 The Map Guy
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Posted: 7 January 2010, 11:59 AM
I recall a similar discussion in 1980 after competing in Australia at the first Pacific Orienteering Carnival (the first APOC). We had numerous waterless gullies in the Taupo region so we used the blue dashes (307) to accurately show the gully shape as dots did't do that very well (as stated by Michael).
From an orienteer's point of view it doesn't really matter whether a ditch is man-made or naturally made by erosion. I would prefer to use 307 rather than the brown dots (110).
I assume those man-made ditches were what the miners dug to bring water to their sluicings. Seem to recall they followed the contours for some distance.
Regarding the pillars: If you can't climb them then a black boulder symbol will probably do the job so long as you are consistent over the map. Are there any "real" boulders which could cause confusion?
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Michael
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Posted: 7 January 2010, 3:19 PM
I had forgotten about your use of blue at Taupo. Yes they are often contour ditches, but there are also downhill ditch systems to drain the diggings. Which often merge into natural watercourses. I'm thinking blue is the answer. (With the proviso that we're talking about small ones, under 1m. There are some monsters as well, but that is clearcut.)
If by "real" boulders you mean kinda round, very few. But the dictionary definition doesn't include anything about shape, heh heh. Thanks for your views Map Guy.
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Paul I
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Posted: 7 January 2010, 4:15 PM
agree that the dashed blue might be the best, although in some case i think they can be easily over used if a mapper gets lazy with the contours, I noticed also in oz then tended to keep the small dry water race ditches that run horizontally with the contours as brown dots, it seemed to look good and helped avoid confusion.
personally I'm not sure about the boulder symbol idea though, if it always had shape like an irregular pillar it could work but I suspect the naseby ones you speak of are too small for that anyhow. The passable/impassable cliff would be the correct way to go but unfortunately as you have discovered the latest line thickness specs doesn't make it easy to fit in the right proportions like the old ones did, do you think you could get away with using a circular or oval brown contour with the odd tag if neccessary. If not, keep it very quiet and use a bit of poetic license with the black line symbol where needed, at least everyone knows exactly what to expect.
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.Kyle.
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Posted: 7 January 2010, 5:54 PM
I am no mapper yet, but regarding the pillar things where you were thinking of using the black circle used for boulders, why not use a black square? This would leave the circle open for real boulders if there are any. Of course I have never seen them so the picture in my mind is probably far from the truth...
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Michael
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Posted: 7 January 2010, 6:03 PM
Paul these pillars can be as small as 2m across. I'm looking for a point symbol, and though I used the dot knoll last time I want to convey that they are different - unclimbable.
Actually the answer was in the specification all along! 202 Rock pillars/cliffs. "In the case of unusual features such as rock pillars or gigantic boulders, the rocks shall be shown in plan shape without tags. Colour: black."
Now I can't find a minimum area of black, but to ensure small pillars are not mistaken for stony ground dots I think I should adopt a minimum diameter of, say, 0.4mm.
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Paul I
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Posted: 8 January 2010, 2:02 AM
yes Michael sounds good, if you can't make it an irregular shape so it isn't confused with a boulder you could attack the thing with a spade until it does. Of course you can't really do that so let your imagination give it some sort of shape???? The minimum area size for any solid colour apart from black is 0.5 , however we see under this often with bare rock and Craigeburns bare earth symbol. It doesn't seem to state a min size for solid black. Depending on it's shape I also think a black point symbol the same as an elongated knoll could work in many circumstances.
Nice out of square thought Kyle but unfortunately that's a building, perhaps a small star? There arn't many shapes left not used.
I've thought for a while that at times orienteering maps need to differentiate between manmade black and rocky black, one or the other could be a strong charcoal colour. Tracks and buildings amid rocky areas can be a nightmare.
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Michael
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Posted: 8 January 2010, 12:35 PM
You're right, I remember an experimental Aussie map of granite terrain which used red for the man-made stuff. I've used it temporarily to help the drawing process. I think the drawback for "real" use is the colour-blind issue.
Had a chat with Casser today, he's facing these same issues at Bannockburn.
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The Map Guy
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Posted: 14 February 2010, 6:27 AM
The latest Service Update for OCAD 10 has been released (10.2.2). There was another Service Release (10.2.1)earlier in February with lots of stuff in it, but it had a few bugs which have now been fixed.
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Michael
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Posted: 15 February 2010, 3:06 AM
The blue for the small ditches is looking good.
I thought that there was no issue with the monster ditches (ie the pointy brown line 109) but I'm having second thoughts. One, its strange when a small one (blue) gradually turns into a big one (brown); two, I'm using tag-less bank lines because of the closeness of earth banks and the line is the same width; and three, the sheer amount of brown.
What do you think of a beefed up blue dash for big ditches? The spec says min 1m but these include those that you get down into and climb up the other side.
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Michael
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Posted: 15 February 2010, 3:28 AM
This one's specialised, even for this thread. It relates to getting topo data in GIS-industry-standard "Shapefile" format into OCAD. Reasons why you might want to do this: downloads from NZTopoOnline, and contours from local bodies.
Those of us with OCAD Standard can't read shapefiles, but have sometimes been able to get the supplier, or mates, to turn shapefiles into DXF, which is an industry standard but for a different industry - engineering drawing. Hence into OCAD Std.
It seems that deep down one of them works in integers and the other in decimals, and the translation introduces errors. Not big, but they turned up in a very particular circumstance. (They might also have been responsible for the rivers in my topo data not always running quite down the bottom of the valleys. Then again the topo data might not have been perfect to start with.)
Anyway, a map guy who has OCAD Professional tried my "very particular circumstance", and the resulting OCAD file appears to be perfect. Moral: get someone with OCAD Pro to do it for you; it's not a big job. We should be prepared to pay; OCAD Pro costs quite a bit more.
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Michael
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Posted: 1 March 2010, 6:29 AM
This is interesting: http://www.attackpoint.org/discussionthread.jsp/message_369620
A decision you would need to make is whether to put your effort into improving the open-source map of your area (adding all the missing tracks etc) or whether to develop a map of your urban area in OCAD as we have for greater Wellington.
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Michael
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Posted: 2 March 2010, 3:18 PM
Linley and I have another recommendation for a "hidden symbol" number. This is for GPS waypoint labels, which you can optionally import with the points themselves.
754.1 "GPS waypoint label" purple text very small eg 1pt
For reference our initial recommendations are on p10 of this thread, plus we have added
750.2 "cut line" for use with partial map
As you can move symbols around in the symbol panel its good to group these ones together so that, when doing production printing, you can easily hide the lot.
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Richard H
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Posted: 6 March 2010, 6:58 AM
Here is a direct link to the opensource orienteering page showing christchurch. No contours on here yet. They have now added the ability to create a score event map. Very new, course setting hangss every time on my machine at the moment in Internet Explorer but works perfectly in Chrome. As Michael mentions, generating a base map from this data, updating open source then putting your course on via this tool may be the way to go for future street events. Especially in Christchurch when we are not on the hills.
http://oobrien.com/oom/?zoom=15&lat=-43.5306&lon=172.6206&layers=B00FTFFFFF
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Michael
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Posted: 6 March 2010, 12:53 PM
I'm not too keen to make our mapping open-source at present, having just had the regional council advise there will be fees to use its land for the rogaine champs:-((
Woops I lashed out blindly there, this really pipsed me off after all we have contributed to the regional council.
My more considered response is that open-source mapping will be good when we need a map at short notice eg when a community group wants something in a particular place. And the place is flat.
But I think that we should all have our entire urban areas in OCAD at a level of detail between the normal o-map and a topo map. This same mapping can be used for street events, after-work rogaines, MTBO, city safaris; and as a framework for normal and sprint maps of small areas. Its not that hard to set up and you don't do it all at once like normal mapping, you fill it in as required. I've got a network of nosey runners and riders, many outside the club, who give me updates as they find stuff.
The main advantage of having it in OCAD is contours. Even if contours become open-source, they are likely to be the 20m topos. We've made a fair few changes to those over the year (eg hilltops and reentrants that fall between the 20's) but more importantly we're now wheeling in 10's obtained from local bodies. These are hugely better.
Another reason, and its subjective really, is that this mapping has mostly low detail, but there are interesting places where we want to cram in as much as the scale (1:20 or 25,000) will permit. I think we need control of the map production to make the most of this; and probably many other cartographic issues
In summary, if we recognise that close-to-home is important for orienteering participation, I think we'll want to have control over the mapping. 65-70% of participations in Victoria come from park/street events (AO March 2010 p10)
This message was edited by Michael on 7 March 2010, 11:17 AM
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Michael
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Posted: 8 April 2010, 5:43 AM
On the Naseby relay map the lines that are diagonal with respect to the page edges are very jaggy. It's most easily seen on the road edge lines along the southern border, but more importantly it affects the clarity of the contours.
I've had a look at the other maps from the weekend (under a magnifier) and jaggies are barely noticeable. Likewise a test print of the Naseby map I did at Hutt Valley's printer. I wonder what was different with the relay map printing. Whatever it was, we need to avoid it particularly in places like Naseby.
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