I’m just starting to learn to edit on OSM, but I’m not new to map editing.
A large part of my experience is using MapMaker Pro. Some of it’s features could be useful here:
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MMP made extensive use of layers. In my use of it, I created a high scale map using orthorectified geotiffs. (1 meter per pixel) This was too large to handel in reasonable time showing the entire region (12 x 18 km) on an 8 MB computer. So from the original set of geotiffs, I constructed 2m/pixel, 4m/pix, 8 m/pix, and 16m/pix versions. I added a layer for each of these.
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MMP has the ability to turn layers on or off depending on the current rendering scale. By picking suitable scales for turning off each of the imagery layers I was able to to have a useable backdrop at all scale levels. OSM does this too. Tertiary roads don’t show up until you zoom in to a certain level of detail.
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MMP has the ability to lock layers. This is a huge help editing. I organized my mapping into layers:
Hydrology:
- Point items (springs, wells)
- Linear items (creeks, streams)
- Area items (Lakes, rivers that show width)
Utilities
- Point items (oil wells, pumping stations, power pylons, pipe access points)
- Linear items (pipeline right of way, power lines)
Human artifacts
- Buildings
- Other point items
- Primary & Secondary roads.
- Tertiary roads
- Trails & unmaintained tracks.
- Control points for checking mapping.
Vegetation overprint.
I tried producing contours from the available digital elevation models, but there were none of sufficient accuracy available for our region. To make a useful contour map would have required 2 meter elevation data. (Gently rolling terrain)
Each layer had to checkboxes: Hide, and Lock. Hide made the layer not visible. Lock left it visible, but nothing on that layer could be selected. This latter feature was very handy. I could lock all the area layers and the trails layers when I was putting in creek routes. Or I could lock all but the trail routes when editing trails. This prevented a lot of inadvertent moves.
When working at a larger scale (more earth in view) turning off layers made for much faster updates.