Getting started
What is GRASS?
GRASS is a geospatial processing engine for advance analysis and visualization of geospatial data. GRASS is a free and open source software, released under the GNU GPL.
Interfaces
GRASS provides a number of interfaces for interacting with the software. The most common interfaces are:
- Command line, also know as terminal or shell
- Python
- Jupyter Notebooks
- Graphical user interface
Tools
GRASS provides a wide range of tools for geospatial processing, modeling, analysis, and visualization. The tools are organized into categories based on the type of data they process. The tools are prefixed with a letter or combination of letters and numbers to indicate the type of data they process.
The following table provides a list of the prefixes and the categories they represent. Follow the links to see a complete list of tools in each category. Or try using the search feature to find a specific tool or topic by subject matter (e.g. hydrology, landscape).
| Prefix | Category | Description |
|---|---|---|
g. |
General | General GIS management tools |
r. |
Raster | Raster data processing tools |
r3. |
3D raster | 3D Raster data processing tools |
v. |
Vector | Vector data processing tools |
i. |
Imagery | Imagery processing tools |
t. |
Temporal | Temporal data processing tools |
db. |
Database | Database management tools |
d. |
Display | Display and visualization tools |
m. |
Miscellaneous | Miscellaneous tools |
ps. |
PostScript | PostScript tools |
Development
GRASS is an open source project and welcomes contributions from the community. The GRASS Development documentation provides information on how to get started developing for GRASS, how to contribute to the project, and how to get involved with the GRASS community.
For more information on developing for GRASS, see the Development Introduction page.