How do I cut areas out of the OSM globe data?

General talk
1

I’m new to this forum so I apologize if this topic has already been covered. Here’s what I want to do. I want to download OSM data for many parts of the globe but there are certain parts that I won’t need. Therefore, I’d like to “cut” those areas out rather than having tons of unnecessary data. I saw that there was an option to select a certain area and download it but that tool can only be used if the selected area is less than 1/4 of a degree (Lat, Long) on each side but I need the data for a much larger area than that. Does anyone know how I might “cut out” an area of the OSM globe data, maybe even cutting out entire countries/continents? Thanks

2

If you want data for large areas (eg whole countries), you should use Planet extracts. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Planet.osm#Downloading
Geofabrik provide extracts for a range of countries/regions. See http://download.geofabrik.de/osm/
Or Cloudmade have some: http://downloads.cloudmade.com

If you want to extract data for a smaller area from one of these extracts you can use Osmosis. http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmosis It can extract data from within a bounding box or bounding polygon.

3

Thanks for the links. I think that has what I need.

4

If you’re just want to do some extracts, the following programs work much faster than Osmosis - although the do not have the variety of functions Osmosis has.

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Pbftoosm
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osmconvert