Ability to create new layers in a project within QField app
B
Bill Chiarchiaro
This relates to the already-existing request titled "Ability to create new projects within QField app".
As good as QField is, it often feels very restrictive compared to typical professional surveying data collector software. The notion of having to "go back to the office" in order to begin new work or to organize data feels very outdated. Being able to create new projects while in the field would be wonderful, but a large portion of the benefit might be achieved with a perhaps simpler enhancement: the ability to create new layers within an existing project.
It is often possible to anticipate the need for a new project and thus be able to create it while in the office. However, it's also often the case that once in the field and performing the work, something is observed that had not been anticipated, but for which data ought to be collected, and that does not properly belong in any of the project's already-existing layers. There might be a logical distinction of these new data from the other categories of data that were planned to be collected. It could be very nice to be able to separately control the visibility of this new category of data, even just for ordinary reduction of clutter on the screen. It could also be that there was a problem with some of the data collection, in any layer, e.g. perhaps a GNSS receiver had been misconfigured, and the problem is discovered while still in the field. So far, I have not found a convenient way in QField to delete a large number of features within a layer (have I missed it?), so a work-around would be to turn off the visibility of the "bad" layer and to create a new layer. Back at the office, the "bad" layer could be deleted.
Perhaps the ability to create new layers could be an intermediate step toward the ability to create new projects. It would be very beneficial in the meantime.
Maybe an even simpler way to achieve much of the benefit would be to have the ability to duplicate an existing layer, asking the user 1) for a name for the duplicate and 2) whether or not the features in the original layer should be copied into the duplicate. I'm suggesting #2 as a safer alternative to having the ability to delete all the features in a layer (e.g. after duplication, with all the features of the original layer having been automatically copied into the duplicate), so as to avoid accidental deletion of needed data.
C
Cuprico
Creating layers directly inside QField sounds really handy, although I would say that, to me at least, it sounds not only less simple, but rather complicated (or at least very work intensive).
Keep in mind that a layer by itself is pretty much invisible on QField without the Attributes Form. Then think of the myriad of options, menues, submenues, etc that just this section of the Layer Properties has on QGIS. All that would have to be re-engineered to work on mobile/touch, there is at least a tonne of UI/UX work there, not even counting the programming side, to have a MVP of this functionality.
In contrast, creating whole projects directly from QField allows to hide most of this complexity, by just creating some predefined (although probably pretty limited) templates.
I'm not sure what would be the benefit of Duplicating the layer in the field, perhaps the issues you mention can also be served by some undo/redo functionality? I think you could already count both the cloud and the office copies of the project as backup in case something really bad happens.
In any case, it seems appropriate to just better plan the project to contemplate at least
some
contingencies. You can have some empty generic point, line and polygon layers for example, with generic fields such as "name", "description", "notes", etc. They can be left hidden (with the eye greyed out) right from QGIS, inside a folder to be even less distracting. You can then process these on the office, whether you want to add them to an existing layer, or create a new one. But then again, I tend to use the copies on QField as "surveying"/field projects and not so much as "the actual/full project, but on my phone".