In the beginning of March, the Swiss National Team was training in Portugal for 9 days to prepare the new season. OCAD is a long-time partner of the Swiss Orienteering Team and was of course widely used to set courses and prepare maps before the camp: 8 different course setters prepared 19 trainings with a total of over 400 controls.

To guarantee highest quality of the trainings, lot of work had to be done behind the scene. An internal document lists the key points:
– Always check if the scale is correct.
– Cut the control circles and connection lines where needed.
– Check the control description.
– Are the North lines on the map?
– On the map with all controls, the control numbers should not cover the control location.

Furthermore, the course setters always use the same course setting template. For every scale, there’s a template, which contains additional symbols, like frames for printing, text symbols or a special North Arrow. This results in a uniform appearance and underlines the common spirit. Also, it guarantees the same color settings for all trainings.

All final courses were exported as GIF’s and double-checked. When everything was in order, PDF’s for printing were created. The printed maps were controlled once again. The result of this effort: Perfect trainings!

Facts and figures: 36 Athletes, 9 Staff, 1100 printed maps (+250 maps from competitions), more than 15h of total work alone for the relay training (setting the course, putting out 50 controls and SI-units and collecting the afterwards).

Links:
– Compose Course tool for fast and easy Course Setting
– O-training with OCAD
– Facebook page of the Swiss Orienteering Team