I have QField (version 4.2.8 - Coral Sea) on a Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE with Samsung’s S Pen and want to be able to freehand draw lines on a geopackage layer. From what I’ve seen online, when I am in digitize mode and I hover the S Pen over the screen a freehand symbol should appear in the top left corner, but it doesn’t for me. I’ve made sure that “Consider mouse as a touchscreen device” is turned off, and I’ve disabled Samsungs built in menus when you hover the S Pen (I saw that sometimes that will override QField and can cause issues). I can use the stylus to add vertices by tapping with it, and therefore getting line features but they are all straight and rigid, as oppose to having lines drawn like you would on a paper map (see the red line in my screenshot as an example). I’ve tried a very basic project (set up on QGIS 3.44.8) with just a basemap image and a linestring geopackage layer with one symbol, and only the fid field, but still no freehand symbol shows. Is there a way to force the freehand symbol to show, or is there something really basic I’ve missed?
Ultimately, I want a way to draw features onto a map in the field. At the moment I draw it on a printed map and then digitize it in QGIS back in the office, but I want to simply the process and just draw it straight into QField so the job is done. Has anyone with a Samsung tablet got freehand to work in a way that mimics drawing over a physical map? Thanks
hello @csurawski , I’ve just tried with a lenovo tablet with its pen (not compatible with s-pens or other wacom pens). I was able to use the freehand digitising.
Let me detail how I’ve did it, let me know if you’ve tried the same:
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Hovering the pen over the map in editing mode does not always seem to trigger the proper mode, but I make sure that the cross cursor that usually stays on the middle of the screen starts to follow the pen’s tip (also, the green plus button on the bottom right gets greyed out when in “stylus” mode).
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At first, the freehand digitizing icon did not appear. First, I have to tap on the icon with a pencil and a cog in the top left corner, below the hamburger button that opens the map legend:
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This will open a couple of “sub” buttons related to digitising operations. Then, when I move the pen over the map (making sure the cross cursor follows the pen), then a new button appeared, with a wavy line.
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Pressing this button enables the freehand mode, adding vertices to a line while you drag the pen (a S.O. level message pops up telling as much). You can lift the pen and QField will create a straight line connecting the last point to the place where the pen lands again.
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In this mode, there is no way to snap the end of the line to the beginning, so I recommend to stop a little before the beginning. By lifting the pen, you might create some unwanted lines, just press the “-” button in the bottom right corner to delete the last segments of the line to a point you like. If the shape is a polygon, at first it might seem like it’s left open, but once you confirm the feature addition and close the form, it will join the last and first vertices.
You’re a legend, thank you for your reply. I thought the freehand just showed up, but you’re right it’s in the sub menu under thatpencil and cog. The extra info about lifting the pen and the minus buttons are super helpful tips. Thanks again
