So I downloaded QGIS 0.7.4 for OS X and put it through some simple comparisions with ArcExplorer Java Edition. The comparisions were primarily relating to cartography, not analysis. Why do this? Well people ask me for a simple, cheap (or free) way to create maps, maybe a neighborhood street map for instance, or a map of the local election districts.
Our county website allows for folks to create these maps online, but that’s only for this county. I know a lot of people outside the county that would like to be able to do something like that, but need something cheap.
Enter our two contenders - QGIS and ESRI’s ArcExplorer Java Edition for Education. Both run on OS X, QGIS natively and ArcExplorer in Java. Both can use shapefiles directly, a real plus since a great deal of data is available in that format.
The comparision I did involved creating a map of Sedgwick county’s Board of Commissioners districts. I did this since that data is readily available from the county website for free, and it covered what seems like a typical extent for my area, namely countywide. Other area counties have similar data available. I used our county since I’m familiar with the data.
The layers used were the commissioner boundary lines, street lines, and city boundary polygons. The streets layer included several classes of streets, from residential and feeders all the way up to interstates. The city boundary layer included all the cities in the county. The commissioner layer included five districts.
ArcExplorer Java Edition for Education
The shapefiles loaded with no problems, and the initial map looked pretty good. The roads layer drew fairly quick, but there was no way to not draw certain classes of roads. I only wanted major highways, but couldn’t change the symbology to eliminate the smaller roads.
This was a problem for a couple of reasons - the legend was much bigger than I wanted, and the city boundaries were obscured by the many small streets.
Other catographic elements, such as scale bar and north arrow, were Ok.
The finished map was just not very pretty.
QGIS
Again, the shapefiles loaded with no problems. When I went to label the commission districts though, a problem presented itself - namely that QGIS doesn’t deal with collisions very well. In fact, label placement just didn’t work well for that layer.
QGIS had the same problem with streets symbology - no way to eliminate unwanted classes from the map, which meant an unweildy legend.
The cartographic elements were also not so nice. The scale bar uses the project options, which is ok, but there are only three options for units: meters, feet, and degrees. For an extent as large as this, miles would have been a nice option to have. The scale bar looked nice, but a bar with a 1 mile scale would have been better than the 6000 feet displayed.
One improvement that I liked in QGIS was that the export to image file worked much better than the 0.7.0 version I used last time. The symbology from the map window was faithfully sent to the image file, and looked very nice.
The bottom line
Both products will work for simple map creation, albeit with limitations. Both have drawbacks, such as symbology issues, but both also have plusses, like ease of use and a clean interface.
I still like QGIS for its other features, like being able to edit layers and plugin framework. Plus, as open source software, I think its future is very bright. So, to the QGIS guys, looking good so far, and keep improving.
6 responses so far ↓
1 Macduro // May 5, 2006 at 1:53 pm
What about SID raster images in both apps?
2 Walt // May 5, 2006 at 2:26 pm
That’s a really good question. I didn’t try SIDs, but will do so when I get a chance.
3 MZM // May 8, 2006 at 5:31 am
About SIDs: QGIS uses GDAL/OGR library (http://www.gdal.org/) to read different raster/vector formats. Question about SIDs is a bit tricky - to read MrSID with GDAL You need non-free SDK from LizardTech (http://www.gdal.org/frmt_mrsid.html). If You have legal copy of MrSID SDK, You can recompile GDAL library with SID support. Most GDAL precompiled versions ship without SID support.
There is a SID to GeoTIFF conversation utility, but I have not tested it. http://www.lizardtech.com/download/dl_options.php?page=tools
4 Walt // May 8, 2006 at 7:30 am
Thanks MZM. That’s some good information
5 Ken H // Aug 15, 2006 at 2:11 pm
Great writeup!
I agree with your frustration with the symbology. When I have to eliminate roads it’s done by striping them out in ArcGIS and exporting a new shapefile. I guess if ESRI gave too much of the cow away…………
6 Walt // Aug 15, 2006 at 2:28 pm
Yeah, that’s what I’d end up doing as well. Too bad really, ’cause that seems a simple enough feature to add without giving away the farm.
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