Download And How To Setup

QGIS is a free GIS program that can open up all kinds of GIS data, most notably is LiDAR data, which is the primary thing I utilize it for. There are other GIS programs that can do the same, but I’ve only used QGIS as of this writing. QGIS isn’t as straightforward as The National Map and can be daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it you won’t look back. Down below I will guide you through everything you need to download and will teach you how to setup and use QGIS. Link for QGIS.

Download the Long Term Version for your system

Once you’ve downloaded and installed QGIS you will have a folder on your desktop that will have six programs in it. Open the QGIS Desktop (version number) that you downloaded. Once its open, you’ll need to download three plugins for making life a lot easier, which are Lat Lon Tools, QuickMapServices and LAStools. Sadly LAStools is a Windows only program and the only way to get it to work on Mac or Linux is with a program called Wine, which I have no experience with. Also, you don’t need LAStools if you never plan to use LiDAR Point Cloud data.

Click on Plugins and then Manage and install Plugins
Search for Lat Lon Tools, QuickMapServices and LAStools and install them

You will also need to download the free version of LAStools from Rapidlasso and point QGIS to its location for LAStools to function in QGIS at all. Link for LAStools.

Click on Settings and then Options
Click on Processing, then click the arrow beside Providers and then LAStools

You now have three of the most useful tools that you’ll need to be able to move around the map and process data. Lat Lon Tools is for inputting GPS coordinates, QuickMapServices is for adding a basemap from one of several different mapping companies and LAStools is for processing LiDAR Point Cloud data.

Lat Lon Tools
Click on Zoom To Coordinate to make it appear in the bottom left
These are all the controls that you need to use for Lat Lon Tools
QuickMapServices
Click on QuickMapServices and then Settings
Click on More services and then Get contributed pack to download more basemaps
Click on Visibility and select which basemaps you want and then click save
Your selected basemaps are under QuickMapServices. I suggest getting Google and OSM
Click on Processing and then Toolbox to find LAStools in the Processing Toolbox
LAStools has quite a bit of different tools within it, but the main ones you’ll be using is lasground and blast2dem

Once you’ve added the Lat Lon Tools search to the interface and updated the basemaps for QuickMapServices, you can now open a basemap and input coordinates for something and start moving the map around.

Click on QuickMapServices, OSM and then OSM Standard to open a basemap
OSM or OpenStreetMap is the basemap that Gaia GPS uses for its basemap

You’re now all set. You can freely move around the map, input coordinates, process LiDAR Point Cloud data and all around have a lot less of a headache then I did when I initially started learning QGIS. Now to learn where you can download LiDAR data from. Link for Where To Download LiDAR Data.