You may have symbols on your map, which consist of many different line and/or area objects. Editing and moving around these Symbols can get tedious. In OCAD Mapping Solution, there’s a function to Convert Area and Line Objects to a Point Symbol (Wiki).
A typical example for this function would be the import of a PDF. Vector objects in PDF files are imported as Image Objects (grey objects) and can be converted to Point Symbols (green objects). Learn here, how to Create a Point Symbol out of Vector Data (Video).
Your map becomes more consistent and better structured.
The latest mapping standard for sprint orienteering maps, called ISSprOM 2019, has been published by the International Orienteering Federation (IOF). The document can be downloaded from the IOF website.
OCAD has implemented the new standard in their symbol sets, which you get with the latest Service Update. The ISSprOM 2019 is valid from 1 January 2020. Until then, the current ISSOM 2007 is still in use.
In order to keep track of all the different symbol sets that have been released lately, we created the Wiki page Symbol Set Overview. There you’ll also learn how to convert your maps to the new standards.
Major changes:
Impassable vegetation (410) is forbidden to cross. Previous ISSOM 2007 Impassable vegetation symbol (421) using green 100% and black 50% has been removed.
Paved area with little (Brown 30%) and heavy traffic (Brown 50%).
New symbol for paved area in multilevel structures.
New symbols for passable walls, fountains and trees.
OCAD has implemented a new function Update Symbol Set to update maps drawn according to ISOM 2017 to the new ISOM 2017-2 standard. There will be approximately 15 changes to your symbol set.
Dialog box after updating a 1:10’000 map from ISOM 2017 to ISOM 2017-2
The changes have also been adopted to the OCAD symbol sets “Orienteering Map ISOM 2017 10’000” and “Orienteering Map ISOM 2017 15’000”. So, if you start a new map, you work automatically with the latest ISOM 2017-2 version.
In OCAD, you can create objects with pair of coordinates. Copy coordinates e.g. from Google Maps to clipboard. When you press Paste in the OCAD window (Ctrl + V or in the Menu Object> Paste), a dialogue window appears.
Now you have three options: You can move the view to this coordinates, create point objects at the coordinates or create line or area objects (only available if more than one pair of coordinates exists).
To use this function properly, a coordinate system has to be defined and the pasted coordinates need to fit to this coordinate system.
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).
