OpenGeofiction
One of the most annoying issues I encounter in creating cities is that there is no easy way to connect ways at intersections where they overlap with a node. I am using JOSM. I am required to go back and connect these ways with nodes manually one at a time. a very painstaking and extremely time consuming process that can take hours when I would much rather be expanding my city or coming up with street names, buildings and more. I have tried to use the Grid building option in JOSM but it does not work as I would like it to. It does not create a regualr grid of connected nodes that can easily be converted to streets. Nor is there a way though the validation process or any other means I have been able to find where it is possible to connect a whole series of nodes. Has anyone found a way to connect the nodes intheir downtown grids without having to individually connect each intersection.
Its very frustrating
Discussion
Comment from tom_m7 on 25 October 2014 at 22:05
I’ve found it frustrating too, especially on JOSM or Potlatch2 where you can’t connect the nodes. On iD it’s more manageable more since you can connect nodes part of different ways to each other.
Comment from Luciano on 25 October 2014 at 22:26
JOSM has a plug-in called “utilsplugin2” that then gives an option called “Add nodes at intersections” which I have used extensively when building grids - although I still have vast tracts of Villa that I haven’t applied it to because I built them before discovering this. It’s a cool trick. This can be combined with a clever use of “filters” (excellent write up of filters in JOSM here) - you can put a filter to show only things with key “highway=*” then just zoom out and select EVERYTHING unfiltered and choose that option. You can add 1000’s of intersection nodes at a time - though there seems to be an upper limit before it crashes my computer - I tried to do all of Villa at once that way and it was too much, so I’m still stuck doing it piecemeal on my older grids. But for new developments and towns, if I remember to do it as I’m building, before each upload/save, it works wonderfully.
I agree that the grid builder in JOSM isn’t very useful.