Trails the Even Faster Way: GPX Import

The template method we used to get a trail map is great for a high-accuracy tracing of trails you've been around a few times (in my example, I walked back and forth on a street). However, there is a faster way to get a good-enough trail map!

Objective

In this exercise, we will directly import GPX trails from Runkeeper and convert them to map symbols.

Instructions

Follow the directions for the Runkeeper trail mapping tutorial right up until opening the template (make a georeferenced canvas and download a GPX file to your computer), or just use the same file and work on top of it.

Import a GPX file

Go to File > Import... and find your GPX file.

Select "Georeferenced" so that the trail shows up in the correct position:

Here is the imported GPX trail– note that it has squares you can drag around, showing that this is an editable map feature:

Convert the GPS trail to a footpath symbol.

If you click off of the imported path, you can see that it is no particular map symbol, just a thin gray line:

Let's make it into a footpath. Re-select the feature:

Now select the correct symbol for your feature from the Symbols menu– in this case, I'm using the "footpath" symbol.

Now click the Fill/Create border tool (yellow circle with the arrow):

Click off of the feature to see the trail map using this method:

Bonus 1: Smooth and Simplify the Path

Great, we have a footpath! But if we want to edit this trail in the future, it's going to be a huge pain to drag around all of these little squares:

If we had used the template method, we would have drawn the line using the Draw Curves symbol. Open Orienteering Mapper lets us convert our line type to curves after the feature already exists! Here's how.

Select the path:

Click the "Convert to curves" tool (blue circle with orange n the inside):

Here's the path after it has been converted to curves. Notice the little blue circles that are characteristic of a "curve" feature (so you don't get unnatural sharp corners):

Open Orienteering Mapper can also identify and delete redundant points in the path with the "Simplify path" tool. Keep the feature selected.

Now click the "Simplify path" tool (blue circle with orange on the outside):

It can be a little hard to tell the difference, but there are fewer editable points now:

This comes in handy when you need to edit the path but don't want to spend hours dragging a million little points into their new positions.

Bonus 2: Manually Simplify

In this example, it's fairly clear that I walked the same trail back and forth– look at these overlapping paths:

Bleah. That's not what a trail map looks like! Let's get rid of the extra junk where the trail is double-mapped.

Cut/Delete Redundant Paths

Select the path feature.

Click the "Cut object" tool (the scissors):

Your cursor now should have a little scissors icon next to it. When you hover over a point, it will turn golden, like this:

Click on a point to cut the path there (dividing one path into two):

After you've clicked on a square, it will have a big X marking that it's an endpoint:

Let's have a look at what we've done. Switch to the little white arrow ("Edit objects") tool:

Click on some blank part of the screen, then click on the path near where you cut, to see that only a portion of the path is now highlighted.

Because the GPX trail has an endpoint close to the south end of the map, here's my one-cut chunk of trail:

We can use this to delete redundant trail chunks. Anywhere your path doubles back on itself, make a cut.

I made a cut at the junction and at the north end of the trail, clicked off of the feature, then clicked on my newly cut section:

Select just the redundant chunk of trail, then delete it:

There's some redundancy near the bottom– we can clean that up in the same way (select, cut, deselect, select just the redundant chunk, delete).

Eventually, you should have a path with no redundancies:

Refining the Path

Okay, now we just have one trail– but is it correct? It looks kind of messy and wobbly to me.

Let's re-import the same GPX trail as a template so that we can have an idea where the median is. Follow the directions from the original Runkeeper trail mapping tutorial– success looks like this: