Biruni GIS is a desktop GIS for surveyors, engineers, students and everyone who
works with maps. It puts a modern, simple ribbon interface on top of the proven
QGIS engine, so you get a familiar way of working without giving up any of the
power underneath.
Named after Abu Rayhan al-Biruni (973–1048), who measured the radius of the
Earth from a mountain top using the dip angle to the horizon - the idea behind
the logo.
Highlights
- Ribbon interface - Home, Data, Edit, Analysis, Quality, Share, View and
Plugins tabs; every QGIS menu is still one click away (☰), and a Classic
Menus switch restores the original QGIS layout.
- Search everything - tools, layers, places and settings from the search box
(Ctrl+K).
- English and Arabic - full right-to-left interface in Arabic; switch from
the language button or the start page.
- Light and dark themes - or follow Windows.
- Project folders - a new project is a folder that keeps everything together:
<Name>.qgz, a project database <Name>.gpkg (new and temporary layers are
saved there), and data/, outputs/, exports/. Data added from elsewhere
can be copied in with one click; Package as ZIP makes it portable. Or start
a temporary map and save it as a project folder later (Ctrl+S).
- Toolbox - about 125 hand-picked tools in 18 task-based categories, with
search (English and Arabic), favourites, recent tools and descriptions; all
~1,370 QGIS/GDAL/GRASS/SAGA algorithms remain one click away.
- Biruni tools - Find overlaps and gaps · Add area, length and coordinates
(any unit, true ellipsoidal size) · Number features in reading order ·
Export layers to a folder (GPKG/SHP/GeoJSON/KML/CSV/XLSX/DXF).
- Start page - new project, temporary map, open a project, open data,
ArcGIS Pro or ArcMap project, points from Excel, sample map, lessons, recent projects.
- All the formats - Shapefile, GeoPackage, File Geodatabase (read/write),
DXF/DWG, CSV, GeoTIFF, PostGIS, WMS/WMTS/WFS, XYZ tiles and more.
- Free, offline, no account.
New in 0.2
| Area | What you get |
|---|
| Coming from ArcGIS | Open ArcGIS Pro projects (.aprx/.mapx/.lyrx) with layers, groups, colours, labels and definition queries · open ArcMap documents (.mxd): layers, groups, visibility, definition queries and data sources, in default styles · write File Geodatabases · type an ArcGIS tool name in the search box and get the Biruni tool |
| Data in a minute | Excel/CSV to points that finds the coordinate columns by itself (degrees, DMS, UTM, Google Maps/WhatsApp links, WKT, Arabic digits) · Open data: OpenStreetMap, Sentinel-2 imagery and NDVI, 30 m elevation with hillshade, 10 m land cover with class areas, administrative boundaries · bundled world sample |
| CAD and survey | CAD to GIS (closed polylines → polygons, texts → labels, blocks → points with attributes, true arcs, Arabic SHX) · move a drawing to real coordinates (2-point / Helmert / affine) · COGO panel (bearings & distances, misclosure, compass rule) · subdivide parcels by equal parts or area · coordinate converter (DD/DMS/UTM/MGRS) |
| Data quality | Check my data (one scan of every layer, safe fixes) · topology rules · attribute rules (required, unique, value lists, ranges, automatic area/date/user/number) |
| Analysis | Closest facility and OD matrix on road networks (one-way streets, speeds) |
| Hydrology | Streams and watersheds from a DEM in one click (sinks filled, Strahler order, basin areas) · a Hydrology category with the GRASS and SAGA tools: fill sinks, flow direction and accumulation, stream extraction, watershed above an outlet, wetness index (TWI), LS factor · all ~590 SAGA GIS tools in Processing |
| Maps and sharing | Map sheet in one click (frame, north arrow, scale, legend, corner coordinates table; Arabic RTL with Arabic-Indic digits) · web map in one HTML file · KMZ for Google Earth · send to QField and bring the edits back · portfolio page |
| Safety | Project history: every save is a version you can restore; the activity log is never rolled back |
| Work records | Activity report (Excel) and a timesheet with hours, work done per day and amounts |
Install
Download Biruni-GIS-<version>-Setup.exe from the
releases page and run it.
An Arabic PDF guide is attached to each release.
Windows 10/11 64-bit, about 2.5 GB of disk space.
Build from source
Requirements: Windows 10/11 x64, PowerShell, the .NET Framework 4.8 C# compiler
(part of Windows), Python 3 (for helper scripts), Inno Setup 6.
# 1. Get the engine: the official QGIS installer (OSGeo4W MSI)
# https://download.qgis.org/downloads/QGIS-OSGeo4W-4.2.3-2.msi -> _downloads\
# 2. Release build: engine + app + launcher + installer -> dist\
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\build.ps1
For development, extract the MSI into engine\ once
(msiexec /a <msi> /qn TARGETDIR=<tmp>), run
app\scripts\engine-postinstall.bat engine, then:
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\build.ps1 -Dev # build\Biruni GIS.exe
This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗
