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North River Geographic Systems Inc

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GRASS

GRASS 8.0 Released

I’m a bit late to the game on this one – but my favorite guilty pleasure software just got a new major release. Guilty Pleasure software? Yeah – I like GRASS and I run it when I can where I can. I actually had a job a few years ago with a drone company and I had to do some elevation “math stuff” and the way I solved it was with GRASS. It turned into “how quick can I do this in python” ( I suck at Python) and I think the end result was just under 40 seconds. I still think I could have done this faster.

Anyway – 8.0. So what’s the big deal for me on this one? Well – The interface. If you download QGIS it comes with GRASS and you may have never started GRASS. If a user did start it they were immediately hit with:

At the beginning you have to start making decisions and setting work spaces and assigning projections and new users would throw up their hands and run away. The GRASS users were used to it. That’s the way we did things and we liked it.

With 8.0 it just starts:

The user then get to choose all the stuff they were faced with before – but they’re over the first hurdle of just starting it. That’s a much friendlier way of doing things.

If you do some digging you’ll find that GRASS has been around now for 35+ (maybe 40) years and the 8.0 release cycle burned about 3 years. If you dig through the release notes:

  • GDAL 3
  • Proj 7
  • Python 3.6
  • To sum up everything Faster and “mo better” and current with more stuff on the way with more releases coming.

Why run it? 35 years of development and it’s fast. Try it. You may hate it – you may love it. How many pieces of software can you point to that are that old AND still actively developed AND Free. Not many.

I should talk more about GRASS up here.

The Third Day of XYMas – GRASS

I know – I’m running behind. So look at these 12 days as either “hints” or “tools”….or both.  Being a consultant I walk into some weird situations with data and clients – so it helps to take a full complement of tools into a situation….and a good attitude but that’s on Day 12.

So what do I give you on day 3? GRASS.  Yeah and it’s the running joke EVERY.SINGLE.TIME. “I tried GRASS back in College”.

If GDAL is a swiss army knife and QGIS is my hatchet – this is my sledgehammer. I may not use it as much as I need to – but when I need it it works oh so well.

grass
Don’t worry it’s got a GUI

GRASS has been under some form of development since 1982. It was opened up in the mid 90’s and it’s still actively developed today. Python friendly. Command line friendly. It has it all – even a friendly gui so you can push buttons.

 

So what do I use it for? If you’re an active QGIS user you’ll see a lot of the tools exposed in the processing toolbox. You can gleefully play along with it there if you wish. I would encourage you to look at the tutorials the community has provided. If you’re dealing with a lot of raster data it’s pretty awesome. I’ve used it for drive time analysis with vector data. My one secret weapon with vector data has been the topology tools. If I receive some really bad vector data I’ll import it into GRASS and clean it up. Yes – for those of you that miss clean and build from your workstation days you can relive some of that excitement here.

A couple of years ago I had a call from a drone company. They wanted to leverage their raster data beyond the commercial software they were using. They wanted multiple products with multiple use cases and a lot of clients all from a server out in the “cloud”. My answer? Something really complicated involving some weird process? No – the Second worst programmer in existence (me) hammered out a process leveraging GRASS and python. We were adding and subtracting elevation models after some hefty discussion using the processes found in GRASS. which to me was somewhat poetic – this, probably the oldest piece of software I use, was working with Drones, probably the most disruptive thing to hit aerial imagery collection in forever.

Right now I’ve been using it with LIDAR data. TN freed up a lot of LIDAR data (points and a surface model) for people to work with. I have been known to download the data and mosaic it with GRASS. I’ve played with point clouds in here also. One of the best thing about GRASS is it’s rock solid. I’ve not crashed it often and I really have to do something super stupid to make it go down. If I want to toss a few hundred GB of raster data at it that’s fine as it will churn through that data without blinking.

On Day 3 – Try the Geographic Resources Analysis Support System software. The Ultimate why?

Captain Kirk said so….

 

 

 

GRASS 7.2 is out

….But Randy you’re a month late announcing it. I know. I’m behind.

I’ve become a GRASS fan for the awesome processing power behind this software. For those who have kept up with the blog you’ve seen me do random things with LIDAR. I’ve used it to process Landsat. I’ve used the topology tools to clean up data. For those of you in County Government – did you know you can “network” your road layers and generate drive times for firetrucks? Yes – you can.

From the website:

GRASS GIS 7.2 is the version of active development with a first 7.2.0 stable release in December 2016. In total, it comes with more than 1900 fixes and improvements with respect to the stable releases 7.0.5.

Read here -> https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass7/NewFeatures72

So if you’re using QGIS you might have updated and then found your QGIS processing toolbox was broken.

  • If you’re on windows – update to 2.18.3 and you’re good with the standalone installer (and I haven’t tested 2.14.10).
  • If you’re on windows with the OSGEO installer – once again update and you’re good.

What if you on Linux like myself – it’s still broken. I spent some time this weekend and as I simultaneously ran on experiment the same thing came over the user list – just link your grass 7.2 binary to grass 7.0 so – if you’re on linux (specifically Ubuntu) and that last part sounded like crazy talk.

  • Open a terminal
  • cd /usr/bin
  • sudo ln -s grass72 grass70

Crank up a GRASS Processing tool in QGIS and you should be back up and running.

 

GIS Day – 2016

It’s the worst Holiday ever.

So where am I going to be:

  • A half day at UTK: John C Hodges Library 1015 Volunteer Blvd, Knoxville, TN 37996
  • A Half Day at Roane State College: 701 Briarcliff Avenue, Oak Ridge, TN 37830 Room 102, Goff Building

and what will I be doing? Well at UTK I’m going to be my usual charming self and discuss all things that are ‘alternative medicine’ in the GIS world. At the other I’m going to discuss LIDAR and GRASS…and annoy whoever I can whenever I can. Track me down – I’ll have info, stickers, and general insanity to spread around.

I’m going to be missing my people at MAGS in Atlanta for their event. So if you’re close to Kennesaw go there and enjoy.

GIS Day Social

Wednesday, Nov 16, 2016, 6:30 PM

Burnt Hickory Brewery
2260 Moon Station Ct NW # 210 Kennesaw, GA

10 Members Attending

This month, we’re moving to Wednesday and taking the long journey to Kennesaw to join in KSU’s GIS Day activities at Burnt Hickory Brewery.There will be various presentations, activities and giveaways by the hosts.

Check out this Meetup →

 

GRASS GIS Meetup – Raleigh NC November 5th 2016

image003

 

Interested in using GRASS GIS as a geospatial processing backend? Or for reproducible research with Python? Or as a surprisingly powerful desktop GIS? Then come to the November GRASS GIS Raleigh meetup which will be specifically focused on getting newcomers started with anything ranging from using GRASS GIS to programing and contributing. The meetup is planned for Saturday, November 5. Meet in 4502 Fishbowl at the Hunt library at NC State Centennial Campus at 2 PM. Map here. Join any time during the afternoon; we will be there at least till 6 PM, but there is an option to stay longer.

Contact Vashek if interested in attending, or if you have any questions:
wenzeslaus@gmail.com

More information: https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GRASS_GIS_Raleigh_meetups_2016

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