Creating vector file using QGIS

Question

I'm an artist hoping to create the shape of two islands out of wood. The person who is running the CNC machine requires vector files.

While I know I could learn to hand-trace in Illustrator, is there a way to do this with QGIS?

Answer 1

One way to do this, without having to digitise would be to use QGIS and the QuickOSM Plugin.

First, you will need QGIS installed. Install QGIS

Once you have QGIS is installed, head to the "Plug-Ins" menu

Then to the "Manage and Install Plugins" option 1.

In the searchbar type in "QuickOSM" and install this plugin.

This allows you to query the OpenStreetMap datasets for information. In your case you are looking for coastlines. Once installed you should have a toolbar added to the main QGIS Map window. Close the plugins window and look for something like the screenshot below, and hit the green magnifying glass.

This opens a query builder window. As an example, I have queried the "Shackleton Banks" boundary from your example. See the query below:

One additional thing, before hitting "Run Query". Hit the "Show Query" button and change the "output = "xml" to output = "json".

Hit the run button and in the main map, all coastlines in NC will be shown, one of which is the Shackleton Banks polygon you need.

You can select the polygon you want and right-click the polygon "OSMQuery" and from the options "Export -> Save Selected Features As".

You can then choose where you want to save it, and the file format you want to save it as.

Better than digitising the boundary.