[Qgis-user] Populating area in the attribute table

[James Sewell]

Hi folks.  I've been evaluating QGIS and lurking on the mailing list.  
I'm a GIS student at Red River College in Winnipeg MB Canada.  I'm 
considering starting a business to do digital maps of golf courses 
(which is the subject of my thesis project).

I've always been a supporter of FOSS and finding a project such as QGIS 
in such an advanced state of development was a welcome surprise and a 
breath of fresh air.  It looks like QGIS has all the features I'd need.  
ESRI wants over 16 grand for ArcEditor and the ArcPublisher extension, 
which is just nuts.  So I'd clearly _LOVE_ to use QGIS for my business.  
Can't argue with free.  I've got software costs factored into the 
business plan, so that could easily go towards sponsoring a developer if 
this business turns out to be a going concern.  Not fair to just take 
without contributing something back.

My application is not particularly demanding in GIS terms.  Basically 
the golf course superintendent wants to have accurate dimensions 
(especially the area) of features on the course, like greens, bunkers, 
etc.  Looking at your screenshots, 
http://qgis.org/images/screenshots/qgis12.png has exactly what I need.  
An attribute table that can be viewed and the area seen.  How did you 
get the area into the attribute table?

I also checked the user guide, and section 3.6 and especially 3.6.2 
discusses measuring area.  With that, you have to draw out the area you 
want to measure.  What I want is to digitize a feature and then 
automatically calculate the area based on that.  For your screenshot, 
surely you didn't go around using the measurement tool and manually 
populate the attribute table???

I'd appreciate any insight you can provide to measuring area in QGIS


-James