Smooth Drawing Tools (plus better route management)

[steverod]

I've been a longtime user of the National Geographic TOPO! series. One of the tools they offer is freehand route drawing: you just click on the 'pencil' and draw (with a mechanism to erase the track), and click to stop drawing. This makes it pretty easy to trace a route along a trail (to whatever level of detail you feel necessary), and is (IMHO) easier than the 'draw a track' mechanism in TF -- the latter results in more point-click-point-click repetition, particularly for trails which aren't straight lines.

Why would I do this? If I'm planning out a hike, it's nice to follow the trail and get a good idea of both the distance covered by the trail plus the elevation profile of the trail, instead of doing straight lines between the interesting waypoints.

(On thinking about it, another feature of TOPO! that is nice is that if you hit a screen edge while drawing, the map will automatically scroll some distance, so you never need to stop drawing; in TF I have to stop drawing, switch to the hand tool, and start drawing again.)

My first, and specific, suggestion is thus to allow for this free-hand style of drawing rather than the current segment at a time.

Now I will go off into dreamland...

The idea for "better route management" is something that's been growing for a while as I've played with various map programs. The general idea is that I've picked a place to go (and in my case, go backpacking) but I haven't narrowed down exactly what to do yet. I can leave from a given trailhead (TH) and do several routes (call them routes 1, 2, 3) and stop at one of several places for my campsite (call them sites A, B, C). Some parts of routes 1,2,3 are in common (same trailhead), some aren't.

With most programs, including TF, I need to draw out every option (route 1 is TH -> A -> TH, route 2 is TH -> A -> B -> TH, route 3 is TH -> A -> C -> A -> TH, for example), and either lay all the routes on top of each other -- which is hard to do -- or draw a route, save it, clear it, draw a new route, record the data, clear it, etc.

It Would Be Nice if I could add another level of indirection and draw segments, then connect segments together into routes (maybe aggregating routes into trips).

In terms of my example above:
I draw a 'segment' a that is TH -> A. 
  Route 1 (one day's hike) is just segment a, Trip 1 is Route 1 in both directions.

I draw a segment ab that is A-> B, and a segment b which is B -> TH.
I've now got a couple of options:
   Route 2a combines segments a and ab (so it goes TH -> A -> B), and Route 2b combines segments ab and b (so it goes A -> B -> TH). (Basically, I'm trying to figure out where to camp one night.)

  Trip 2A has Route 2a for the first day, and a route that's just segment b (hiking B to TH) on the second day.
  Trip 2B has segment a (TH->A) for the first day, and Route 2b (A -> B -> TH) for the second day. Both of these Trips cover the same terrain but the Routes I travel are different.

This may sound complicated but it's basically a manual form of what a trip planning program like Streets and Trips or TopoUSA lets you do. What I'm hoping for is a way to think about a trip  as a whole and on a per-day basis, including adjusting the route accordingly ("what if I go THIS way? what's the elevation profile if I stop HERE, rather than THERE?").

I can certainly understand if your response is "way too hard and not worth it," but I figured I had to try.

[ScottMorris]

First -- regarding drawing tools.  Try holding down the mouse button while you draw.  This gives continuous drawing similar to what you are describing in Topo!.  I like having both since it is can be hard to trace a straight section of road or trail using free hand drawing.  In TF you can combine the two during a single track trace.

Also, I recommend using the arrow keys to pan the map when you get to the edge.  Also, if you hold down the CTRL key, the tool mode turns to pan mode until CTRL is released.  That's a VERY handy tip and works for all tool modes.

If I parsed your routing suggestion correctly, I think you can do what you want using networks in TopoFusion.  If you already had trail data already you could combine your tracks, then create hypothetical routes (complete with a profile and stats) using the "merge tool."  You just click segments of the network in succession (right click to get a menu with more options).  Creating a network slices up tracks into distinct pieces, eliminating duplicate representations of a single trail.

Now, if you were creating a network from scratch (by drawing), I would just draw each segment (from trailhead A to the first intersection with any other trail).  Save out each segment as a different track (with no overlap among the tracks).  Now you have all your pieces.  Use the merge tool to put them together (it will auto reverse things as you click, so don't worry about direction -- although you do need to make sure your first segment is in the direction you want).

Hopefully that makes sense, or let me know if you're trying to do something different.

[steverod]

Thanks!

I think that the merge tool (plus the cut tool) will give me exactly what I wanted for route management.

I had some further comments on the line drawing but further investigation suggests that it's not you:
- I couldn't get the 'Ctrl' trick to work because Ctrl+Click maps to Right-click in Mac OS X (but this can be overridden in the VMware Fusion mouse preferences). I suppose it might be nice to let the user pick which key controls this behavior, but that's not really needed.
- I was going to gripe about the need to hold the mouse button down but on reflection this really means I need a mouse driver that supports drag lock... which is not your problem. I'm now researching drag lock options.

[jennifermilly]

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