Hello, I’m trying to measure from point A to point B on openstreetmaps, and I understand that I have to got to settings and preferences and press plugins but I don’t get the option to do any of this on my openstreetmaps. (I have settings and preferences but then there is no tab for plugins.) Can anyone advise me?
Hello and welcome to the OSM Community forums.
Which Editor are we talking about? JOSM has a measurement plugin. Got the info pane permanently in view so I can see lengths/widths, circumferences, and area m2 in a quick view.
If one selects multiple sections of a way, it will show the totals.
The preferences pain of JOSM
Looks like the in-browser ID Editor. Someone other than me has to help you on finding plugin for this one, suspecting this is a chrome/firefox type of add-on. What web-browser are you using?
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There’s no plugin, or measurement, on the official website, which is for demonstration and verification only. You are thinking about one of the app, eg OSMAnd. For browser, use eg uMap, or Mapy.
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- Hit the edit button, visible at the top of your screenshot.
- Click on an object that you want to measure
- Hit “Ctrl-I”, which makes the measurement window pop up with alls sort of information, including length. If you shift-click multiple linear objects, it’ll give you the sum of their lengths. If you click an ‘area’ (closed way) object, it’ll give you the perimeter.
If there is no object covering the distance you could press ‘2’ and draw one, then follow the steps above. But if you do that, be careful not to save/upload.
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Thank you very much!! A lot of changes can be made to the image with the Edit button I see that now. Unfortunately, I don’t see a measure tool or a ruler tool and when I click on the line I’ve drawn I don’t get a length, just a prompt to name the line or give it a tag. Is there one extra step? Thank you again for the help.
chrome and thanks for the feedback. much appreciated
Not quite following… selected a stream mapped 2 days ago, selected it, hit Ctrl+I and this shows, 2.037km long.
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These are not changes only to the image - they are potential changes to the live database. If you accidentally hit save while doing this, your changes will be uploaded.
If you don’t actually want to edit the map, I’d suggest using a tool that is not intended for editing. As @Kovoschiz mentioned, umap is one example, e.g.
- go to this link
- hit “Create a Map”
- click the measurement took in the panel on the left
- draw a line as shown and the length will be displayed
With umap anything you draw is local to you, there is no risk of it being saved to the OSM database.
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Hi! As you can see, I don’t get a window like you do in the lower right hand corner even though the line is selected and I’ve hit Ctrl + L
Command + i on the mac did the trick! thank you.
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Sometimes the keyboard shortcuts get ‘captured’ by the browser. So if the 'Ctrl-i ’ shortcut isn’t working for you (step 3 above), you can click your way to the ‘Map Data’ panel button.
then the Show Measurement Panel button
and tick it. Then you’ll get the measurement panel in the bottom right (black box, yellow heading).
.
Bear in mind alan_gr’s warning elsewhere in this thread. Don’t save anything (save button at the top right), it’ll affect the whole map for all users immediately.
Had different reasons for not mentioning iD in mind. At intermediate zoom, often all features need to be hidden for it to be usable, not slowed down by the number of objects in cities. Can’t even draw a line to measure at any lower zoom. It’s not a worthwhile solution for general measurement.
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Not Ctrl+L, It’s Ctrl+i for incident.
With a zoom out greater than 300m nothing is selectable for me in ID.