Automated spline polygons from four points in QGIS?

Question

I'm looking for a way to use QGIS for tree surveys which involves plotting four points to demarcate the NESW extents of a tree canopy and then generating a polygon that passes through each of these - I know that AutoCAD offers this functionality but I was hoping to achieve it through QGIS. I can create a convex hull easily enough but this is only straight lines connecting the points.

Is there a way to generate a curved polygon (or line) that could be automated over large datasets?

Did you have a look at this question https://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/167308/representing-uneven-tree-canopy-spread-around-point-in-qgis/248003#248003 ? it seem to be closely related to your problem — J.R, Mar 09 '18 at 12:16
Hi, yes I did find that - I'm just having trouble figuring out the geometry generator symbology and can't really find much in the way of help or tutorials online. Is this the best way to achieve this? Are there any decent online tutorials? — Luke, Mar 09 '18 at 16:03

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Feb 20 '19 at 03:56

One of the more robust approaches to generating curved polygons for large datasets is to use PostGIS with some sort of smoothing function. PostGIS 2.5 has Chaikin smoothing but I have not tried this out yet.

What has worked for me is using the custom function CreateCurve documented here and then creating a VIEW in PostGIS based on the virtual layer (SQL) approach I've posted about here

Here is one I have used successfully with PostGIS 2.3 (I think it was 2.3):

CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW layer_name_pca AS 
SELECT 
    ogc_fid,
    treeid, 
    n, 
    e, 
    s, 
    w, 
    CASE WHEN n = s AND n = e AND n = w 
        THEN ST_Buffer(geom,n)
        ELSE st_makepolygon(st_curvetoline(createcurve(st_makeline(array[
               st_translate(geom,0,greatest(N,0.2)),
               st_translate(geom,0.6*greatest(E,0.2),0.6*greatest(N,0.2)),
               st_translate(geom,greatest(E,0.2),0),
               st_translate(geom,0.6*greatest(E,0.2),-0.6*greatest(S,0.2)),
               st_translate(geom,0,-greatest(S,0.2)),
               st_translate(geom,-0.6*greatest(W,0.2),-0.6*greatest(S,0.2)),
               st_translate(geom,-greatest(W,0.2),0), 
               st_translate(geom,-0.6*greatest(W,0.2),0.6*greatest(N,0.2)),
               st_translate(geom,0,greatest(N,0.2))]),70))) 
        END
    AS geom

FROM layer_name WHERE n IS NOT NULL;

This VIEW can then be loaded into QGIS as a polygon and you can proceed to do further calculations (e.g. total non-overlapping canopy area, canopy area intersection with proposed building footprint, etc.)

It is dynamic and fast and generates actual polygons; none of the other solutions have really managed to do all three.

Automated spline polygons from four points in QGIS?

1 Answers1