Creating areas from existing ways (using JOSM)

General talk
1

I would appreciate some advice about creating areas from existing ways as I have been unable to find much detail about this on the wiki.

Suppose I have a park bounded by some streets. How do I use the existing ways to create an area representing the park? Can the bounding ways extend beyond the boundaries of the park as, for example, below:

                      \ ________________________________________  way
                       \   |                                |
                        \  |                                |
                         \ |         area                |
                           \                                |
          ___________\_________________|__________ way

                                                           way

Or do I have to make the bounding ways the exact length of the area boundaries?

If anyone (imi?) could create a screencast demonstrating this using JOSM, it would be a valuable addition to the user guide. I find screencasts particularly helpful in conveying this sort of information.

Cheers,
Jon

2

OK, conceptually I think I was a little off the mark. Let me try and reframe the question:

Using JOSM, how do I reuse segments in multiple ways?

Jon

3

Some info on tagging areas.

In JOSM you can use the middle-mouse-button to show a list of segments and ways of a selected segment or node. To select a particular way press the ‘CTRL’ key, middle-mouse-click the segment and then left-mouse-click the intended way.

4

OK, so far so good. I can select a segment from an existing way. How do I then add together several segments from differing existing ways to make a new closed way?

5

I have made new ways and selected them with the selection rectangle to make a new closed way. This creates problems with the numbering and direction of the segments…

I clearly have a lot to grasp.

6

With areas, all segments need to point in the same direction (In JOSM: Preferences → Draw direction arrows). You can use the ‘reverse segments’ option in JOSM to organise the direction. Numbering the segments in the proper order can be organised by using the ‘reorder segments’ option in JOSM.

7

Am I right in thinking that an individual segment can have several different numbers depending on which way is in focus, but that the direction is a property of that segment?

8

Yep :slight_smile:

9

If I make many ways on 1 segment, (wich I try to do as little as often cause its messy), I tend to create a segment to start each way on (1, 2 and 3 in the attach image), then extend them to the 1 shared way (A), and then when I’m done with adding the different properties, I remove segments 1, 2 and 3 from the ways and delete the segments/nodes. Messy, but does the job.

10

OK, I think I’ve got it now.
Thanks to both for your help. :sunglasses:

11

How about if I want to create an area for a city suburb? Generally suburban boundaries are often drawn along streets, and in many cases those streets may be one-ways in contrary directions. If the segments/ways used to define an area MUST run in a common direction, is my only recourse to redraw the boundaries using new segments and ways simply running very very close but not on the existing segments and ways?

12

I would, and I think most people do, usually make the landuse=residential and other landuse areas out of seperate way-segments.