QGIS Symbology – Creating Random Point Polygon Fill Symbology in QGIS

Question

Using QGIS 2.18.3, I would like to apply a random point pattern to my polygon symbology. The default Style Manager has a regularly-spaced point pattern, called Cemetery-25-50k (please see image below). This is a good starting point, but obviously not random.

Alternatively, I have reviewed the Point Pattern fill options within the Layer Properties (below), but nothing appears that would generate a random pattern.

What I need to recreate is the ESRI Arcmap random point symbology, shown here:

Answer 1

You can add random point symbology using the following steps:

1. Add new symbol layer using the '+' button:

2. Change the Symbol layer type to 'Point pattern fill'
3. Highlight 'Point pattern fill' in the left side tree
4. Change the horizontal and vertical distances to reasonable values. In this example, I chose the same value for both distances of 2.0

5. Under the Horizontal displacement and vertical displacement, use the following functions:

   5.1 For Horizontal displacement:

   randf(3,5) 
   

   5.2 For Vertical displacement

   randf(2,4) 
   

6. Duplicate the point layer and change the horizontal and vertical distances to 6 and 3, respectively. Under the Horizontal displacement and vertical displacement, use the following functions:

   6.1 For Horizontal displacement:

   randf(0,1) 
   

   6.2 For Vertical displacement

   randf(1,2) 
   

7. You need to reduce the symbol size to 2 Pixels

You can see the output in the following image:

In the composer, the legend will look like this: