osgeo – North Road

Posted on November 7, 20233D Tiles, Integrations, QGIS

QGIS 3D Tiles – thanks to Cesium Ecosystem Grant!

We’ve recently had the opportunity to implement a very exciting feature in QGIS 3.34 — the ability to load and view 3D content in the “Cesium 3D Tiles” format! This was a joint project with our (very talented!) partners at Lutra Consulting, and was made possible thanks to a generous ecosystem grant from the Cesium project. Before we dive into all the details, let’s take a quick guided tour showcasing how Cesium 3D Tiles work inside QGIS: What are 3D tiles? Cesium 3D Tiles are an OGC standard data format where the content from a 3D scene is split up into multiple individual tiles. You can think of them a little like a 3D version of the vector tile format […]

Posted on November 24, 2022November 25, 2022QGIS

QGIS 3.28 improvements for working with ESRI formats and services

The QGIS 3.28 release is an extremely exciting release for all users who work in mixed software workplaces, or who need to work alongside users of ESRI software. In this post we’ll be giving an overview of all the new tools and features introduced in 3.28 which together result in a dramatic improvement in the workflows and capabilities in working with ESRI based formats and services. Read on for the full details…! Before we begin, we’d like to credit the following organisations for helping fund these developments in QGIS 3.28: Naturstyrelsen, Denmark Provincie Gelderland, Netherlands Uppsala Universitet, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History Gemeente Amsterdam Provincie Zuid-Holland, Netherlands FileGeodatabase (GDB) related improvements The headline item here is that QGIS 3.28 […]

Posted on November 4, 2022QGIS, SLYR

SLYR Update — November 2022

Our SLYR tool is the complete solution for full compatibility between ArcMap, ArcGIS Pro and QGIS. It offers a powerful suite of conversion tools for opening ESRI projects, styles and other documents directly within QGIS, and for exporting QGIS documents for use in ESRI software. A lot has changed since our last SLYR product update post, and we’ve tons of very exciting improvements and news to share with you all! In this update we’ll explore some of the new tools we’ve added to SLYR, and discuss how these tools have drastically improved the capacity for users to migrate projects from the ESRI world to the open-source world (and vice versa). ArcGIS Pro support The headline item here is that SLYR […]

Posted on October 4, 2022QGIS

Crowd funding alert: Point Clouds, Elevation Profiles and 3D Map view improvements!

Together with our partners at Lutra Consulting and Hobu, we have once again have collated your feature requests for even MORE point cloud and QGIS elevation improvements and are ready to start working on them! Here’s a taster of what to expect if our latest crowd funding campaign is successful: Point cloud data management, transformation and analysis via incorporation of PDAL within the QGIS “Processing” toolbox Optimised handling of large datasets to speed up your 3D maps, including dynamic data loading for complex 3D scenes Combine multiple LAS/LAZ point cloud files into a single “virtual” point cloud for easy data management and display Elevation profile tool embedded into print layouts, totally customizable, more efficient and with the ability to export […]

Posted on September 16, 2022November 30, 2023Core Feature Development, Data, Integrations, QGIS, Web Mapping

Securely accessing ArcGIS Online (AGOL) and enterprise ArcGIS Portal sites through QGIS (2022 update!)

We’re often contacted for advice regarding our recommendations for securely accessing content on ArcGIS Online (AGOL) or enterprise ArcGIS Portal deployments from within QGIS. While we ran through our recommended setup in an older post, we thought it was time for a 2022 update for our recommendations. In this version we’ve updated some of the descriptions and screenshots for newer QGIS releases, and have added explicit instructions on accessing ArcGIS Online content too. This post details step-by-step instructions in setting up both AGOL/ArcGIS Portal and QGIS to enable this integration. First, we’ll need to create an application on the server in order to enable QGIS users to securely authenticate with the server. The process for this varies between AGOL and […]

Posted on August 5, 2020January 4, 2021QGIS

Announcing SLYR Community Edition

North Road are proud to announce the official release of SLYR Community Edition, a new open-source version of our powerful SLYR ESRI to Open Source compatibility suite. The Community Edition is available for download from the official QGIS plugin repository today, for QGIS versions 3.4 and above. It supports automated conversion of ESRI .style symbol databases, including conversion of markers, fills, line styles and color ramps to their closest QGIS symbology equivalent, allowing users to instantly transition their style libraries into QGIS! If you’ve followed our work in the past, it will come as no surprise to hear that North Road are passionate about open source geospatial, and for reducing the barriers which users encounter when moving to open-source software. […]

Posted on June 4, 2020September 16, 2022QGIS

Securely accessing enterprise ArcGIS Portal sites through QGIS

An updated version of this guide is available! We were recently contacted for advice regarding our recommendations for securely accessing content on an enterprise ArcGIS Portal deployment from within QGIS. Fortunately, this setup is fully supported and works seamlessly in QGIS, thanks to the native integration of “OAuth2” authentication in QGIS! This post details step-by-step instructions in setting up both ArcGIS Portal and QGIS to enable this integration. First, we’ll create a new desktop application on the Portal site in order to obtain the application-specific access keys for OAuth2 authentication. We’ll then create an authentication configuration in QGIS and associate this with a connection to the Portal site. Let’s dive in by doing the Portal configuration first… Creating an application […]

Posted on January 20, 2020January 4, 2021QGIS

QGIS Processing, Model Designer and ETL Campaign crowdfund launched!

QGIS Processing offers a rich and expandable set of algorithms which can operate on spatial data, along with a powerful Model Designer which allows users to string together these algorithms to create custom workflows. Since its introduction in QGIS 2, the Processing framework has seen an intensive amount of development and optimisation efforts. In recent QGIS releases it offers a very user-friendly way of performing complex spatial data processing tasks, all without requiring ANY expensive third-party tools or software licenses! At North Road we are passionate about the QGIS Processing framework, and have invested considerable effort in this framework over the past 5 years. We’re proud to announce that our latest crowd-funding campaign is focused on further expanding the capabilities and flexibility […]

Posted on November 5, 2019January 4, 2021QGIS

QGIS Print Layouts Graphs and Charts Campaign – Complete!

Last week saw the exciting release of version 3 of the QGIS DataPlotly plugin, which incorporates all the work done as a result of our Print Layouts Graphs and Charts crowdfunding campaign crowd funding campaign. Now, beautiful charts and graphs are available directly within QGIS print layouts, and all it takes is the easy installation of the “DataPlotly” plugin from your QGIS install! In this post we’ll showcase the functionality which has been added during this campaign, and which is available today in the plugin. UI modernisation and tweaks First up, during our work on this plugin we’ve invested some time in refreshing the plugin’s UI to ensure it follows all the widget conventions used elsewhere in QGIS. Now, the […]

Posted on October 9, 2019January 4, 2021QGIS

SLYR ESRI to QGIS compatibility suite – October 2019 update

Recently, staff at North Road have been hard at work on our SLYR “ESRI to QGIS compatiblity suite“, and we thought it’s time to share some of the latest exciting updates with you. While SLYR begun life as a simple “LYR to QGIS conversion tool”, it quickly matured into a full ArcGIS compatibility suite for QGIS. Aside from its original task of converting ESRI LYR files, SLYR now extends the QGIS interface and adds seamless support for working with all kinds of ArcGIS projects and data files. It’s rapidly becoming a must-have tool for any organisation which uses a mix of ESRI and open source tools, or for any organisation exploring a transition away from ArcGIS to QGIS. Accordingly, we […]