Orienteering NZ Wiki

Free open-source mapping software.

http://oorienteering.sourceforge.net/?p=126

A big thanks to magnus for sharing that link to OpenOrienteering, I have been using it since then and have found it excellent.

One awesome feature is overprint simulation. That seems to be missing from OCAD as far as I know and really needs to be added.

Anyone have trouble with background positioning when taking OCAD files into OOM? Or backgrounds that fail to open? Can overcome the former via close/open if I have the world files, but I'm stumped by the latter so far.

Ok, thanks for the replies for drawing parallel objects.

The Fill/Create border does nothing to the road in OpenOrienteering and the parallel mode sounds specific to OCAD too. Looks like I AM ===out of like for now but hopefully that will at least help someone else in future. Cheers.

This doesn't solve your problem Fraser, but OOM seems to have a couple of ways of putting an object exactly on top of another. There's a duplicate function but unlike OCAD it doesn't displace the duplicate, so you might not notice it has been done:-)) And the fill/border thing (line on line) works for me. Haven't found a way of doing the move parallel though.

Thanks Michael, yes I use the duplicate function a lot followed by the switch symbol function to create borders.

I see how the fill/border function works now and it has the exact same result as the duplicate/switch method.

There is an open ticket which sums up the problem and potential solution if it were possible to follow the border line rather than the centre line. http://sourceforge.net/p/oorienteering/tickets/362/

Latest experiences with OOM, anyone? I revisited it today using the latest 0.5.96, the obstacles I previously found seemed to still be there. Opening an OCAD file and the backgrounds were in the wrong place, importing a GPX using a Proj.4 recipe fails to give me the tracks/waypoints. (Can't see any other way to specify NZTM.) OOM froze on me opening a large-ish file, too. Yet it seems to be a way forward for encouraging mapping.

For OOM I would suggest posting on their forum or filing a bug report so they are aware of the problems. There is one bug possibly related to your problem with OCAD files which is scheduled for fixing in 0.6.1.

Thanks for your suggestions Fraser. But I rather like testing my questions locally first, this forum demonstrates there is a heap of expertise here. Has anyone (you?) taken OCAD files with backgrounds into OOM? Has anyone been able locate a GPX in OOM? Is Proj.4 the way to get it to recognise the NZ grid? What arguments do you pass to OOM to “look up” NZTM? Or have I got this projection thing all wrong?

I don't have any OCAD files with backgrounds to check. If I start a new map by importing an Open Street Map file and georeferencing it, then when I import a gpx file it lines up perfectly where expected.

Here is an older thread which discusses the background not lining up http://sourceforge.net/p/oorienteering/discussion/mapper/thread/be6f9c7f

And here is a newer post about georeferencing OCAD maps in OOM http://sourceforge.net/p/oorienteering/tickets/373/ “This ticket remains open for dealing with CRS specification / GPS corodinates from OCD files.”

That may shed more light on things.

They may make my head swim Fraser! Looks like the short answer to my OCAD import issue is to wait.

Importing GPX, I can see them now, I was diverted by failure to distinguish GPS lines/points brought thru as objects from the OCAD file, and lines/points opened as OOM templates. Though they are not that far apart, the GPS lines disagree with both the map and a background photo set up as a template in OCAD, which disagree with each other.

Yes, short answer is to wait.

I installed the latest OOM and had another go at transferring OCAD files. I previously had problems with the geo-referencing. I succeeded this time but AM ===not entirely sure whether it was just luck. I list below the steps I took in the hope that others can increase my understanding.

1. Opened an OCAD file containing some GPS tracks and waypoints turned into symbols; and some aerial photos in the background exactly positioned via their world files. 2. There were some messages about some symbols not being able to be translated, that's another topic I think. The important thing is that the photo positioning seems fine. 3. Want to re-import the GPX to see whether it would sit directly on top of lines in the file. Note the way OOM treats GPXs is to open them as templates (backgrounds). Chose the geo-referenced option. This opens the geo-referencing dialogue. 4. I would have thought it would know from the OCAD that my coordinate reference system was NZTM, but apparently not. I can put in a Proj.4 string, or use the EPSG method (2193 if I remember correctly). 5. This then stuffs up the offsets (coords where the paper origin is) and makes a difference between the declination and grivation numbers. Proceeding without fixing them up is I think what led to my problems before. 6. I don't know what it decided my offsets were but I put them back to the right values. Editing is strange, I couldn't select the whole field, but I could select the bit before the decimal point and retype, and the bit after. Almost as if I wasn't supposed to be doing this! 7. The angle in OCAD is the grid-magnetic angle. It sums up the declination (true-magnetic) and the convergence (grid-true), only on latitude 173 does grid=true for NZTM. Seems that OOM calls this the “grivation” and it is now wrong. But you can't edit it. You can only edit “declination” and you have to fiddle it to get the grivation right. There is the same problem with editing this field as above. 8. After saying OK, OOM says “declination changed, do I want to rotate the map”, I say no (although not the default). I have lots of adjacent maps with the same offset/angle and I don't care if my grid is not PERFECTLY mag north, more important is for them to be consistent. 9. After all this, the gpx file opens in exactly the same place as it did in OCAD. Whew. 10. To fully test the aerial photo positioning, I removed some and re-opened them (world file option), they fit fine, but I would think only because I had adjusted the geo-referencing parameters as above.

The above seems soooo tortuous that I think it can't be the intended method. Could someone who understands the geometry behind map projections please enlighten us?

OpenOrienteering Mapper version 0.6.0 has been released.

https://openorienteering.github.io/news/2015/mapper-0.6.0-released/

They have been working towards this milestone for a while and is worth updating your version.

There's a new OOM, version 0.6.2. I installed it and re-did the test I described on 1 Dec, but it behaves just the same. Whether by coincidence or not, it was very slow though (a) I used a bigger file than before 3.5mb with several hi-res photos behind, and (b) there are a number of random things that cause my computer to freeze up. Can anyone enlighten us about these projection issues?

There have been some more OOM versions, the latest is 0.6.8. I installed it and re-did the test I described on 1 Dec 15 and 2 June 16, but it behaves pretty just the same. On a medium size (6mb) file it froze at first, but I got it to work on a 2mb file. There were a number of warnings when opening an OCAD file but I am uncomfortable about the kludges that seem to be necessary to load a GPX file in the right place. There seems to be a different way of depicting the map-to-real-world relationship. Can anyone enlighten us about these projection issues?