wxGUI.vdigit(1)

📦
version 8.4.2 · 10 versions
, in fedora 44

💅 wxGUI.vdigit — the wxGUI Vector Digitizer, bestie edition ✨

okay so welcome to wxGUI.vdigit(1), the GRASS GIS manual page that's about to change your whole digitizing life. grab a snack, open your mapset, and let's go 🦋

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

The vector digitizer is a wxGUI component, and its whole ~thing~ is interactive editing and digitizing of vector maps. (If you want the non-interactive GRASS flavor of vector editing, go look at v.edit, that's its moment 💅)

Heads up, bestie: only vector maps that are stored or generated in the current mapset can be opened for editing. no exceptions, no cap.

The digitizer lets you edit 2D vector features — that's points, lines, centroids, boundaries, and areas. the full roster 💖

Vector features can be selected two ways:

  • by mouse — bounding box, or just a plain old mouse click (the threshold lives in Settings→General→Select threshold, iykyk)
  • by query — like by line length, see Settings→Query Tool

🎀 STARTING THE DIGITIZER 🎀

There are like, so many doors into this thing, pick your fave:

  • From the Map Display toolbar: pick "Digitize" from the Tools combobox.
  • From the Digitizer toolbar: the "Select vector map" combobox — note that only vector maps from the current layer tree in Layer Manager show up there.
  • From the Layer Manager contextual menu: right-click a selected vector map in the layer tree and pick "Start editing".
  • Straight from the Layer Manager toolbar itself.
  • As a stand-alone application from the command line: g.gui.vdigit 🌈

🦋 CREATING A NEW VECTOR MAP 🦋

Making a brand new vector map is lowkey the easiest thing ever. From the digitizer toolbar, just pick "New vector map" in the "Select vector map" combobox. boom:

  • a new vector map is created ✨
  • it's added to the current layer tree in Layer Manager ✨
  • it's opened for editing ✨

and the "Select vector map" combobox in the digitizer toolbar also lets you switch between vector maps to edit, super smoothly. main character energy fr fr 👑

💜 EDITING AN EXISTING VECTOR MAP 💜

You select an existing vector map in the digitizer toolbar, in the "Select vector map" combobox. That map gets opened for editing and added to the current layer tree in the Layer Manager. And yeah, that same "Select vector map" combobox in the digitizer toolbar lets you easily hop between vector maps to be edited. effortless 🫶

🌈 USING A RASTER BACKGROUND MAP 🌈

Wanna digitize on top of a raster map? literally just load the map into the Map Display using the Layer Manager, then start digitizing. see below for the details, babe.

⭐ USING A VECTOR BACKGROUND MAP ⭐

The vector digitizer lets you pick a "background" vector map. Loading it inside the digitizer is a different vibe from just loading it via Layer Manager, because then you can directly interact with single vector features. obsessed.

Vector features can be copied from the background map using the "Copy features from (background) vector map" tool, which lives in the "Additional tools" of the digitizer toolbar. And newly digitized vector features get snapped, within the given threshold, to the features from the background map. slay 💅

👑 DIGITIZER TOOLBAR 👑

  • Digitize new point — Add new point to vector map and optionally define its attributes (Ctrl+P).
  • Digitize new line — Add new line to vector map and optionally define its attributes (Ctrl+L).
  • Digitize new boundary — Add new boundary to vector map and optionally define its attributes (Ctrl+B).
  • Digitize new centroid — Add new centroid to vector map and optionally define its attributes (Ctrl+C).
  • Digitize new area — Add new area (closed boundary and one centroid inside) to vector map and optionally define its attributes (Ctrl+A).
  • Move vertex — Move selected vertex of linear feature. Thus shape of linear feature is changed (Ctrl+G).
  • Add vertex — Add new vertex to selected linear feature (shape not changed) (Ctrl+V).
  • Remove vertex — Remove selected vertex from linear feature (Ctrl+X). Thus shape of selected feature can be changed.
  • Edit line/boundary — Edit selected linear feature, add new segments or remove existing segments of linear feature (Ctrl+E).
  • Move feature(s) — Move selected vector features (Ctrl+M.). Selection can be done by mouse or by query.
  • Delete feature(s) — Delete selected vector features (point, line, centroid, or boundary) (Ctrl+D). Selection can be done by mouse or by query.
  • Delete areas(s) — Delete selected vector areas (Ctrl+F). Selection can be done by mouse or by query.
  • Display/update categories — Display categories of selected vector feature (Ctrl+J). Category settings can be modified, new layer/category pairs added or already defined pairs removed.
  • Display/update attributes — Display attributes of selected vector feature (based on its category settings) (Ctrl+K). Attributes can be also modified. Same functionality is accessible from Main toolbar "Query vector map (editable mode)".
  • Additional tools
    • Break selected lines/boundaries at intersection — Split given vector line or boundary into two lines on given position (based on v.clean, tool=break).
    • Connect two selected lines/boundaries — Connect selected lines or boundaries, the first given line is connected to the second one. The second line is broken if necessary on each intersection. The lines are connected only if distance between them is not greater than snapping threshold value.
    • Copy categories — Copy category settings of selected vector feature to other vector features. Layer/category pairs of source vector features are appended to the target feature category settings. Existing layer/category pairs are not removed from category settings of the target features.
    • Copy features from (background) vector map — Make identical copy of selected vector features. If a background vector map has been selected from the Layer Manager, copy features from background vector map, not from the currently modified vector map.
    • Copy attributes — Duplicate attributes settings of selected vector feature to other vector features. New category(ies) is appended to the target feature category settings and attributes duplicated based on category settings of source vector features. Existing layer/category pairs are not removed from category settings of the target features.
    • Feature type conversion — Change feature type of selected geometry features. Points are converted to centroids, centroids to points, lines to boundaries and boundaries to lines.
    • Flip selected lines/boundaries — Flip direction of selected linear features (lines or boundaries).
    • Merge selected lines/boundaries — Merge (at least two) selected vector lines or boundaries. The geometry of the merged vector lines can be changed. If the second line from two selected lines is in opposite direction to the first, it will be flipped. See also module v.build.polylines.
    • Snap selected lines/boundaries (only to nodes) — Snap vector features in given threshold. See also module v.clean. Note that this tool supports only snapping to nodes. Snapping to vector features from background vector map is not currently supported.
    • Split line/boundary — Split selected line or boundary on given position.
    • Query tool — Select vector features by defining a threshold for min/max length value (linear features or dangles).
    • Z-bulk labeling of 3D lines — Assign z coordinate values to 3D vector lines in bounding box. This is useful for labeling contour lines.
  • Undo — Undo previous operations (Ctrl+Z).
  • Redo — Redo previous operations (Ctrl+Y).
  • Settings — Digitizer settings (Ctrl+T).
  • Show help — Show help page for the Digitizer (Ctrl+H).
  • Quit digitizing tool — Changes in vector map can be optionally discarded when digitizing session is quited (Ctrl+Q).

💖 NOTES 💖

Mouse button functions — memorize these, bestie:

  • Left — select or deselect features
  • Control+Left — cancel action or undo vertex when digitizing lines
  • Right — confirm action

Dead (deleted) features are only marked as 'dead' in the geometry file but remain there and occupy space. Any vector module used afterwards on this vector map which really reads and writes vector geometry (so not g.copy) will write only features which are 'alive'. 😭 the drama of it all

Added or modified vector features are snapped to existing vector features (Settings→General→Snapping). To disable snapping, set the snapping threshold to '0'.

If the digitizer crashes for some reason, the changes are automatically saved. Broken topology can be repaired by running v.build. 🩹

GRASS GIS uses a topological vector format, meaning that a common boundary of two polygons is only stored once. When digitizing polygons it is thus important to be able to only draw each boundary once. When drawing a polygon adjacent to an existing polygon, one has to first split the existing boundary at the points where the new boundary will be attached. Snapping should be set to ensure that the new boundaries are automatically attached to the chosen points. it's giving precision, it's giving care, it's giving topological queen 💅

🧚 REFERENCES 🧚

  • GRASS Vedit Library
  • Vector Database Management (Wiki page)

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

wxGUI, wxGUI components

v.edit, v.category, v.build, g.gui.rdigit, wxGUI.rdigit

See also the WxGUI Vector Digitizer Wiki page including video tutorials.

🍓 AUTHOR 🍓

Martin Landa, FBK-irst (2007-2008), Trento, Italy, and Czech Technical University in Prague, Czech Republic

💜 SOURCE CODE 💜

Available at: wxGUI Vector Digitizer source code (history)

Accessed: Saturday Jan 17 05:42:35 2026

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 this was the wxGUI.vdigit(1) manual, pulled from GRASS GIS 8.4.2 — © 2003-2025 GRASS Development Team, GRASS GIS 8.4.2 Reference Manual, and yes it says GRASS 8.4.2 at the bottom too. go digitize something iconic. periodt 💖✨

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