<< Click to Display Table of Contents >> Navigation:  5. Detailed description of the Actions > 5.10. TA - GIS - Geographical Information System > 5.10.9. Save and view Shapes > 5.10.9.3. SHP + QGIS visualization

 
You can download QGIS from here (1GB download):
 

https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html
 

The installation wizard is simple and straightforward.

 

 
Let’s now assume that we have two shape files:
 

•“SHOPS.shp”: a shape file with the geometry column that contains the coordinates (latitude, longitude) of the shops. One row per shop.
 

•“SHOPS_ CATCHMENT_AREA.shp”: a shape file with the geometry column that contains the polygons that defines the catchment area for each shop. One row per shop.

See the section 5.10.13 about the Tesselate action for an example on how to compute&create these catchment areas.

 

 
We’ll create a new vizualisation inside QGIS with 3 layers:
 

•Bottom layer: the “Open Street Map” Tile layer to have “context”.
 

•Middle layer: the catchment areas for all shops (i.e. the geometries from “SHOPS_CATCHMENT_AREA.shp”).
 

•Top layer: many dots with the position of the shops and their name/id (i.e. the data from “SHOPS.shp”).

 

 
Here are the steps:
 

1.Run “QGIS Desktop”.
 

2.2. Add the “Open Street Map” layer:
 
2.1 Open the dropdown menu “Layer”, select “Add Layer”, click on “Add XYZ Layer”:
 

 
2.2 Select “Open Street Map” (this should be already selected) and click the “Add” button :

 

 

 

3. Add the layer with the “catchment area” for each shop:

 

 
3.1 Drag&Drop the “SHOPS_ CATCHMENT_AREA.shp” inside the QGis window:

 

 
 

 
 

3.2 Make this layer semi-transparent:
 

•Right-click the new layer and select “Properties” inside the context-menu :

 

•Move the “Opacity” slider to 40%:

 

 

 

3.3 Increase the thickness of the border of the geometries: Click on the “Simple Fill” style and increase Stroke width to 0.5 millimeter :

 

 

 

4. Add the layer with the positions of the shops:

 

4.1 Drag&Drop the “SHOPS.shp” inside the QGis window:
 

 

 

4.2 Add Labels to your shops: Right-click the new “SHOPS” layer and select “Show Labels” inside the context-menu (the Labels come from the content of the first column inside the .shp file):

 

 

5. (optional) Add decorations: Open the drop-down menu “View”, select “Decorations” and add a “Scale Bar” and a “North Arrow”.

 
6. (optional) Save your design (press [CTRL]+[S]) to be able to reuse your design to quickly produce an updated map with new, updated shape files.

 

 
Here is the final result: