Canvas – Importing and Exporting Canvas Data

Your canvas is not just a thing that lives by itself inside SCALGO Live. There are powerful ways of integrating data from the wider SCALGO Live ecosystem into your canvas, and you can also import external GIS data into your canvas. Furthermore, you can easily export your canvas in a number of different ways.

For high-level information about the SCALGO Live Canvas, please consult the product page. Some of the topics on this page are also referenced in the canvas getting started video.

Importing SCALGO Live data into your canvas

You can get data into your canvas through point queries and watershed queries, and through the download tool.  Make sure you activate the canvas you want to work with before continuing.

Point query

When you use the point query tool on certain objects, you will get an "add to canvas" button that allows you to add the selected object directly to the canvas.  You can do this on:

  • Depression-Free Flow, Flow Accumulation: Adds the flow lines upstream of the query point with a flow value higher than the flow threshold slider setting - that is, the flow paths currently shown on the map. Use this to extract important flow paths from the terrain.
  • Depression Map, Depressions: Adds the part of the depression that is below the query point, corresponding to the highlighted part of the depression on the map.
  • Flash Flood Map, Flooded Areas: Adds the flooded extent of the depression at the current rain event as set by the rain slider.
Here we're showing a point query and watershed info, both showing the "add to canvas" option. On the map we're showing the result of adding a depression, a watershed and some flow paths to the canvas using this functionality.

If you are not seeing the add to canvas button, make sure you have an active canvas.

Download tool

Data from many of the layers and analyses in SCALGO Live can be added directly to the canvas through the download menu. In general, if the layer download type is a vector, it can be added to the canvas. To try this out do the following steps:

  1. Make sure you have an active canvas
  2. Activate the download tool (Export->Download Data)
  3. Select your download area
  4. Select the download icon next to the layer name
  5. Click the "add to canvas" button (only available for vector data)
Adding flooded extent polygons from the Flash Flood Map at 10 cm of rain directly to the canvas using the download tool.

Once the objects have been added to the canvas, you can select them in the canvas object list and change their style (colors etc.).

If you are not seeing the add to canvas button, check if you have an active canvas.

Importing data from GIS

If you have GIS data in one of our supported vector formats you can drag this file directly into the canvas object list in the right sidebar.  You can also click inside the drop area to select a file directly.

The drop zone for importing vector data into a canvas. Drag your files here, or click inside the box to pick file(s) directly.
Exporting canvas data

You can export the canvas in a couple of different ways:

Export map

You can use our export map functionality to create a rendering of the canvas. If you choose the PDF format you will get a georeferenced PDF, supported by some GIS (e.g. QGIS).

Download object geometries

You can download the geometries of the objects in a canvas using the download button in the canvas tab in the left sidebar.

Apart from the standard formats available elsewhere in SCALGO Live, canvas also supports exporting to KML, preserving as much visual markup as possible, as well as the folder structure and naming of objects.  Text boxes are exported as i icons that can be selected in e.g. Google Earth to show their content with full markup.

Use a web service

You can access the geometries of the objects in a canvas using the OGC API - Features, an open web standard.  You access this through the canvas settings: click the cogwheel next to the canvas title in the left sidebar, then click Web service -> Get OGC link. (Note that to use the endpoint, you must have a token which you can generate through the account panel.) Consult your GIS for information about how to integrate using OGC API - Features. For your convenience here is the documentation for QGIS and ArcGIS Pro. Note that the endpoint exported for a canvas is read-only, we do not support editing features through the web service.

Note that both download and the OGC API - Features allow you to access the raw geometry of the objects in a canvas, with information about colors and styles as fields on the vectors. Text boxes are single geometries with the text available as a field. Thus, these options are not suitable for getting the same graphical representation of the canvas that you get in SCALGO Live, for that you need to use the export map option.