Speckle | QGIS

Speckle is the first AEC data hub that connects with your favorite AEC tools. Speckle exists to overcome the challenges of working in a fragmented industry where communication, creative workflows, and the exchange of data are often hindered by siloed software and processes. It is here to make the industry better.

Connector for Spatial Data from QGIS

Warning

This is a legacy QGIS repo! A new next generation connector will be coming soon. In the meantime, check out our active next generation repos here:
speckle-sharp-connectors: our .NET next generation connectors and desktop UI
speckle-sharp-sdk: our .NET SDK, Tests, and Objects

Repo Structure

This repo contains the QGIS plugin for Speckle 2.0. It is written in python and uses our fantastic Python SDK. The Speckle Server is providing all the web-facing functionality and can be found here.

Try it out!! Although we're still in early development stages, we encourage you to try out the latest stable release. Just follow the instructions on this file, and head to the Releases page to download the necessary files and dependencies.

What can it do?

Currently, the plugin allows to send data from a single layer to a Speckle server using one of the accounts configured on your computer. It will extract all the features of that layer along side their properties and, when possible, geometry too. The following geometry types are supported for now:

• Point
• MultiPoint
• Polyline (LineString)
• MultiLineString
• Polygon
• MultiPolygon
• More to come!!

Data types currently not supported for sending:

• Layers depending on the server connection (WMS, WFC, WCS etc.)
• Scenes
• Mesh Vector layers
• Pointclouds

If you have questions, you can always find us at our Community forum

Installation

QGIS Marketplace

You can find Speckle QGIS in the QGIS Plugins -> Manage and install plugins menu item.

The plugin is currently published as experimental, so make sure you go to Settings and activate the Show also experimental plugins checkbox.

Then go to the All tab and search for Speckle. You should see the plugin appear in the list. You might need to restart QGIS.

Speckle Desktop Manager install

Install Speckle Desktop Manager from here. Click on QGIS plugin to install it:

Launching the Plugin

SpeckleQGIS will appear in the Plugins Toolbar. Click the blue brick in the toolbar to open the plugin.

Developing

Setup

Setup is a bit cumbersome for now. The following is adapted from this tutorial

Qt Creator

To edit the UI of the plugin, you'll want to install Qt creator. You can find the free installers on this page in the "Qt Creator" tab. On Windows, you'll be prompted to create an account during the installation process.

Python Qt Bindings

For Windows, the bindings are already included in the QGIS installation.

For Mac, you can install PyQt using homebrew.

brew install pyqt

Install pb_tool

pb_tool allows you to compile resource files from into something python will understand.

For this plugin we only have one file to convert:

• resources.qrc -> resources.py

To install pb_tool, just run:

pip install pb_tool

or

YOUR_PYTHON_EXECUTABLE -m pip install pb_tool

For convenience, the pre-compiled resources.py file so you don't really have to do anything here.

Dev Environment

For a better development experience in your editor, we recommend creating a virtual environment. In the venv, you'll just need to install specklepy. You will also need to copy over the qgis module into the {venv}/Lib/site-packages. You can find the qgis module in your QGIS install directory:

• Windows: C:\Program Files\QGIS 3.28.15\apps\qgis\python
• MacOS: /Applications/QGIS.app/Contents/Resources/python

QGIS Plugins

Though it is not required, we recommend installing these plugins from the QGIS Plugin Manager:

• Plugin Reloader (allows you to reload the plugin without restarting QGIS)
• Remote Debugger (enables interactive debugging)
• First Aid (shows errors before crashing QGIS, sometimes)

Debugging

Visual Studio Code

First, you'll need to change the _debug value to True in plugin_utils/installer.py file.

    _debug = True

This will automatically setup debugpy if it's not already installed, and start listening to port 5678.

Select the "Python" -> "Remote Attach" option. Your launch.json should look like this:

{
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "configurations": [
    {
      "name": "Python: Remote Attach",
      "type": "python",
      "request": "attach",
      "port": 5678,
      "host": "localhost",
      "pathMappings": [
        {
          "localRoot": "${workspaceFolder}",
          "remoteRoot": "${workspaceFolder}"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

To start debugging, you'll need to first launch QGIS. Once it's running, run your debug Python: Remote Attach configuration.

That's all there is to it! Now any breakpoints you create should be hit.

Enjoy!