VoWa Baselayers
Purpose of the QGIS Plugin
There are a number of commonly used geodata available locally at the servers of Vogelwarte as well as online at swisstopo. Users of QGIS who want to use these data in their visualisations require specific knowledge of the data and database structure in order to find the appropriate layers.
It is the goal of this plugin to make overview, access, and use of the commonly used geodata as easy as possible. The plugin presents the data so that the users recognise what data are available. It allows selecting the data and adding the selected data to the user’s QGIS project. Furthermore, it gives descriptions about the layer and links to metadata.
Installation
In QGIS, go to "Plugins" and "Manage and Install Plugins...". Click on "All" and type "VoWa". You will see all available QGIS plugins created and maintained in-house. Make sure the required plugin has a checkmark next to it.
If the requested plugin does not show in "All" go to "Settings" and make sure that Plugin Repository "VoWa-Plugins 3" is listed. If it is not, contact the Scientific IT (see Contact below).
Usage
Prerequisite: You need to have read access to the Spatial DB.
You open the plugin by either selecting "Plugins" > "Vowa Baselayers" > "Vowa Baselayers" from the menu, or by clicking on the plugin's icon in the toolbar. After authentication the plugin presents a dialog with a number of tabs. Each tab contains a list of various map layers with description and links to metadata. Select the requested map layers by clicking on them. By holding Shift or Ctrl/Cmd while clicking you add more layers to or remove them from the selection. If you change to another tab the layers you already selected remain selected. Check the text above the table to see how many layers are selected in total.
If you have selected the map layer you require click on "Add" to add these layers to the current QGIS project. There, you may rename or otherwise manipulate the layers. If you open the plugin once again you may add the same layers multiple times.
Implementation
The QGIS plugin uses tables in the schema qgis_tools for storing the information on the layers to be loaded into QGIS. The documentation is on this page.
Contact
Scientific IT: Bernhard Schneider
GIS: Jérôme Guélat