We are delighted to announce another milestone in the development of OCAD.
The OCAD App is now available as a beta version!
With the OCAD App, we are taking map making on mobile devices to a 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.
We hope you all had a good start to the new year and wish you all the best for 2025.
In this blog post, we give you an update on the most important OCAD innovations from last year.
Feature Map – Get more out of your LiDAR Data
The Feature Map can be used to recognize objects close to the ground such as stones, walls, tree trunks, fences, or cars which were previously not or only poorly recognizable on background maps that can be created with the DEM Wizard in OCAD.
Define Paper Size
OCAD has been enhanced with the Define Paper Size function to make it easier to display a print area or create a map layout. The paper size is visible in the drawing area and the area outside is grayed out.
Apple Look Around Viewer added to OCAD
The Apple Look Around Viewer now offers itself as a real alternative to Google Street View, as it can be more up-to-date and more comprehensive depending on the area. It has therefore been added to our list of Geoviewer.
OCAD Sketch App Improvements
We have added some new features to the OCAD Sketch App: Sketch colors can now be filtered and sorted, zoom buttons can be hidden, the eraser can be resized, the sketch layer can be hidden or just dimmed and background layers can be shown or hidden all at once.
With the Open Geoviewer function, you can click in the drawing area and specify a viewing direction. OCAD opens by default a web browser with Google Street View at the chosen position and direction.
The Apple Look Around Viewer now offers itself as a real alternative, as it can be more up-to-date and more comprehensive depending on the area, see example below.
How to access Apple Look Around Viewer in OCAD
The prerequisite for using Geoviewers is that the map is georeferenced and covered by the Geoviewer service.
Why you should use Geoviewer?
The use of Geoviewer can be very helpful for sprint maps, as many objects can already be drawn at home or a certain scene can be checked again afterwards. This reduces the amount of field work. It is advisable to test different Geoviewer services.
The video recording about recent and ongoing developments in OCAD at the 21st International Conference on Orienteering Mapping (ICOM on 03.11.2024) is available on our YouTube Chanel:
https://youtu.be/UZpF2_2b4CU
The following topics are presented:
– Function Define Paper Size
The paper size is visible in the drawing area and the area outside is grayed out. This is useful for displaying a print area or creating a map layout.
– Function Feature Maps
The Feature Map can be used to recognize objects close to the ground such as stones, walls, tree trunks, fences, or cars which were previously not or only poorly recognizable on background maps that can be created with the DEM Wizard in OCAD.
– Prototype of the OCAD Sketch App further development
The further development of the OCAD Sketch App will support vector objects.
You will be able to easily switch between sketches and vector objects to enable efficient mapping in the terrain.
The 21st International Conference on Orienteering Mapping (ICOM) will take place on 3rd November 2024 (postponed from 29.09) as an online event.
We will present the latest functions in OCAD and give an insight into where our development focus currently lies.
A link to the meeting and a detailed timetable is published on the IOF website.
Participation in the conference is free of charge.
