Add nodes by heading/distance.

[dw-osm@…]

It would be nice to be able to draw lines using data from surveyors' maps and legal land descriptions. Those documents typically say things like " S 42°35'17" E 225' ", which indicates a line starting from the current point, 225 feet long, with a heading of 42°35'17" East of South (equal to a compass heading of 137°24'43").

I imagine a function similar to the existing "Add Node...". You would first select a starting point, then click this new tool (called "Add Line..." perhaps?). You would then get a dialog where you would enter a distance (in feet or meters) and a heading (as a compass heading or in the above notation).

When you click "OK", a new node would be added at the specified distance and angle from the original node, with a line connecting them. The new line would be selected, and if you do "Add Line..." again, the newly added node would be used as the start point, rather similar to how the existing "Draw nodes" works.

Come to think of it, this could be added to the existing "Add Node..." tool, instead of in a new tool. If you have a node selected before choosing "Add Node...", the dialog could have tabs to choose different data entry forms, so you can enter either lat/long or heading/distance. In either case, the tool could draw a line from the selected node to the new node.

[dw-osm@…]

It occurs to me that I should have mentioned the motivation for this -- WHY it would be useful.
In cleaning up TIGER road data, I've noticed that a lot of area data (parks, schools, etc) in OSM are only rough approximations of the actual shapes. For example, this school in OSM:

​http://osm.org/go/TZZK7TBHq-

Should really look like:

​http://webapp.solanocounty.com/SCIPSApps/asr/maps/0126/012627.tif

The tool described in this enhancement request would make it fairly quick and easy to enter the correct shape into JOSM using the data in the Assessor's Map.

As a side note, this map contains two curves. "R=250' L=174.53'" means "a distance of 174.53 feet along a curve with radius of 250 feet". It would be a nice bonus if the tool allowed entering curve data, either in this format or in another format I've seen where the length of the curve is specified by angle. But support for curves is less important, since you can find the endpoints of the curve by drawing a straight line to the center of the radius and back out again at the correct angle. So all that's really critical is the ability to draw straight lines of a given length at a given direction from a selected start point.

[NE2]

Yes, this would be really useful in mapping lots.

[aTarom]

wow eleven years :) anyone know if this useful function has been implemented?

[gaben]

Replying to aTarom:

wow eleven years :) anyone know if this useful function has been implemented?

The closest thing I know is the utilsplugin2 LatLon tool for adding a coordinate, then the status bar values for distance and direction.