Oh very, very much yes. I've been using QGIS for about five years now as the first step in doing any sort of visualization work around GIS data. Better to trust a GIS application than my own bad d3 code :). It's also been absolutely fantastic for changing projections, changing resolutions, merging GIS files, things like that.
My only complaint about it is that it can be a little bit slow sometimes. It has to redraw everything if you zoom in. That's especially annoying if you're working with data that has millions of multilines or points. But, as a prototyping engine, that's kind of expected and still better than paying for ArcGIS.
My only complaint about it is that it can be a little bit slow sometimes. It has to redraw everything if you zoom in. That's especially annoying if you're working with data that has millions of multilines or points. But, as a prototyping engine, that's kind of expected and still better than paying for ArcGIS.