Creating Lines from Multiple Points to one Reference Point

Question

I'm looking to create a new line shapefile to connect two sets of point files using a common reference field.

E.g. in the below image i'd have 7 lines connecting from the blue shapefile to the orange shapefile. I have a few hundred clusters of features like this so need a fairly automated way.

Answer 1

There are a couple of options available to you:

1. RT QSpider plugin that will create a spider diagram using pairs of coordinates. You'll need to create one table listing all the source coordinates with their target coordinates.

2. Use PostGIS and a simple query to build the lines from the coordinate pairs held in your_table. The data could be in a single table or two tables joined on a common ID.

SELECT sourceid, targetid, ST_MakeLine(ST_MakePoint(source_x, source_y),ST_MakePoint(target_x, target_y)) FROM your_table;