Welcome to the CivilTools wiki! The goal of this project is to bridge the worlds of CAD and GIS by adding CAD-like tools to QGIS. Rather than attempting to be an exact replica of existing CAD packages, this suite of tools aims to bring a more "QGIS flavor" to drafting - and rather than reinventing the wheel, reuse existing QGIS functionality whenever possible. See the Basic Principles page for more details.

Development of this project is ongoing; see the Project Roadmap for a basic structure of planned improvements. Pages marked with a [future] tag discuss features that aren't implemented yet in the current version of the plugin.

Before You Start

While this plugin can be installed in a self-contained manner and work (mostly) as you'd expect, the undo/redo system is built on another open source project, Kart. In order to use the undo/redo functionality, Kart will need to be installed. Information about how to do so can be found at the Kart website.

Getting Started

Once the CivilTools plugin is installed, the user must "initialize" every QGIS project in which they plan to use it. Initializing a project creates a GeoPackage of default CAD layers, where all geometry the user creates will be stored. Features can be copied/moved to other layers in the project, but all features will be initially created on the GeoPackage layers.

To initialize a project, navigate to the CivilTools plugin menu and click "Initialize Project." The user will be prompted to set a name and location for the GeoPackage.

A Note on Coordinate Systems

CivilTools will set the GeoPackage layers to have the same coordinate system as the overall project at initialization, and the coordinate system MUST BE A PROJECTED SYSTEM. If the project coordinate system is not a projected system, CivilTools will not allow you to initialize the project.

Entering Drafting Mode

Once a project is initialized, the user can begin using CivilTools by entering Drafting Mode. This can be accomplished by clicking the "Toggle Drafting Mode" button in the plugin menu, or by entering the keyboard shortcut (CTRL+ENTER).