The main challenge with filling in neighborhoods is adding the addresses.

Adding the buildings is not so bad if the houses are mostly rectangles and only a couple sizes; copy/paste is pretty quick. Labeling other properties is similarly straightforward. However, adding hundreds of unique addresses is prohibitively tedious! I currently have to click on a single house, click on the address field, check the address, enter the address, then repeat for the next house. This is not so bad until it’s repeated 100s (or 1000s) of times.

PLEASE tell me I’m just being foolish and there is an easy way to scroll through multiple selected buildings to enter the same field in each! I’m picturing something like: select all houses, enter first address, HOTKEY TO NEXT HOUSE, enter next address. Not only would it remove several steps, but also remove manual mouse clicks which require diverting attention. If I could do this, I could have a list of addresses and zip through an entire area pretty quickly without losing my place constantly looking back and forth.

    • @gedaliyahOPEnglish
      2•1 month ago

      This helps a lot! It took me a minute to figure out how to use it but it allows for pretty quickly from the number field on one house to the same field in the next. It could only be improved if there were a way to cycle directly through a group of selected houses without clicking in between, but still a huge improvement!

        • @gedaliyahOPEnglish
          1•1 month ago

          I think I’m being unclear. Right now, the tool makes it:

          • mouse over and click on first house
          • hotkey K
          • choose editing options (housenumber)
          • type house number
          • enter
          • Mouse over and click on next house (this is the part I wish could be a “next house” hotkey. Am I missing something?)
          • hotkey K
          • repeat previous 4 steps as needed
            • @gedaliyahOPEnglish
              1•1 month ago

              That’s basically what I got down to as well. It eliminates the second click and losing one’s place; you click directly from one house to the next rather than clicking back and forth between two parts of the screen. Its good enough and a big improvement over the previous workflow.

              I’d imagine that a tool would have to allow a user to first select a set of houses then proceed through the selected group, which is basically a negligible improvement over this (other than grouping the mouse task and the keyboard tasks).

              The automatic number advancing is nice but so far isn’t useful in this case. The city is on a grid, so the numbers sometimes advance by 4, sometimes by 6, and sometimes more depending on the exact alignment. There will likely be some streets that follow regular intervals though.

  • TipponEnglish
    2•1 month ago

    I’m still quite new to this, so I’m not sure if this is the best thing to do, but in JOSM you can paste data.

    I copy the address from the street name down, so street, village, town, postcode / zip code, and paste it to the buildings on that street. I haven’t done it for a little while, but I’m pretty sure that you can select multiple buildings at once too, saving some time that way.

    • @gedaliyahOPEnglish
      2•1 month ago

      Yes, you can copy and paste, but it is even easier to use the dropdown. It will automatically give options that match surrounding labels such as street name, city, state, zip, etc., and of course selecting and editing multiple buildings is relatively easy. (not sure if JOSM does this but the web editor does)

      The part that is slowing me down is getting quickly from the “housenumber” field on one house to the “housenumber” field on the next house. It has to be done one at a time because they are unique - and typing is faster than copy/paste for this. At present, I am having to mouseover and click on each house and then re-select the housenumber field; trivial for a small number, but adds up when repeated 100s or 1000s of times.