I am dealing with a .shp with a number of points in it. The distances between points range from ~300m to 5km.
I wish to create a 1 km buffer around each point with as little overlap as possible. Each buffer should have an ID. Where 1km buffers overlap with each other, I would like to give that buffer a different ID.
So lets say I have 50 points, and I create a 1 km buffer around every point. Owing to the short distances between my points in the Shapefile, overlapping between buffers are inevitable. Where there is overlap, I would like to give one of those buffers a particular ID. I would like to replicate this throughout my entire dataset until there are no buffers of the same ID overlapping.
I am sure this is possible in QGIS with a combination of the vector manipulation tools, I am just struggling on the best approach.
I am using QGIS 2.0.1 Dufour.
Best Answer
I would Intersect the buffers, turning the overlap into polygons.
Apply a Spatial Join from the original Points to assign the original ID, clear the ID's that don't have a match.
Join the two layers on the ID to compare Area. The buffers that overlapped have buffer.area > intersect.area.