I am learning to use QGIS and ArcGIS for Desktop but I cannot find the differences between them.
What are the differences between the capabilities of QGIS and ArcGIS for Desktop?
Answer
Thats a huge question, so i ll just point out a few things that were important to me. Main differences are that qgis is an opensource application and its free while ArcGIS is a commercial product and it costs a lot of money.
To me important things are the number of supported formats, which is excellent in both and you can even further extend it in qgis with additional libraries, plugins,... also i think that some kind of scripting support is needed in the software because every GIS pro is gonna eventually hit a point where out of the box tools just won't cut it.
The area where i think we have to give ArcGIS an edge is spatial analytics: Arcgis has a ton of tools ready out of the box for you, from the most basic stuff like hillshading, to overlays, map algebra, surface approximation, network analysis,... Of course some of this is available in Qgis, just not to such extent.
For me it was like this: I started out with ArcGIS, then only recently moved to the opensource scene and i got to say, i have in fact no need for ArcGIS anymore, if there is some advanced functionality i need, its probably not available in arcgis anyway so i script it in python-qgis myself. I would say, only go with ArcGIS if you need its analytical functionality, for simple data viewing, symbolisation, simple editing, ur perfectly fine with qgis.
PS: I agree with Simon, its a question of preference
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