[Talk-GB] importing house shapes

[Adam Hoyle]

On 16 Oct 2012, at 22:43, Ed Loach wrote:

> Adam wrote:
> 
>> Can anyone give me any pointers about importing house shapes
>> into OSM? 
> 
> They were probably traced by hand from Bing imagery rather than
> imported.

I've had a more detailed look at them, and I think in hindsight you are probably right. I thought all of the buildings in town had appeared almost overnight, but actually it appears the buildings were added over a ~2 week period.

>> I've added a few
>> buildings over the years, but they end up being slightly wobbly,
>> which is far from ideal. I have a huge preference for Potlatch
> over
>> JOSM, but will switch if necessary.
>> 
>> Can anyone help or point me in the right direction?
> 
> Gosh. Potlatch 2 has changed since I last looked. When editing,
> select the closed way selecting the building and if the toolbox
> bottom right has an option to "Show More" click that. The button to
> make corners right angled is the square one with red nodes on the
> corners.

ooo.. create parallel way also looks quite handy. Those 2 will definitely do the trick for me.

> I personally now try to only add buildings having first surveyed to
> collect the house number details, as I figure while the buildings on
> their own look pretty, the addressing information can help routers
> get an accurate destination (and not having unaddressed buildings on
> the map helps me see where still needs surveying). But that's
> probably just me (and another local mapper). 

Good point - adding the address details could be useful - especially in some of the outlying villages where the houses are named, and not numbered. I'm aware of at least one lost delivery driver who called in at the pub in that village to ask the land lady where a particular house was. 

To anyone who cares, I think I'm going to start on the main town's high street first, because it annoys me that it's broken at the moment, and then I'll look at buildings in the countryside around the town (as I find the buildings there can be good for anchoring oneself when off for a walk).

Thanks,

Adam