QGIS – Vertex Editing

By David Crowther

QGIS 3.8 Zanzibar was released in August 2019 and the full change log can be viewed here:

https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/visualchangelog38/index.html

In the coming weeks I will be creating a number of useful FAQs based on many of these new features – so watch out for these!

Here is a feature improvement for editing the vertex points of your spatial data.

Vertex Editing

In the Layers list make your asset layer editable e.g. planning applications.

Then from the Drawing Toolbar choose the Vertex Tool (Current Layer) and the Vertex Editor window will open.

In the map window > Right Click on a feature in the editable layer and the list of vertices for that feature will be listed in the Vertex Editor.

Note – the coordinate values will be shown based on the layers projection, in this case BNG 27700.

Now use the Vertex Tool from the Drawing Toolbar and move a vertex to reshape the feature.

Once reshaped, notice that the vertex value in the Vertex Editor window is updated to the new coordinates.

 If you select the record in the Vertex Editor, the corresponding vertex in the map object is shown in blue.

If you now press the delete key the corresponding vertex in the map object will be deleted, and in turn reshape the feature.

And finally if you choose an existing vertex you can type over the current vertex value to specify a new coordinate location and the map object will reshape accordingly.

Note – the Vertex Editor was included within QGIS before 3.8 Zanzibar, however the link between the map vertices and the records in the Vertex Editor are now more consistent.

This feels like a great tool to enable you to more accurately manage your spatial assets!