[OSM-talk] Splitting Long Ways/Polygons

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

Ian Dees wrote:
> Over on talk-us, we're discussing the appropriate way to import the National
> Hydrography Database which contains most of the water features for the
> United States. One of the issues we've uncovered is how to split long ways
> and polygons to comply with the 2000-node limit. Have others discussed how
> to do this correctly? I'm assuming that chaining ways together is not the
> optimal solution.

For long waterways, it is absoutely usual to split them into a number of 
ways of manageable size (think not only of the API limit but of someone 
downloading an area touched by the river in JOSM!).

Optionally, use a relation to group the parts.

The same is true for large areas, with the exception that you *must* use 
a relation (see 
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Relation:multipolygon, under 
"advanced multipolygons").

BTW I intend to move this from the "talk" page to the proper article 
soon, please shout your objections.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"