Constraints Mapping
I had a project where I needed to look at constraints mapping for a series of project areas. Essentially I needed to look at a project and see what parts and how many layers it intersected with. The first thing I wanted to look at was how to go about automating as much as I could and since my python skills are still very green I looked into using the new to me QGIS process modeler.
Processing Modeler
The process modeler is a rad tool as you can work out a process visually and not need to worry about the ‘raw’ coding. It does have its limitations, but it does open up a whole world of scripting with a pretty small investment to understand it. Here is a quick example I created so I could merge and clip a variety of shapefiles at once.
You can see that I take three types of inputs (points, lines, and polygons) and then process them through a “merge” followed by a “clip” and then three outputs. This was something that I normally would have done by hand, creating a lot of temporary shapefiles in the process. This way I just end up with the outputs that I want, and while it may take longer to process, its all in one step. Hopefully I will find new ways to use this and have some cooler examples in the future.