Overview

GIMLabs for QGIS is a QGIS plugin that loads your project data onto the map as styled layers: investigation locations, site boundaries and location groups, drawn the way the GIMLabs map draws them.

It talks to the GIMLabs public read API at https://api.gimlabs.io/v1, so everything it shows is the same data your team is working on in Manage, not an export somebody made last month.

What it loads#

Layer	Geometry	Loaded by default
Locations	Points	Yes
Site boundary	Polygon, or a separate layer for line boundaries	No
Location groups	Convex hull polygons around each group's members	No

Locations is why most people open the plugin. The other two cost extra requests and need a scope your key may not carry, so you tick them when you want them.

Layers arrive together inside a layer-tree group named for the project. Loading three projects otherwise leaves nine loose layers with nothing saying which belongs to what.

Styling comes with the data#

A borehole comes through with the colour, size and symbol it has on the Manage map, and a boundary keeps its stroke and fill. Where a location type uses custom marker artwork uploaded to your account, that artwork is what draws in QGIS.

Styling is applied through QGIS data-defined properties rather than baked in, so it stays visible and editable in the layer properties like any other layer you would style yourself.

Read-only, on purpose#

Nothing you do in QGIS changes anything in GIMLabs. The plugin only ever reads, because the API only ever reads. Move a point, delete a layer, edit an attribute table: none of it travels back.

That also means the layers do not live-update. Refresh layers re-fetches the project when you want it.

What you need#

• QGIS 3.40 or newer, including QGIS 4.x. Developed and tested on 3.44 LTR.
• A GIMLabs account on a Pro or Legacy plan.
• A GIMLabs API key, created by a Super Admin under Settings, API keys.

Working offline#

Responses and marker artwork are cached under your QGIS profile, so a laptop that has loaded a project once can load it again with no signal. See Loading data for how the cache behaves and when it does not step in.

Next#