[OSM-talk] Overlapping Ways - Embrace or Avoid?

[Steve Hill]

mail at s-holst.de wrote:

> 1. The area shares some nodes with the highway, creating overlapping ways.
> 2. The area shares no nodes and was drawn as close as possible to the road.
> 
> I couldn't find any recommendations in the wiki on which option to prefer.

I prefer sharing nodes.

> Overlapping ways allow a cleaner data model and saves nodes. But editing such ways is quite a hassle. There is currently no function to split nodes so that ways can be separated again. So if the border of the area needs to be changed, the complete area has to be redrawn (at least to my knowledge).

JOSM handles overlapping objects reasonably well (using the middle-click 
menu).  If you need to separate the ways you can add a new node to each 
way individually and then delete the shared node - could be neater, but 
it isn't bad.

-- 

  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence