Sorry if this is a repeat, but I couldn't find an answer here. And sorry if the answer is completely obvious, but I do appreciate your assistance with my first QGIS map.
When I try to use composer to create a printable PDF of a map I've made, clicking 'add new map', then drawing a rectangle, the map does not show up. I can add and see a north arrow image or a scale bar, either on top of or to the side of the map rectangle. I can add and adjust a frame around my map and I can change the background color. I tried to show the grid and cannot.
I downloaded a map from www.naturalearthdata.com and composer seems to work fine for me, including moving the map, changing the scale, adding the north arrow image and the scale bar.
I'm using QGIS 1.8.0-Lisboa, with Windows 8.
Any suggestions?
Best Answer
This might only be my opinion, but I had a lot of problems with QGIS's Print Composer especially when I had a mixture of map layers with various Coordinate Reference Systems in the same map. I used to get the dreaded 'bad allocation' error very frequently, and following that my compositions would become blank and non-functional and could only be deleted. Developing the habit of saving all new data promptly to ESRI Shapefiles and all in the same (UTM) CRS and leaving 'on the fly' turned off seems to have cleared up most of my problems. I only turn 'on the fly' on briefly now when I want a quick preview of new incoming GPS data in WGS84. Apart from that I think QGIS generally works best for me with 'on the fly' turned off.