Practical GIS

Creating a printable map

As we saw in the previous chapter, even the simple task of making a map can involve some geoprocessing. Now we will dive further into using basic geoalgorithms to fix some of the more obvious flaws of our map before exporting it. The most basic geoalgorithms in GIS are buffer, clip, intersection, difference, union, and merge. Some experts also consider dissolve a basic geoalgorithm, although it involves merge and multipart conversion with some criteria. Now we will use clipping to get features only in our study area. Clipping is similar to extraction used in the previous chapter, although it not only selects features within a mask but also clips the features to its boundary. It's like placing a cookie-cutter shaped ...