Hello – I have only taken one class on GIS and then downloaded QGIS. I was able to download files to create a base map (which includes houses). What I am trying to do is draw a polygon around certain groups of houses to highlight them. I know I need more instruction. I am lost. Help if you can. Thank you.
So I’m going to assume you’re working in shapefiles - do this.
Click on Layer at the top of QGIS
Click on Create Layer → New Shapefile
You will need to supply a projection and pick if you want points, lines, or polygon (hint polygon). From there you just need to edit your new layer. Click the Pencil (toggle editing) and use the add feature tool to draw it. Don’t forget to save.
Hello – I have only taken one class on GIS and then downloaded QGIS. I was able to download files to create a base map (which includes houses). What I am trying to do is draw a polygon around certain groups of houses to highlight them. I know I need more instruction. I am lost. Help if you can. Thank you.
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Randal Hale
North River Geographic Systems, Inc
[rjhale@northrivergeographic.com](mailto:rjhale@northrivergeographic.com)
(423) 653-3611
[https://www.northrivergeographic.com](https://www.northrivergeographic.com)
So there’s one other way to tackle this - and I guess that depends on your data.
IF the areas have a field for Disaster Preparedness training - as in you open the attribute table for your data and you have a “training” column and in that column there is a “yes” or “true” - you can symbolize the data on that field. Which would sorta make your “selection” somewhat permanent.
Which may not make sense…Could you share a copy of your data? That might help. You’re almost there it sounds like. You could send it over email just to me and tim or share it through dropbox. We’ll delete it when done!
So, back kind of where I was before. No I am able to select and both drag the area and draw a polygon around the area. When I use the default drag the area after dragging the area and when I let go of the cursor the area disappears. In addition, when I drag and highlight the area I do not know how to make it stick. When I finish the polygon it wants to keep drawing the highlighted area wherever I drag the cursor. I am missing something here.
As an alternative to Randal’s good advice, if you simply want to highlight existing features in your houses layer do this:
select the houses layer in the layers list
use the selection tools icons (as shown below) to select the selection mode you want to use. The default select feature(s) option will let you simply drag a box around your houses. Other options will let you draw a free-hand region around them etc.
*now drag a region on the map that encloses the houses
the houses will be highlighted in yellow
your selection will also be made in the attribute table of that layer
you can also save out those selected features to make a new layer using Layer → Save as …. From the menu and checking the ‘save selected features only’ box.
So I’m going to assume you’re working in shapefiles - do this.
Click on Layer at the top of QGIS
Click on Create Layer → New Shapefile
You will need to supply a projection and pick if you want points, lines, or polygon (hint polygon). From there you just need to edit your new layer. Click the Pencil (toggle editing) and use the add feature tool to draw it. Don’t forget to save.
Hello – I have only taken one class on GIS and then downloaded QGIS. I was able to download files to create a base map (which includes houses). What I am trying to do is draw a polygon around certain groups of houses to highlight them. I know I need more instruction. I am lost. Help if you can. Thank you.
That makes sense Randy. Let me look at that tomorrow and see what I can work up for you. Thank you again. It’s great to know there is a community to help.
So there’s one other way to tackle this - and I guess that depends on your data.
IF the areas have a field for Disaster Preparedness training - as in you open the attribute table for your data and you have a “training” column and in that column there is a “yes” or “true” - you can symbolize the data on that field. Which would sorta make your “selection” somewhat permanent.
Which may not make sense…Could you share a copy of your data? That might help. You’re almost there it sounds like. You could send it over email just to me and tim or share it through dropbox. We’ll delete it when done!
So, back kind of where I was before. No I am able to select and both drag the area and draw a polygon around the area. When I use the default drag the area after dragging the area and when I let go of the cursor the area disappears. In addition, when I drag and highlight the area I do not know how to make it stick. When I finish the polygon it wants to keep drawing the highlighted area wherever I drag the cursor. I am missing something here.
As an alternative to Randal’s good advice, if you simply want to highlight existing features in your houses layer do this:
select the houses layer in the layers list
use the selection tools icons (as shown below) to select the selection mode you want to use. The default select feature(s) option will let you simply drag a box around your houses. Other options will let you draw a free-hand region around them etc.
*now drag a region on the map that encloses the houses
the houses will be highlighted in yellow
your selection will also be made in the attribute table of that layer
you can also save out those selected features to make a new layer using Layer → Save as …. From the menu and checking the ‘save selected features only’ box.
So I’m going to assume you’re working in shapefiles - do this.
Click on Layer at the top of QGIS
Click on Create Layer → New Shapefile
You will need to supply a projection and pick if you want points, lines, or polygon (hint polygon). From there you just need to edit your new layer. Click the Pencil (toggle editing) and use the add feature tool to draw it. Don’t forget to save.
Hello – I have only taken one class on GIS and then downloaded QGIS. I was able to download files to create a base map (which includes houses). What I am trying to do is draw a polygon around certain groups of houses to highlight them. I know I need more instruction. I am lost. Help if you can. Thank you.
Randy – I think I understand where you are going with this. Let me see if I can share a little more information on what I have and what I ultimately want to do. I have a street map of the entire Los Angeles County that I downloaded from the LA County Dept. Public Works website. The map includes data on all of the houses within the county. My community, Altadena is in Unincorporated LA County. Altadena has a little over 15,000 homes. Our program, Map Your Neighborhood reaches out to folks that are interested in bringing their neighborhood (10 to 30 homes) together to organize as a group to help each other out in the event of a disaster (911 emergency services will not be available). We have trained over 50 neighborhoods totally over 1200 homes. I would like to be able to present these graphically by either drawing a shape around the neighborhood or highlighting the homes (as you may have been suggesting below). The attribute table I assume contains all of the data from all of the items from LA County. It would be nice to parse this down to just the area I am working with and go from there. But I get the feeling I am asking you all too much. Please tell me if this out of your scope.
So there’s one other way to tackle this - and I guess that depends on your data.
IF the areas have a field for Disaster Preparedness training - as in you open the attribute table for your data and you have a “training” column and in that column there is a “yes” or “true” er- you can symbolize the data on that field. Which would sorta make your “selection” somewhat permanent.
Which may not make sense…Could you share a copy of your data? That might help. You’re almost there it sounds like. You could send it over email just to me and tim or share it through dropbox. We’ll delete it when done!
So, back kind of where I was before. No I am able to select and both drag the area and draw a polygon around the area. When I use the default drag the area after dragging the area and when I let go of the cursor the area disappears. In addition, when I drag and highlight the area I do not know how to make it stick. When I finish the polygon it wants to keep drawing the highlighted area wherever I drag the cursor. I am missing something here.
As an alternative to Randal’s good advice, if you simply want to highlight existing features in your houses layer do this:
select the houses layer in the layers list
use the selection tools icons (as shown below) to select the selection mode you want to use. The default select feature(s) option will let you simply drag a box around your houses. Other options will let you draw a free-hand region around them etc.
*now drag a region on the map that encloses the houses
the houses will be highlighted in yellow
your selection will also be made in the attribute table of that layer
you can also save out those selected features to make a new layer using Layer → Save as …. From the menu and checking the ‘save selected features only’ box.
So I’m going to assume you’re working in shapefiles - do this.
Click on Layer at the top of QGIS
Click on Create Layer → New Shapefile
You will need to supply a projection and pick if you want points, lines, or polygon (hint polygon). From there you just need to edit your new layer. Click the Pencil (toggle editing) and use the add feature tool to draw it. Don’t forget to save.
Hello – I have only taken one class on GIS and then downloaded QGIS. I was able to download files to create a base map (which includes houses). What I am trying to do is draw a polygon around certain groups of houses to highlight them. I know I need more instruction. I am lost. Help if you can. Thank you.