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Welcome to our #24daysofQGIS for 2018! Just like your Christmas advent filled with chocolate, each day we’ll reveal a #QGIS tip or trick for you to devour like a tiny tasty treat and improve your workflow. We declare this #qgisadvent officially open! Watch this thread.
Day 1: If you have a compatible video card, you can enable the experimental OpenCL mode within #QGIS. This offloads some tasks to your video card, potentially speeding up these operations by an order of magnitude or more (because who wants to wait!?) #24daysofQGIS 
Day 2: Turn off "Show partial labels" within your #QGIS project's label settings to avoid chopped off labels on the edges of your map, giving you an instantly more professional looking creation! #24daysofQGIS
Day 3: Did you know that many #QGIS widgets directly accept simple calculations and evaluate them on entry? No more need for doing calculations by hand! #24daysofqgis
Day 4: You can quickly create a GeoPackage containing a bunch of layers in #QGIS by using the "Package Layers" Processing algorithm. (Sorry team @shapefiIe !) #24daysofqgis
Day 5: Have #QGIS projects with many print layouts in them? You can insert a label with the expression "@project_path || ' - ' || @layout_name" for a handy auto-updated footer containing both your project's file path AND the name of the corresponding print layout! #24daysofqgis
Day 6: Finding #QGIS a bit too jumpy when you scroll in or out of a map? Hold down the ctrl key while scrolling to enable a "fine" zoom mode! (Also works in the layout designer.) #24daysofqgis BONUS TIP: You can ctrl+scroll wheel over number widgets for a "little change" too!
Day 7: Embrace the power of #QGIS color libraries! From the options dialog, color tab, you can create your own custom color palettes for quick access, import existing palettes, and even setup project-specific color schemes! #24daysofqgis
Bonus tip: if you check the "Show in Color Buttons" option from the drop down menu at the top of this screen, then you can pick which color palettes you want to have instantly available from any #QGIS color picker!
Day 8: Use the handy #QGIS Ctrl+F6 shortcut to open an attribute table containing only visible features, and Shift+F6 for a table containing only selected features. #24daysofqgis
Day 9: Continuing on with more handy #QGIS shortcut keys -- you can use Ctrl + 1, Ctrl + 2, 3, 4... etc to quickly toggle and jump between the different QGIS dock panels, including the layers panel, file browser panel, styling panel and bookmarks panel (+more!) #24daysofqgis
Day 10: Don't mess around with numerically setting layout map extents and scales in #QGIS layout designer -- instead, embrace the interactive "Move Item Contents" tool and just drag the map content around! Also works great with our Ctrl+Scroll Wheel tip from day 6 #24daysofqgis
Day 11: Use a mouse right-button click with the #QGIS identify tool to show a handy menu allowing identification of features from ALL map layers at the clicked coordinate! #24daysofQGIS
Day 12: Got a particularly "jagged" looking dataset you want to cartographically improve? You can use the interactive Simplify/Smooth tool in #QGIS with the "Smooth" method to round off the corners in your features! #24daysofQGIS
Day 13: If you fully embrace the power of #QGIS symbology, data defined properties, and layer effects you can give your maps a more festive look! #24daysofQGIS
Day 14: If you're using #QGIS with a gaming mouse (or any mouse with back/forward buttons), you can use those buttons to quickly jump back and forward through previous map views! #24daysofQGIS
(Bonus pro-user-tip: you can also use a mouse "back" button from the layer styling dock as a shortcut to backup a level of the dock panel breadcrumb - e.g. to jump from the color picker panel back to the symbol properties panel)
Day 15: Type "f" in the #QGIS locator bar (that search widget down in the status bar) followed by a keyword to search for and quickly locate features from the current layer. #24daysofqgis
Day 16: You can embed your graphical models directly inside a #QGIS project -- very useful for packaging models with project-specific logic within their associated project! #24daysofQGIS
Day 17: Got a complex #QGIS rule-based or data-defined expression? You can use "--" and /* .. */ style comments to put documentation directly inside the expression! #24daysofqgis
Day 18: If you hold the "Alt" key while making a selection in #QGIS, it switches from an "intersects" type selection to a "contains" selection mode. (This also works while holding the shift modifier to add to a selection, or ctrl to subtract from a selection!) #24daysofqgis
Day 19: Turn on the "Shape Digitizing Toolbar" when digitizing in #QGIS to find many tools for creating circles, rectangles and other shapes. #24daysofQGIS
Day 20: Set your #QGIS project's "home" folder from the browser panel to have all your project's assets immediately accessible! #24daysofqgis
Day 21: Use the handy #QGIS property assistants to easily create data-driven map styles, including scaling and coloring symbols by attribute values. #24daysofqgis
Day 22: Use a lot of network sources in #QGIS? Bump up the network cache size from Settings -> Options -> Network for a nice speed boost! #24daysofQGIS
Day 23: Take advantage of map themes in #QGIS to showcase multiple different views of your data within the same print layout. #24daysofQGIS
Day 24: Set a #QGIS map layer to the "Blocking" label mode to push other map labels away from features in that layer. Handy for moving labels away from unlabelled rivers, roads, and other line work in your maps! #24daysofQGIS
That’s a wrap for #24daysofQGIS 2018 - we hope you’ve enjoyed this series! Please get in touch in the new year if you’d like personalised training... we’ve got hundreds more tips like these to share. This is our passion!
