Mesh layer is now supported for the 1D, 2D and 3D data frames. It also comes with integration to the temporal controller in QGIS 3.14.
The releases of QGIS 3.14, MDAL 0.6.1 and Crayfish 3.4.4 are planned for this Friday We are delighted to have made improvements for the upcoming release:
- full integration with the new temporal controller
- 1D meshes support (e.g. to support urban drainage system models)
- New rendering and styling options for mesh layers
- improving greatly rendering speed for large datasets
- various other enhancements and bug-fixes
If you are eager to try the latest features, you can always install QGIS nightlies/master.
Special thanks to all contributors and the sponsors of these features
Do you want to use QGIS Mesh Layers in your projects? Read more…
Native QGIS Temporal Controller
The long awaited native temporal support in QGIS is finally materialised. We managed to port all QGIS Mesh Layer code to the new infrastructure and remove the custom time slider in the Mesh Layer properties/styling dialog. The native temporal support will greatly benefit users in the long run. We can now share the code components for time handing with raster, vector and WMS-T and other temporal data types. Also user can load multiple temporal layers and change time-domain for all of them at the same time.
Unfortunately, the new temporal framework changed the API, so if you use QgsMeshLayer in your plugins, consult the QGIS documentation for required changes.
New MDAL logo and docs
We have started writing the proper documentation for all supported formats and also reference documentation for developers. We welcome all contributions to improve the documentations. Just go to https://www.mdal.xyz and click “Edit on GitHub”!
Support for 1d meshes
MDAL and QGIS now supports 1D meshes, currently for UGRID and 3Di formats. Other formats should be easy to add. If you are interested in supporting a format, drop us a line.
You can read the full technical description in the following QGIS Enhancement Proposal.
The 1D meshes can be styled with the various renderers, for example use of pressure data to calculate line width:
Furthermore, Crayfish plugin has been extended to support such mesh data frames. For example, 1D plots in Crayfish with the snapping and routing along the network can be used:
2D mesh rendering improvement
2D meshes streamlines/particles/arrows can be now styled by the colour ramp. You can better display streamlines and mesh vectoral data varaition:
Meshes in 3D map view
The mesh layer is now fully supported in the 3D map view. You can visualise your terrain and overlay vector arrows (e.g. velocity) and other mesh quantities (e.g. water surface) in the 3D map view.
Other features and bugfixes
QGIS
- The mesh rendering speed increased by 2-20 times depending on various mesh/zoom/map/data combinations
- Ability to show only subset of dataset groups in the Mesh styling window
- Support for reading multiple meshes in one file (e.g. UGRID)
- Ability to resample vertex values to faces
- Support for saving/loading of QML styles
- Full usage of temporal controller, even in print templates, animation, …
MDAL
- The GRIB and NetCDF datasets are now loaded twice as fast
- Support for UGRID datasets with magnitude and direction
- Support for reading of UGRID classified data and its usage in QGIS color ramps
- Renamed the pointers and functions in the API for consistency
- Created brand new logo and started the online-docs
- Support XMS Tin
Crayfish
- Ported to new temporal API
- Added 1D plots
- Fixed various UI bugs
You may also like...
Mergin Maps, a field data collection app based on QGIS. Mergin Maps makes field work easy with its simple interface and cloud-based sync. Available on Android, iOS and Windows.
