[GIS] Can QGIS export Geospatial PDF for Avenza PDF map app

avenzageospatial-pdfgeotiff-tiffpdfqgis

Since QGIS uses GDAL, does any map exported as a PDF become a Geospatial PDF? I am hoping to import maps from QGIS into the Avenza PDF Map app on my phone. Previous posts mentioned exporting as Geospatial PDF's and GeoTiff's, but none had an exact answer or process.

Best Answer

Let me quote Andreas on the mailing list (Status Feb 05, 2012):

"no - GeoPDF is not yet supported in QGIS.

If you want such a feature in QGIS, please consider sponsoring the GDAL/OGR library to include support for this format. See http://www.gdal.org/ogr/ and supported formats: http://www.gdal.org/ogr/ogr_formats.html

QGIS is using the OGR library for vector formats. Once GeoPDF is supported in OGR, it should be easier to support it in QGIS. On the other hand, many other GIS packages and tools would benefit from the additional format."

Update Nov 2012:

http://www.gdal.org/ogr/drv_pdf.html

GDAL/OGR >= 2.0.0 can read and write geospatial PDF with vector features.

Read support requires linking to podofo or poppler libraries, but write support does not.

But at least QGIS via OSGeo4W is still built with GDAL/OGR 1.9.

Update October 2014:

http://www.gdal.org/frmt_pdf.html

From GDAL 1.10 onwards, PDF can be read and created from raster and vector soruces. Both OSGEO4W and gisinternals are build with PDF support.

But QGIS has still some problems with it: http://hub.qgis.org/issues/8912

It is now possible to export a raster layer in QGIS to GeoPDF. QGIS 2.4.0 can not read its own output, but current qgis-dev 2.5.0 can. A layer stack can be created with the commandline window of Raster -> Conversion -> Translate using the GDAL command line example from the manpage, but QGIS-dev takes just the first layer. In a PDF reader all layers are selectable.

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