[HOT] Squared buildings

Thu Apr 14 07:47:19 UTC 2016

JOSM is the tool to use, I agree. However I did become somewhat of an iD power user and so I just tried to square a number of polygons at once rather than one at a time. I tried many variations including selecting all of them and then trying to apply the “s” tool and grouping them. Nothing worked. Maybe the iD team could add that to iD? Then new mappers could then square all their buildings in one go when the mistake is pointed out. It would be quite useful. Squaring buildings in either iD or JOSM is a thankless and tedious task. 

Cheers! 
Suzan 

On Apr 13, 2016, at 11:01 PM, Ralf Stephan <gtrwst9 at gmail.com> wrote:

I might be missing something but what's wrong with selecting all buildings in JOSM via Search (check if there are huts selected or 45-degree buildings of course) and then do a mass orthogonalization? That would be part of a validation workflow and could even be automated.

On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 7:48 AM Jo <winfixit at gmail.com> wrote:
If you want a building squared at 45 degrees in JOSM, for some reason, you can start with a closed way with 8 nodes, then use the circle tool.

Or you can press 'a' twice, allowing you to add the next part of a way at 15 degree angle intervals. It's possible to create really nice geometric shapes using this method.

One has to know the tool one is working with.

When people insist on working with iD, it's necessary to tell them (over and over again) about the importance of doing the extra step of squaring the rectangular buildings. For one thing, it makes using JOSM's extrude tool easier, if it's needed to improve the building.

I understand that, as a validator, it's extremely tedious to square all those buildings, even when using the todo plugin and pressing ]q]q]q]q]q] hundreds of times. You could invalidate the tiles which contain mostly unsquared buildings. Or you could just leave them alone, post a remark to the user and validate the tile anyway. Better that than becoming burned out as a validator.

I've been trying to get people to understand how much work it is to validate their tiles, when buildings are not squared by creating screencasts and posting a link to it in the comment field. This was rather effective, but it still is rather time consuming and there are always new users coming in, which, for some reason, were not trained with JOSM the power tool, but with iD instead.

Anyway, those screencasts were also meant as a way to show people the advantages of using JOSM, but I don't know if I have been very successful at getting them to start using it. It's hard to make people switch to something new, which is why I'll be teaching only JOSM, this Saturday (also because I don't know iD all that well, ofc). I failed to follow up, as I moved on to other projects that gave me more satisfaction (as a validator).

Polyglot

2016-04-14 4:15 GMT+02:00 Suzan Reed <suzan at suzanreed.com>:
How about showing people how to map a building and square it right at the beginning of mapping? It’s all one motion for me.

Just a suggestion!

Suzan

On Apr 13, 2016, at 7:05 PM, Clifford Snow <clifford at snowandsnow.us> wrote:

On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 4:52 PM, john whelan <jwhelan0112 at gmail.com> wrote:
Seeing 200 unsquared buildings by one mapper on a tile makes me think they weren't using JOSM and the building-tool.  I could be wrong, the same mapper also left behind three area=yes squares that just happened to be the same as a building image.  Again it is perfectly possible to do this in JOSM to draw such a shape and tag it area=yes, though why anyone with JOSM and the building_tool plugin would do such a thing I can't imagine.

I'm asking a pragmatic question given that I'm seeing so many unsquared buildings when validating is it essential they be squared?  and if so how do we get squared buildings?

From my experience with hosting Missing Maps and HOT mapathons many of the mappers are first time contributors. We try to get them mapping as quickly as possible. After a period of time we introduce new techniques, such as squaring buildings and copy paste. The behavior you observed may be the lack of training. If its possible to find out if the mapper attended an event and if so who organized it to give gentle constructive feedback to the host. (Hopefully it wasn't one of ours)

Clifford

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