Use Nautical Charts in QGIS for marine projects

The 70% of earth is sea, but we could not find any good WMS, Web-Map Service for sea area. It has proven that GIS technology has developed fully and very useful. But it has been very limited to apply GIS to sea area, since the map of sea was not accessible easily. Now ArgoGIS WMS service of sea map is created based on the worldwide nautical charts. It expects the WMS service of nautical chart by ArgoGIS helps the QGIS users of who want the map of seas.

Add nautical charts on your QGIS canvas as follows.

Open your QGIS project including marine area

It assumes that you know and use QGIS, a free Geographic Information System. The right screen shot shows a sample canvas with the layer of 'Open Street Map'.

If you don't know QGIS well, please refer QGIS website.

A QGIS canvas shot of San Francisco bay area with Open Street Map

2. Select 'Add layer' menu and 'WMS/WMTS..' submenu

You have to add a layer of 'Nautical Charts' in your QGIS project for utilizing nautical charts of ArgoGIS. Right image shows the 'Add layer' menu and the submenus. Select 'Add WMS/WMTS Layer' item, then a new window pops up.

Menu and submenu of QGIS for a new WMS/WMTS layer

3. Set the value of 'New WMS... Connection' window

It needs to define the values of 'New WMS/WMTS Connection' to link ArgoGIS nautical charts service. The 'Name' and 'URL' fields are them to be filled as following.

Name: ArgoGIS

URL: https://enc.argogis.com/wms/wms_enc

Any other fields including 'Referer' are not necessary to be filled, left them unchanged as default values.

QGIS data source window for WMS connection definition

4. Select 'ENC' layer of 'Nautical Charts'

After setting the 'Name' and 'URL' fields and press [OK] button, there appears 'Data Source Manager | WMS/WMTS' window. Press [Connect] button on this window, then there appears an item with the name of 'ENC' and the title of 'Nautical Charts'. Select this 'ENC' item and press [Add] button at the edge of right-downside.

Define the Name and URL

Press [Connect], select 'ENC' item and press [Add].

5. Take looks the nautical charts on your QGIS canvas

If there was no problem above procedures, you find the canvas was filled with nautical charts. And the widgets on left-downside, 'Nautical Charts' layer appears, too.

Please understand the nautical charts WMS might not be fast until ArgoGIS has nice servers.

A QGIS canvas shot of San Francisco bay area with nautical charts

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