A control description is as essential to orienteering as a compass. You could manage without it, but it makes things easier.
What do you need to know about control descriptions, and what tools does OCAD offer for viewing, printing, and exporting them?
We’ve compiled all the relevant information for you.
-> Read article on our website
In this blog post, we’ll show you the tools OCAD offers for adding great base data to your mapping project—tools that help you determine your location in the field and allow you to identify and map terrain features, vegetation, and man-made objects.
As you’ll see at the end of this article, all of this base data can be used in the OCAD App to map efficiently and accurately.
If you have access to up-to-date LiDAR data, consider yourself lucky. With LiDAR data, you can create excellent base maps that not only allow you to pinpoint your location but also help you identify many map features.
OCAD calculates two types of Contour Lines: smoothed (green) and not-smoothed (blue). Use the not smoothed contour lines as a background during field mapping, which includes all the details. To draw contour lines on the PC, you can start with the smoothed contours and adjust them as needed using the Reshape function.
The Hill Shading Map reveals numerous terrain features that are not visible in the contour lines, such as roads, forestry tracks, gullies, small pits and knolls.
The Feature Map is similar to the Hill Shading Map, but also shows features that are close to the ground such as stones, walls, tree trunks, fences, or cars which were previously not or only poorly recognizable on background maps.
The Las Intensity Map helps you to distinguish between deciduous and coniferous trees.
The Vegetation Height Map shows vegetation features ranging from open areas (yellow) and ground vegetation (red) to dense vegetation (green), open forest (white) and high trees (blue). The latter can be particularly useful in open forest with few ground vegetation.
The Vegetation Base Map is similar to the Vegetation Height Map but focus more on the runabilty of the terrain.
GPS is another key tool for determining position, especially when there is no or insufficient Lidar data available.
If your mobile device does not have a built-in GPS module, or if the built-in module is not accurate enough, you can connect it to an external GPS receiver.
In the OCAD App, you can use GPS not only to determine your location, but also to directly capture sketches and objects
We recently published a comprehensive article titled GPS in Orienteering Map Map Making that provides information about GPS and its use with OCAD.
Detailed cadastral maps are particularly useful for sprint maps, and they often allow you to pinpoint your exact location and map many features such as buildings, roads or boundaries.
You can import cadastral maps into OCAD in various formats (Shape, GeoPackage, DXF) or load them as a WMS/WMTS background map.
In open terrain, aerial photos and orthophotos can help with positioning and recognizing objects that are not visible on cadastral maps.
You have the following options for loading a georeferenced aerial photo into OCAD.
Head out into the field with the best possible base map!
All of this base data can be used in the OCAD App to map efficiently and accurately. In the app, you can show or hide various base maps or symbols and show your current GPS position.
We are hosting a webinar to introduce you to our new OCAD App and explain step by step how you can use it.
Date: Wednesday, 11.03.2026
Time: 19.00-20:30 (UTC+01:00) Amsterdam, Berlin, Bern, Rom, Stockholm, Wien
Take the opportunity and ask us questions about the app directly during the webinar.
We look forward to your participation.
This was the question that participants in the Swiss Orienteering course setting competition had to answer when they set an M10 and a WE course.
In its report, the jury summarized the most important points of a good sprint course and explained its decisions. Definitely worth reading.
The winner, Silvan Ulmann, is a familiar face: he was the course setter for the Knock-Out Sprint at the World Cup Final in Uster, which was voted Course of the Year 2025 in a WorldofO poll.
Winning courses of Silvan Ulmann: Concept / M10 / WE
OCAD AG provided each of the top three finishers in the course setting competition with a free annual license.
We hope you all had a good start to the new year and wish you all the best for 2026.
In this blog post, we look back at the most important OCAD innovations of the past year.
Improved PDF Export for Course Setting
You can now define a reverse side for PDF exports. This option allows you to export a PDF with two pages for double-sided printing. See this blog post for more information and application examples.
The reverse side option adds to a long list of useful features to make it easier to export orienteering courses. These include the Define Paper Size feature for displaying a print area and the Canvas feature for exporting orienteering maps in different scales or layouts.
License Management Improvements
OCAD licenses can be transferred if, for example, another person is to work with OCAD or OCAD is to be used on another device.
To transfer an OCAD license, you should use the License Transfer Utility in the OCAD Help menu. This function deactivates the OCAD license on your computer and allows you to activate this license on another device.
OCAD Single User licenses can now be activated independently on a new device, even if the old device is no longer accessible!
Base Colors: Color Management Made Easy
We added an option to the Colors dialog to define Base Colors, to makes color management easier for people who print maps.
This way, only a few base colors need to be defined, and each color in the color table can be assigned to one of those base colors, which determines its color value. When changing the CMYK values of the base colors, the derived colors change too.
See this blog post for more information.
OCAD App – Beta Release
At the end of 2025, we were able to announce another milestone in the history of OCAD AG. We released a beta version of the OCAD App, which replaces the OCAD Sketch App.
With the new app, we are taking mapping on mobile devices to a whole new level. While the previous OCAD Sketch App only allowed you to sketch, the new OCAD App enables you to edit the entire map. There are also many improvements to make mapping in the field even more ergonomic and efficient.
Discover the OCAD App at www.ocad.com/app.
