Kumoy Supports Raster Image and SVG Icons

Introduction

When you make a map in QGIS, you often want to show point data clearly with image icons or SVG icons rather than only simple markers. For example, showing tourist spots as pictograms or using a different custom icon for each type of equipment makes the purpose of the map clear at a glance.

Kumoy, which lets QGIS users share maps easily as web maps, has a new feature: web maps can now display raster image icons and SVG icons. This means you can take point styling you crafted in QGIS to the web in a form closer to the original.

The Kumoy icon feature is available with QGIS plugin version 2.1.1 or later. If you use an older version, upgrade the plugin first.

What the Kumoy icon feature can do

With this update, the raster image icons and SVG icons you set on a point layer in QGIS are now reflected on Kumoy web maps too.

This makes it easier to share a map while keeping the look you built in QGIS, and it greatly expands what web maps can express. Information that is hard to convey with plain point symbols alone can be expressed more intuitively with icons.

The feature works well in situations such as these:

• When you want to show attractions and facility types clearly with icons on a tourist map or guide map
• When you want to organize infrastructure equipment and inspection targets with a different symbol for each type of equipment
• When you want evacuation shelters, water supply points, and hazardous locations to be easy to tell apart on a disaster response or disaster prevention map

How to use the icon feature

Using icons in Kumoy is not very different from sharing maps the way you did before. This section walks through the steps from setting icons in QGIS to showing them on a web map.

1. Set icons on a point layer in QGIS

First, in QGIS, set a raster image icon or SVG icon as the symbol of a point layer. This example uses world airport data downloaded from Natural Earth, styles it by category value for each airport type (type), and sets an airplane icon as the symbol.

If you register an icon by selecting Embed File in the symbol settings, the same icon appears even when another user opens the project you shared through Kumoy in QGIS. An icon registered through the regular Select File option also appears on the web map.

For details on how to set icons, see the following article.

Once set, the map looks like this.

2. Upload the map to Kumoy

Save and upload the map with the icons to Kumoy. In the Browser panel, expand Kumoy, right-click Maps, and click Save Current Project As.

Set the map name and other information, then click OK.

If the map has local vector layers, the Select Layers to Convert dialog appears, where you choose the layers to convert to Kumoy vectors. Check the layers you want to convert and click OK.

When the upload finishes and the message bar shows “Map ‘(map name)’ has been saved successfully.”, the save is complete.

3. Check the display on the web map

Log in to Kumoy in a web browser and open the uploaded map. You can confirm that the icons you set in QGIS are displayed properly on the web map and in the legend of the Layers panel.

Notes on using the icon feature

If you use raster images or SVGs stored locally as icons, it is important to set the icons with Embed File in the QGIS symbol settings so that they are saved in the project file.

If you do not, the icon image reference depends on each person's local environment, so the icons may not display correctly when other users open the same project in QGIS.

Take particular care when you share the project file within a team or continue your work on another PC.

If you use QGIS's default icons from the SVG browser, as in the image below, you can use them without worrying about the above.

Conclusion

With the new Kumoy feature, you can now use raster image icons and SVG icons on web maps, and you can take the way a map looks in QGIS to the web more faithfully than before.

Icon support not only makes maps look more polished but also makes the information on the map easier to grasp intuitively. The effect is easiest to see when you want to present point data clearly, such as for tourism, equipment management, and disaster prevention. Try the Kumoy icon feature.

Data sources

• GSI Tiles
• Natural Earth