I read the best is to use a chart option. I created a sample copy, but I have a query; maybe someone can help. Why are not all the pie charts showing, as you can see in the image, two of them (highlighted in yellow) remain transparent. There are values in the attribute table for those two.

🚨 NEW RESEARCH 🔥
We mapped the 2025 Palisades Fire to explore how wildfire burn severity intersected with the demographic characteristics of the affected communities.
JPG

Spatiotemporal Patterns of Wildfire Severity and Demographic Characteristics in the 2025 Palisades Fire, Los Angeles, California https://www.mdpi.com/4123346 (Published in GeoHazards)

Rarely but sometimes I need to do some simple terrain/elevation analysis and this is what is usually my template (note: all names are made up lol). My company owns many parcels and the idea is to show its terrain for purposes of field work. I have quite precise LiDAR DEM 1x1 m.

Basically my question is, what would you change about this template, what do you like, what do you think about legend, title, data source etc...

Also opinions of the topographic visualizations itself is welcome.

I saw some cool visual techniques I wanted to try out on pinterest, and figured that QGIS is a super capable vector-based tool that could do lots of cool things it maybe wasn't originally intended to.

For these visuals, I converted the images to B&W, blurred them using r.neighbours, divided the image into 4 categories by lightness with the raster calculator, and vectorised the raster to shapes followed by a round of simplify and smooth. Then I filled in the areas with color for version 2 and symbols for version 3.

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on my master's thesis using QGIS (version 3.44.7) on a MacBook, and I've run into a serious problem with my project.

My entire QGIS project, including all GeoPackages, Shapefiles, and other spatial datasets, is stored in iCloud Drive.

Everything was working fine until recently, when several layers suddenly stopped loading. Interestingly, some layers (e.g., my wind turbine and battery storage datasets) are still working perfectly, while others (e.g., photovoltaic installations and ALKIS cadastral data) can no longer be accessed.

Here's what I've observed:

• Several layers show red warning symbols in QGIS.
• When I right-click on an affected layer or try to add it again, QGIS becomes unresponsive and appears to load indefinitely.
• I've checked the project file (.qgz), and it appears to be intact.
• The folder structure and relative file paths are still correct.
• The affected datasets are stored in iCloud Drive, but macOS seems unable to download some of them locally.
• Other datasets have been downloaded automatically and work without any issues.

When I try to download the affected files through Finder, macOS displays the following error:

"Your device could not establish a connection to the server. There may be a problem with the server or the network."

My suspicion is that QGIS is trying to access files that are only stored in iCloud, but macOS is failing to download them.

I'm particularly worried about losing the work I've already done on my master's thesis.

Has anyone experienced similar issues with QGIS and iCloud Drive on macOS?

I’m an undergraduate civil engineering student working on a research project involving multi-temporal landslide mapping along Nepal’s Mid-Hill Highway.

My goal is to develop a reliable landslide inventory covering approximately 2010–2023, identifying landslide locations, mapping their boundaries, and determining when they first appeared or reactivated based on historical satellite imagery.

I’ve been exploring Google Earth Engine (GEE), QGIS, GeoLibre, Sentinel-2, and Landsat imagery, but I’m struggling to determine the most efficient and reliable workflow for mapping landslides across such a large area and multiple years.

I would appreciate advice on the following:

1. Mapping methodology: What is the most practical approach for creating a multi-temporal landslide inventory over a long highway corridor? Is manual digitization, semi-automated detection, or a combination of both preferable?
2. Historical imagery: What datasets or platforms would you recommend for identifying landslides from 2010 onward? In particular, are there suitable alternatives to Sentinel-2 for the pre-2015 period?
3. Change detection: Are there reliable methods for identifying newly formed landslide scars by comparing satellite images from different dates?
4. Existing inventories: Does anyone know of publicly available landslide inventories covering Nepal’s Mid-Hill Highway or nearby regions, particularly those containing temporal information?
5. Practical workflow: If you have worked on a similar project, what workflow would you recommend for mapping landslide polygons and estimating their occurrence periods without manually inspecting every image?

I’m particularly interested in approaches that are feasible for a student research project with limited computational resources.

I’m not expecting a fully automated solution. My aim is to develop a scientifically defensible inventory using satellite-based candidate detection and manual verification wherever necessary.

Any advice, relevant publications, open datasets, scripts, or examples of similar projects would be extremely helpful. I’d also appreciate hearing from researchers who have worked on landslide inventories in Nepal or the Himalayas.

Thank you!

I am at my wit's end and am likely overlooking something simple.

I am trying to add coordinate points to a map of Kansas through a CSV table. I have tried both Data Source Manager and "create points layer from table" through the Processing toolbox. I'm under the impression that DSM is the more correct way to do it.

When I open the Data Source Manager and add through Delimited Text, I make sure to select EPSG:4326 like every tutorial says. My project is in ESRI:103049, but I know that QGIS will reproject the coordinates to align with the project's projection. My points from the table are the first item in my layers list. Despite all of this and no error messages, I get absolutely nothing on my map. When I zoom out, I don't even see the points in the wrong spot. What am I doing wrong?

Hello. The attached shows a common style for plans I receive from clients. I want to recreate that style in QGIS, and have the style carry through to the legend in a print layout.

Specifically, I mean the dark green line with the V (where the line breaks either side of the letter); I do not mean e.g. D (where the letter is offset from the gap, presumably an error).

I've spent most of the day trying to get this to work, going back-and-forth with ChatGPT and Google's AI thingy. They keep sending me around in circles; I get close, then some small detail isn't right, rinse, repeat.

How can I actually do this?

It is important to note that I need the solution to be able to handle varying intervals for the letter as I often need to export maps as image files at different scales. Sometimes I might want a letter every few metres; sometimes the label needs to be at ten-metre intervals.

Thanks in advance.

Today I discovered you can nest rule-based symbology rules, to make it act more like a CASE expression and reduce queries required to render the map.

It's one of those features that instantly made me think, "Well... that would have made a lot of old projects much cleaner."

I feel like every time I stumble across some deeper QGIS functionality, I have a brief moment of excitement followed by the realization that I could've been using it for years.

What's a feature you've discovered recently that made you go:

"Wait, I could have been doing this the whole time?!"

Interested in hearing everyone's hidden gems, especially the ones that completely changed how you build maps or manage projects.

Hi folks, QGIS noob here, running v.4.2.3.

I've created a few layers, customised the symbology, and (in the case of the "buried power cables" layer, I've added an SVG file onto the end using a marker line).

However, as you can see, the label for "Power poles" is indented slightly to the right.

I've asked several different AI LLMs and none of them suggested anything useful, so here I am asking humans instead. ;)

Things the LLMs have suggested:

1. A space at the start of the name for the "Power poles" layer. Nope.
2. An offset applied in the layer symbology. Nope.
3. Layer hierarchy. Nope. All relevant layers are on the same top level.
4. Maybe it's because it's a point layer? No, I created a new point layer, "t" (for "test"), created a bunch of points, and that "t" label displays correctly-aligned in the legend (see the third screenshot).
5. Perhaps the size of the symbols isn't quite right. I set the symbol width/height to a variety of values, some square, some different aspect ratios, some very large (e.g. 20px) just in case there was something weird going on with that triangle symbol... no luck.

Interestingly, the layers panel shows a different layer ("Buried power cables") being offset to the left of the rest of the list (see third screenshot) by a one-letter space. However, the corresponding label in the legend is aligned correctly.

Any suggestions please on how to fix this?

Hi! I’m in the research phase of writing a book about a ghost town in eastern California. As part of it, I want to create accurate maps of the town and its mines.

For the mines, I have been using the USGS MRDS database, which is unfortunately inaccurate in the area, so next time I’m there, I’ll be getting GPS coordinates on all the mine features. This is within my capabilities to do.

What’s a bit beyond my capabilities is the town itself. I plan on finding foundations and comparing those to historical photos (of which there are few.) There are very few structures left. I got the USGS lidar data, but filtering out the vegetation in the area is difficult because it’s largely sagebrush, and I am a complete novice at this.

Can anyone suggest methods for finding the locations of historical buildings (town was active until 1915ish) either using publicly available data or other methods? It would be an absolute amazing help in getting my book up to the quality I want.

Currently, I am having issues with my sandbags in QGIS. It simply wouldn't block any water. So far, I've tried to use the raster calculator to combine the r.lake layer and sandbag layer but it didn't work. The original one didn't work either.

If needed, here is the file: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ygoDBGa_9z5SzysXrfqF4FQgCGBz9bic/view?usp=sharing

I don't need anyone to send the version that works back to me but I'd just like an explanation on what can I do to make the sandbags work.

Hello. I just started learning QGIS. My country has a specific CRS it allows. It only allows that specific one for what I should be doing. So when I open up QGIS, the first thing I do I set it to that specific CRS in the right bottom corner. EPSG:23700 - HD72 / EOV is the one I set it to. All I want to do right now is to simply measure a simple area.

After this I go to web, quickmapservices, google, google satellite. It sets CRS to a different one so I set it back in the bottom right corner. The map becomes this, 1st picture.

After this I zoom in to the building I wanna measure (I don't yet know how to just have QGIS move me to it). Add a geopackage. Create the geopackage layer. Correct CRS, set it to polygon 2nd picture. I select the layer. Toggle edit, toggle add polygon. I untoggle and have my polygon. 3rd picture. I right click the layer. Open attribute table. Open field calculator. I name the output field, set field type to decimal number (real), and add $area to the expressions. Preview shows 19563,333163363863 m2. This is already incorrect because I know the area of the building which is 17 745 m2. So I decide to try to do it another way.

I use measure area. I set it up like in the 4th pic. I am just messing around so the polygon is kinda ugly so they are not the exact same area, but it still comes back as roughly 19500m2 5th pic. Where am I messing up this bad? Is it the CRS because to me it seems like I mess up with the moving between CRS. But could be anything at this point since I don't really know what I am doing. The google map is not on the required CRS but If I move it there it just become worse. I know I shouldn't, I was just checking. Any idea where I am messing up? Mine would be around the malformed map, but I really don't know.

Edit: REALLY IMPORTANT. The coordinates for the building does not match reality.

Hi everyone,

i recently posted a thread, asking how to create a world map and in this process i came across another Map on which i liked the 3D effect so much, that i want to do it myself. As previously mentioned, I am really new to QGIS so i appreciate every help i can get.
Thank you!

Hello everyone. has anyone else experienced this issue and does anyone have a fix? I saw a few other posts elsewhere but none of the solutions worked for me. I am trying to plot the spectral graphs for different points on this raster layer of my map. I have the layer added to the plugin window and am actively clicked into the window. The tool will display min and max values each time I click, and if I go to the table tab I can see the values for every band each time I click, but I'm unable to actually plot the graph.

I'm running the most recent version of the plugin and am running QGIS 3.44.9

Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks!

UPD (100926): Look for Ukiyo-e Relief in QGIS plugin repository (see comments for recommendation).

No AI, no hand painting — it's all algorithmic. Input is just a Copernicus GLO-30 DEM, everything else is Python + numpy inside QGIS.

Roughly what it does:

• renders an oblique view and splits it into flat colour "plates" — by distance (Hiroshige-style receding ridges) or by elevation (Hokusai's Red Fuji)
• bokashi gradients, so the plates aren't just flat fills
• black key-block outlines only on real silhouettes, where a ridge actually hides what's behind it
• snow line that creeps down the gullies
• fake printing artefacts: slight plate misregistration, wood grain, washi paper texture

It's fully deterministic: same seed, same print.

The fun part was figuring out why the first versions looked wrong. Distance slices drew fake ridges across every slope, Gaussian smoothing turned every volcano into a parabola, and linear vertical exaggeration made all mountains look the same. Hokusai's Fuji has concave flanks, so I ended up adding a non-linear relief curve.

• The manual way, for the buildings of Paris 7th: search for a download, grab the 518 MB Île-de-France extract from Geofabrik, find the buildings file among 101, load 3.3M buildings, then clip everything in QGIS

• The AI Way: using the AI Agent plugin in QGIS -> one prompt, "Load the buildings of Paris 7th arrondissement". It finds the best building on his list of 700+ open-data connectors, clipped them to the arrondissement and styled them. 4,982 buildings in about 1min

I work on it. It's free to start, in the QGIS plugin manager under "AI Agent".