[Imports] [Talk-us] Mass towns

Metcalf, Calvin (DOT) calvin.metcalf at state.ma.us
Wed Oct 19 13:05:57 UTC 2011


Yeah ways on top of ways would be bad, I grabbed the massgis arcs from survey points without coast which is a file that has just the linework with off shore boundaries,  the ways are currently already split at junctions, my method is going to be
1. take out counties boundaries and state boundary
2. take out boundaries already in 
3. check to see if anything already there corresponds to the border (river etc)

Would that be helpful or am I missing the source of duplicate ways/need for splitting?

>-----Original Message-----
>From: peter.dobratz at gmail.com [mailto:peter.dobratz at gmail.com] 
>On Behalf Of Peter Dobratz
>Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 8:56 AM
>To: Metcalf, Calvin
>Cc: talk-us at openstreetmap.org; imports at openstreetmap.org
>Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Mass towns
>
>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Shp-to-osm.jar
>
>It's basically just a Java command-line program that reads in a .shp
>file and produces an .osm file.  It can use a configuration (rules)
>file that allows you to map attributes in the .shp to tags in the
>.osm, but I just create an empty rules file and add appropriate tags
>manually.
>
>If you find it easier to add Ways without Relations first that would
>be useful.  But I would avoid adding Ways on top of each other, as it
>would seem like just as much work to start from scratch instead of
>having to split Ways and delete duplicate Ways before adding them to
>Relations.
>
>On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 8:14 AM, Metcalf, Calvin (DOT)
><calvin.metcalf at state.ma.us> wrote:
>> So on ubuntu you can open up a self extracting exe with 
>archive manager (I smacked myself in the head when I learned 
>that, turns out massgis makes them on linux).   I'm not 
>familiar with shp-to-osm.jar link? I've been using Merkaartor 
>to convert, but that usually forces me to then use kate or 
>gedit to clean up the tags it makes. I wasn't going to add any 
>extra tags except maybe population (so that a renderer could 
>use the relations to label).   Would it make sense for me to 
>add the ways now with relations to come as people are able, or 
>does that sound like it wouldn't save much time?
>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: peter.dobratz at gmail.com [mailto:peter.dobratz at gmail.com]
>>>On Behalf Of Peter Dobratz
>>>Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2011 8:06 AM
>>>To: Metcalf, Calvin
>>>Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Mass towns
>>>
>>>I had just added Tyngsborough and Dunstable and my plan was to work
>>>along the NH/MA border downward, especially over the winter when it's
>>>harder to go out and see things with the snow accumulation.  I also
>>>plan on continuing to clean up NH towns as people often import them
>>>such that you have lots of overlapping Ways.
>>>
>>>For NH towns, I had been starting with the TIGER shapefiles.
>>>Generally I open the .shp file in QuantumGIS, then select a town and
>>>save it as a .shp file using EPSG:4326 - WGS 84 coordinates.  Then I
>>>run this .shp file through Shp-to-osm.jar with a blank rules.txt.
>>>This gives me an OSM file without tags that I can open in JOSM in a
>>>separate layer.  If there's already a Way in the map (mostly from a
>>>border of a neighboring town), then I split and re-use part of the
>>>existing way and add them to a relation.  If there are 2 or more
>>>overlapping Ways in the map, then I delete all but one of 
>them and add
>>>it to multiple relations.  If the way doesn't exist yet, 
>then I either
>>>merge a portion from my other layer or for straight lines I 
>just merge
>>>the 2 end-points instead of the tens of points all along a straight
>>>line from TIGER.
>>>
>>>On the Way itself, I add boundary=administrative and admin_level=4
>>>(state), admin_level=6 (county), admin_level=4 (city/town).  On the
>>>relation, I add type=boundary, boundary=administrative, name=(actual
>>>name of the town), admin_level=(4, 6, or 8), wikipedia=(appropriate
>>>article link).  Each way of the border is added to the relation with
>>>role as outer (unless there's an unusual border where an inner is
>>>necessary to make a whole in the town or county).  Note: it 
>looks like
>>>you could just as well use type=multipolygon on the relation as the
>>>values for the roles are identical (inner/outer).
>>>
>>>Rather than deleting Ways or Relations in the database, I would
>>>instead split existing Ways and edit existing Relations if they are
>>>not right.
>>>
>>>For MA, I had also been using TIGER as I looked at MassGIS, but the
>>>only download I could find was an EXE and wasn't sure how to extract
>>>it on Mac or Ubuntu.  If you can point me to how to get an .osm file
>>>from this on a non-Windows system, that would be helpful.
>>>
>>>It is annoying that MassGIS tends to use hundreds of points to
>>>represent roads where 10 or so would suffice, and I've been deleting
>>>hundreds of points on roads near what I happen to be editing.  Also,
>>>if you do end up pulling stuff from MassGIS, try to avoid adding tens
>>>of tags to each way just because there is a MassGIS database 
>field, as
>>>they are probably not all relevant.
>>>
>>>As far as Boston goes, I would think you'd put the whole city in a
>>>relation with admin_level=8.  There's no convention to map smaller
>>>divisions within a city or town.  Looks like the 
>non-agreement on this
>>>has been summarized on the wiki:
>>>
>>>http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Neighborhood
>>>
>>>Peter
>>>
>>>On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 7:11 AM, Metcalf, Calvin (DOT)
>>><calvin.metcalf at state.ma.us> wrote:
>>>> As towns are the primary division in MA that peole tend to
>>>use I'd like to add them to osm.  From what I can tell a few
>>>have been put in near NH as boundary relations (tyngsborough
>>>and dunstable) one has been put in as a closed way (stow) and
>>>10 or so have been put in in the south west as multipolygon 
>relations.
>>>> Looking for some suggestions on the best way to do it, seems
>>>to me after playing around a bit last night that it would be
>>>something along the lines of taking the town boundary arcs
>>>from massgis, probably simplifing them, deleting any arc
>>>already up (county boundery, state boundary coast), uploading
>>>those arcs as ways with boundary=admin and admin_level=8, add
>>>admin_level=8 to the current 4 and 6 ways, a/d then longer
>>>term putting in the relations.
>>>> Is there a better or easier way? Which of the 3 ways used so
>>>far is prefered (if any).  And if I wanted to add cambridge
>>>and boston neiborhoods how would I tag that (cambridge I made
>>>myself as cambridge gis somehow figured out how to embed a pdf
>>>inside a kml).
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>>>
>


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