OpenGeofiction
I made a couple of contour maps and emailed them to the Admins. One for St. Richards, and one for the Westward Gate Plateau. I have been having problems with the contouring. I feel like I have not added steep enough hills. with only 100 meter hills outside the city. I started out at 310 meters by the river to 400 meters at Beglideres Castle. This is my first time doing this and I am a little confused.
EDIT. I just figured out what I need to do. I have to place (10) contour lines between each 100 meter line on the map. That is going to take A LOT of time. will see what I can do :) Trying to not flood the admins inbox with “updated contour maps”. Being American and thinking in imperial units doesn’t help matters.
Discussion
Comment from Luciano on 21 March 2017 at 03:19
I’m very pleased to know that someone else is actively trying to do contours. Let’s wait and see how it looks.
In fact, if you don’t like your hills because they’re not steep enough, it’s not that hard to “fix” it in a contour file - just increase the interval. Thus, if you drew 10 meter intervals, you can just re-tag all the contours so they reflect 20 meter intervals, and voila, your hills became twice as steep. I’ve done this in both directions many times, as I figure out what will work best in a given area.
I’m looking forward to seeing how it goes.
Happy mapping.
Comment from bhj867 on 21 March 2017 at 03:32
OH MY I just realized my Westward Gate Plateau contours are in 100 meter intervals. :o We will see how it looks lol
Comment from bhj867 on 21 March 2017 at 03:33
Yes, I eventually want to do all of Pretany, although Pretany is a huge undertaking. I am excited to perfect this process.
Comment from Easky30 on 21 March 2017 at 20:43
You only need 9 intermediate contour lines the 10th would be the Index, or every 100 meter line. You could also do 4 intermediate lines of 20,40,60,80 increments. Is there way way in Potlatch to draw contour lines? I would like to try making contours for Samiloor.
Comment from Luciano on 21 March 2017 at 22:52
@Easky30 - I’m sorry but I can’t understand at all the first part of your comment. The contour uploading tool Thilo is developing doesn’t care what the intervals are - sometimes I have used quite strange intervals as I take previously drawn contour areas and adapt the height to match the exact elevations I want, and then I mix and match different intervals on the same contour map, too. Thus I have sections with 50 m intervals, 25 m intervals, 10 m intervals, 8 m intervals, 1 m intervals, etc.
RE your second question. The contours must be drawn “offline” - thus UNLESS there is some secret functionality in Potlatch that allows you to edit offline OSM files, it is certainly the case that it would NOT be useful for editing contours.
Comment from Easky30 on 22 March 2017 at 00:23
@Luciano I was just responding to bhj867’s comment about adding 10 contour lines between each 100. I am used to the topographic map standards where the index is the thicker line that has an elevation label and intermediate are the the thinner lines.
Comment from Luciano on 22 March 2017 at 01:53
@Easky30 - OK, I somewhat understand. But my point is that what you draw in a contour file isn’t what gets drawn on the Topo layer. There is a kind of interpretation that happens. So if you give a contour file with random intervals, the program interprets that, and what it draws is a standard-looking topo layer, with 50m index lines and 10m intervals. The program’s input is more based on DENSITY rather than interval - you just have to give it a certain minimum density of data for a given area. Where there are lots of ups and downs, you can give it 100m intervals and it will be fine, because if the topography is steep, the distance between lines is still small. In an area that is relatively flat, you may need to provide contour lines on 1 meter intervals (I’ve even experimented with half-meter intervals in a few places in my most recent file set - we’ll see how that turns out…)
Comment from bhj867 on 22 March 2017 at 02:19
What is a good time estimate for my contouring? I’m just curious to see if I fudged it or if it looks good.
Comment from Luciano on 22 March 2017 at 02:51
It can take quite a while. It comes down to: “when Thilo has time for it.” Given the recent server issues, probably he’s been busy with other stuff. I have a set I’m waiting on, too. We’ll just have to be patient. One day, two weeks… average is a few days. Somewhere in there.
Comment from bhj867 on 22 March 2017 at 03:10
Oh cool, alright. I just wasn’t sure which Admin/Mod was in charge of the contouring. Thanks for the information.
Comment from bhj867 on 25 March 2017 at 19:52
That looks horrible yikes