Opening and saving a map in composer

  • Once you are happy with the scale and position, click Project> New Print Composer.

New print composer in the project menu
New print composer in the project menu
  • A window will open asking for an ID/Title, however it is not required. Click OK.

  • A new window will open showing a blank page. To insert the map from QGIS click on ‘Add new map’ (see below).

Left click and then drag a rectangle to select the dimension of the added map. Once added the position of the map within the frame can be adjusted by selecting ‘Move item content’ (see below).

Move item content (top) and  Add new map (bottom) buttons in the toolbar
Move item content (top) and Add new map (bottom) buttons in the toolbar
  • Click Item Properties on the task bar on the right. The specific scale can be selected here, and if you scroll down there are several other options including Position and Size. Here the dimensions of the map can be adjusted in millimetres.

Careful, as when altering the position and size the scale will also change.

Item properties window showing 17,000 scaler selected

OS VectorMap District is most useful to design a map within scales of 1:15 000-1:30 000, for this map of Southampton the selected scale is 1:17 000.

  • Once you are happy with the image you can export the map as an image or a PDF by selecting

‘Export as image’ or ‘Export as PDF’ respectively (see below). And save within an appropriate folder.

Export as image (left) and Export as PDF (right) buttons in the toolbar
Export as image (left) and Export as PDF (right) buttons in the toolbar
  • Your final JPEG image should looks similar to this:

Final JPEG image showing map data
Final JPEG image rendered showing map data

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#345: Adding What's next networking links

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