[GRASS-user] The upper limit for displaying large vector layers

[peter.loewe at gmx.de]

Hi,
the current GRASS versions share a constraint regarding the maximum size of _displayable_ vector layers.
This affects both traditional GRASS monitors and map displays.

While GRASS is capable to ingest and process rather large vector data sets, these can _not_ be properly be displayed when their size exceeds a certain threshold [which needs to be further pinpointed].

The effect can be experienced when using the GADM dataset. It is provided here:
http://biogeo.berkeley.edu/gadm/data/gadm_v0dot9_shp.zip

The shape file holds about 600+Mb of areas (global administration boundaries).
While _working_ with the data poses no problem (just as expected), attempts to display (d.vect... ) it in GRASS have failed so far.  

It is interesting that visualizing data of this size freezes GRASS and QGIS, yet is no problem for Java-based applications like uDig once the heapsize is cranked up.

If other people also encountered this issue, we might be able to better describe  this (current) limitation and to tackle it in a next step: Todays "very large data sets" will be the standard data sets of the future.

Peter 

-- 
Dr. Peter Löwe
<peter.loewe at gmx.de>





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