5 QGIS Plugins to Streamline Exploration Planning

One of the things I love about QGIS, is that if the software can’t do what you want it to do, it is likely that someone has made a plugin that will let you! In this post, I’ll give you a short introduction into 5 simple QGIS Plugins that I have found can really assist with your exploration planning workflow.

  1. Qdraw

    Qdraw is an incredibly useful plugin that can help make your exploration planning in QGIS a breeze. This handy tool allows you to effortlessly draw points, lines, rectangles, circles, polygons, and buffers as scratch layers, simplifying the process of drafting exploration program ideas.

    With Qdraw, you can quickly mark areas of interest, plan reconnaissance routes, and define sampling locations. It's a convenient solution that helps minimize barriers and streamlines your workflow, making exploration planning more efficient.

    Remember, the scratch layers created using Qdraw are temporary and will be erased when you close your QGIS session. To preserve your work, be sure to compile and export the layers you wish to keep.

2. QChainage

QChainage takes a line input and creates a new layer of points at specified intervals along the line. This tool is incredibly useful for planning and plotting accurate sampling points within a stream or for creating drill collars along exisitng irregular tracks. Simply use QDraw to digitise the line along your feature of interest, select that line as an input, and enter your interval spacing and viola!

If you have a large polyline layer, you can also specify it to only generate points along currently selected line features.

3. Feature Grid Creator

Feature Grid Creator is a useful tool for creating soil, outcrop or auger locations within specific areas of interest. The tool also has labelling capabilities for quickly pre-assiging planned sample point names.

4. Freehand Raster Georeferencer

I discovered this plugin a while back, and have never looked back. It is incredibly useful for image georeferencing of historic maps that give you no CRS details into your project workspace, allowing you to reproject the old-timers maps and incorporate their hard work into your exploration planning. The tool allows for rotation, 2 point georeferencing, scaling and transparency adjustments. See below how easily I am able to (roughly) georeference a historic geological workings map that contains no grid, CRS reference, and a scale measuring “10 Chains to an Inch”!

5. SLYR

SLYR is a plugin that allows conversion of ESRI .style databases and vector .lyr files for use in QGIS. Whilst this is only the free version, I have found it incredibly useful whilst downloading govermental geological mapping that only caters to ArcGIS users, or for importing clients ArcGIS styling into my QGIS workspaces.

Vist https://north-road.com/slyr/ for more information and to contribute, as the softwares full capabilites will be released to all users once their development fundraising benchmarks are reached

Do you have any plugins that you couldn’t live without? Comment below!

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