[OSM-newbies] Complex Ways et al

[Nick Austin]

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009, J.Slee<J.Slee at open.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> I have a couple of simple newbie questions:
>
> 1. Most of the residential roads in my area are not simple lines but
> resemble television aerials with lots of off-shoots.
>   In potlatch I have been drawing a way and tagging it as "residential"
> and giving it a name.  Then I am selecting a point at each junction and
> cutting the way and then extending from a new end-point into the extra
> spurs of the way.  Is this the best / only way to map such complex ways?

That's one way of doing it. It's not my preference because it
creates lots of ways that have right-angle corners in them.  I
find that the renderers seem to like placing street names on
sharp corners which makes them hard to read.

I start creating such ways at an end-point that's furthest away
from existing ways, then end by clicking over an existing way.
In Potlatch clicking on top of an existing way while in drawing
mode inserts a node shared by both ways.

> 2. I mark way points on my Garmin Edge 705 cycle GPS whenever I get to
> letter boxes , bus stops etc but I can't find an easy way to get these
> from the way point file into potlatch.  Any suggestions welcome.

The "Show GPS Tracks" icon (or key press 'G') doesn't show
waypoints.  View the "Your GPS traces" list and where it
says "more / map / edit" click on the "edit" link.  Waypoints
from that GPS file will now show as orange blobs.  You can
convert the orange blobs to nodes by clicking the padlock
symbol (bottom left).

Nick.