QGIS
From charlesreid1
Installing
To install QGIS on Mac OS X:
First, I went to the download site on QGIS website:
http://www.qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html
I was pointed to the KygChaos wiki http://www.kyngchaos.com/software/python
At that wiki, I downloaded several provided dmg files:
- Numpy
- Matplotlib
- GDAL framework
- QGIS
I installed each, in that order. The python libraries that are being installed install to /Library/Python/2.x/site-packages - which is where libraries available to the SYSTEM version of Python are available. This will not interfere with existing versions of numpy or matplotlib libraries that you've installed using an Anaconda or Python.org or Homebrew (or other) version of python that you have installed.
Once all of those installers had been run, I opened QGIS in my Applications folder.
Basics
Opening Shapefiles
To open a shapefile, you can create a project. Then you can click the first icon in the left-hand menu, the dots connected by lines (Add a Vector Layer). Here, you can pick "ESRI Shapefile" from the drop-down menu, and you'll be able to open shapefiles.
Here's an imported shapefile of military installations in the United States (from the Harvard Library website):
