[Talk-us] Best practices for high-density residential areas

[Andrew Guertin]

On 03/31/2015 01:07 PM, Steve Friedl wrote:
> 2) Are rectangular house outlines good enough?
>
> So in my area I've been making the outlines look actually like the house, as
> best as I can, but there's no way I'm going to do this to every house in
> America.  For other areas, assuming house outlines are warranted, I can use
> the building tool in JOSM (what a *great* tool) to make strictly rectangular
> outlines that vaguely approximate the shape of the house. What are the
> thoughts on this?
>
> a) A rectangular outline is great, thank you
> b) It's better than nothing,  but only marginally so
> c) drawing squares on non-square things is inaccurate
> d) something else?

Focusing just on this one, I often approximate buildings by rectangles 
when they're not technically but are pretty close. Lots of buildings 
seem to be a rectangle with a part of one wall that sticks out by a 
meter or two, or to have a bay window, or any other of an endless number 
of tiny variations. If it's close enough that a rectangle is the right 
shape at a lower level of detail, then there's absolutely nothing wrong 
with mapping it at lower detail.

Sometimes, like for a clearly L-shaped building, it's just better to add 
the two more vertices though.

--Andrew