[Qgis-user] Importing SVG + Designing maps from scratch

[Robbie Smith]

Hello everyone

I’m very new to GIS, and I’ve been reading a lot of manuals and 
information, but I thought I’d ask a couple of questions here.

One of my major hobbies is drawing maps of a completely imaginary 
country; it’s part of a massive project of mine. I’m getting to the 
point where I’m reaching practical limitations in the way I’m drawing 
the maps. The first is that to extend in any direction I need to either 
make the canvas size bigger or create a new image and line up elements 
exactly, which is quite error-prone and time consuming. The other major 
problem is different zoom levels: if I want to draw, say, a more 
detailed map of a town, again I’d have to draw a completely new image 
and try to copy and/or scale elements of an existing drawing, which is 
also time-consuming and error prone.

As I’m trying to make my maps (and everything else) as realistic as 
possible, I’ve been starting to think that maybe moving to using some 
sort of GIS application might be the way to go. With GIS, I could store 
all the geographical information in a database, and then just generate 
maps that cover the area and scale that I want. And if I wanted to 
create different types of maps, such as topographical or a road map, I 
could easily select which layers I want to export. The possibilities are 
pretty-much endless.

However, I’ve already done quite a lot of work on these SVG maps in 
Inkscape, and I really would prefer not to start completely from 
scratch. Can I import an existing SVG map into QGIS and use it as a 
starting point, preserving the existing paths and shapes? Can I define 
an arbritary grid to align things to? Learning and adapting to GIS is 
going to be challenging enough without having to redo years of work.

Any links, books, manuals or whatever that you could recommend for this 
kind of project would be great, as I honestly have no idea where to start.

TLDR: Is it possible to import completely fictional maps into (Q)GIS and 
design them from scratch, and if so, where to begin?

regards
Robbie