JPH08297466A - Mapping device - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE: To easily convert a map drawn with lines into a practical map in considering a road width by displaying the map on a display part, specifying an optional road by using a pointing device and re-drawing the road with parallel lines of specified width. CONSTITUTION: An information processing device is provided with an input processing part 6, raster/vector conversion part 7, a storage part 8 and a road width re-drawing processing part 9. And, when a road is specified by a pointer 3, the road is converted into prescribed parallel lines. The road width is specified, for example, by a window 18 displayed at a corner of the display part 1. When the road width is specified as 10m in this window, a width of the parallel lines is set in accordance with a scale of the map. Namely, although this road is drawn as a line without width, once specified by this pointer 3, parallel lines corresponding to a prescribed width are drawn. After that, the previous road is eliminated.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a map making apparatus used for making a road map having a width from a map in which a road is drawn by one line.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art There are various types of maps, such as accurate maps based on aerial photographs and the like, and simple diagrams such as guide maps. Such maps are mainly required to accurately draw roads. Usually, when a map is created by handwriting, for example, each road is first drawn as a single line with its width ignored, and a schematic drawing is drawn. After that, adjust to the width of the road if necessary, 2
Rewrite the map using the lines of the book. When such a map is used for various information processing or is to be included in a document by a word processor, it is appropriately converted into data and then registered and stored in the information processing device.

[0003]

By the way, the conventional map creating process as described above has the following problems to be solved. For example, when there is data such that a map that accurately represents the position of the road is created by ignoring the width of the road, it is not preferable to print this data and use it as a map. It is necessary to rewrite the line that draws each road considering the road width. However, such work is not easy and requires a lot of labor, and it is difficult to draw a road with an accurate width. In addition, when a guide map or the like is simply created by handwriting, if each road is represented according to its width, the map becomes easier to see, but such work is not always easy.

[0004]

The present invention adopts the following constitution in order to solve the above points. This map creation device is a storage unit that stores vector data for displaying a map in which a portion of a road is drawn by a line without a width, a display unit that displays the map, and a map that is displayed on this display unit. A pointing device that specifies an arbitrary road with a pointer, and a road width redrawing processing unit that redraws the road specified by the pointing device into parallel lines of a predetermined width and generates new vector data for displaying a map. Prepare

An input processing unit for inputting bitmap raster data of a map by handwriting and a draw for displaying a map in which a road portion is drawn by a line having no width from the input raster data of the map. A raster / vector conversion unit that generates system vector data may be provided.

[0006]

The map is displayed on the display unit, and an arbitrary road displayed by one line is designated by the pointer to be converted. If the road width is specified in advance, the road is converted into two parallel lines by clicking the pointing device. When map data to be converted is input by handwriting, bitmap raster data is converted to draw vector data before conversion.

[0007]

The present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the embodiments shown in the drawings. FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing an embodiment of a map creating apparatus of the present invention. As shown in the figure, a general-purpose information processing device including a display unit 1 and a control unit 2 is used for this map creation device. A pointing device 5 is attached to this device. As a result, the pointer 3 can be moved on the screen of the display unit 1 to specify a figure or the like displayed on the screen. In this example, the map 4 is displayed on the display unit 1. This map depicts each road by a single line with no width.

In order to realize the apparatus of the present invention, as shown in the figure, the information processing apparatus includes an input processing unit 6,
A raster / vector conversion unit 7, a storage unit 8 and a road width redrawing processing unit 9 are provided. The storage unit 8 stores vector data 10 for displaying the map 4. In addition,
The vector data is data created by so-called draw application software, and is data for designating points, lines, polygons, etc. by numerical operation and reproducing a drawn figure. The use of such draw-type vector data 10 is to perform processing such as rewriting a road drawn by a line having no width into parallel lines having a predetermined width, or erasing unnecessary lines at road intersections and the like. This is because draw vector data is easier to process than bitmap raster data.

FIG. 2 shows an example of a concrete hardware example for realizing the device of the present invention. The central processing unit 11 in the figure is stored inside the control unit 2 shown in FIG. This is composed of a computer and application software for graphic processing. The handwritten map input device 12 is composed of, for example, an image reading device, has a structure in which bitmap raster data is generated by a built-in scanner, and the raster data is taken into the information processing device as map data. The keyboard 13 is of a well-known configuration that a user presses to operate the device. The mouse 14 constitutes the pointing device 5 shown in FIG. This mouse 14
Is for moving the pointer 3 for designating each road on the map 4 displayed on the display unit 1 shown in FIG. 1. This will be referred to as a pointing device and the description will be continued. A device for moving the pointer 3 on the screen is
Various things such as a keyboard and other pen input devices can be mentioned. You can use any of them. The display 16 corresponds to the display unit 1 shown in FIG. In addition, the magnetic disk device 15 has the vector data 10 shown in FIG.
Etc. are stored.

FIG. 3 shows a concrete operation explanatory diagram of the apparatus of the present invention. A process of redrawing a road designated by a pointing device into parallel lines having a designated width, which is a main operation of the apparatus of the present invention, will be described with reference to this drawing.
Note that this processing is executed by the road width redrawing processing unit 9 shown in FIG. First, in FIG. 3A, it is assumed that, for example, three roads R1, R2, and R3 intersect each other appropriately and are drawn by lines having no width. In this case, the pointer 3 is used to specify the road R1.

When the road R1 is designated by the pointer 3 in this manner, the road R1 is converted into parallel lines having a width designated in advance as shown in (b). The road width is specified by a window 18 shown in the corner of the display unit 1, as shown in FIG. 1, for example. If the width of the road is specified to be 10 m in this window 18, the width of the parallel lines is set according to the scale of the map. FIG. 3E shows an explanatory diagram of such a conversion processing method. That is, as shown in this figure (a), the road R1 is drawn by one line with no width, but if this is designated by the pointer 3, the road (R) of the interval corresponding to the width designated in advance (e) Parallel lines RL1 and RR1 are drawn as indicated by broken lines in FIG. After that, the display of the road R1 shown by the solid line is deleted. In (b), the next road R2
Is designated by the pointer 3. by this,
As shown in (c), the road R2 is also converted into parallel lines.

In this case, if the parallel lines are unconditionally drawn at the intersection of the road R1 and the road R2, useless lines are generated.
The processing method of the line is shown in (f). As shown in this figure, lines RL1 and RR1 indicating one road are displayed in advance, and then two parallel lines RL for road R2 are displayed.
2, When RR2 is drawn, the intersection of these lines is then detected, the end point is moved, and the intersection line is removed. Such a process itself can be easily realized by a well-known graphic data processing technique, so a more detailed description will be omitted.
The result is as shown in (c). In (c), the road R3 is designated by the pointer 3 this time. As a result, the next road R3 is converted into parallel lines as shown in (d). As described above, the road map having a constant width shown in (d) is generated from the map drawn by the line having no width shown in (a) of the figure. Each of these roads can be specified with any width to reproduce a faithful map similar to the actual topography.

FIG. 4 is a flow chart showing the overall operation of the apparatus of the present invention. As described above, the vector data for displaying the map to be processed is stored in advance in the storage unit 8 shown in FIG. Such vector data may be created from the beginning using application software of the draw type, or by converting the bitmap type raster data generated based on photographs and drawn drawings. It may be generated. Also,
Such a map serving as a manuscript may be handwritten, or may be drawn by a digitizer or the like. With a digitizer, draw-type vector data can be obtained. In order to convert raster data into vector data, the image is read, the trajectory of the line is recognized from the image, and the start point, end point, inflection point, etc. are recognized, and the end points and inflections necessary for draw vector data are read. Get information such as points and distances. Such processing may be performed by obtaining the existence of a line and its coordinate point sequence using a technology such as character recognition processing, and can be easily realized by a well-known conventional technology.

In step S1 shown in FIG. 4, map data is manually input by a person using a scanner, for example. Then, this is raster / vector converted in step S2 by the processing just described. This vector data is once stored in the storage unit and then displayed on the display (step S3). After that, from step S4 to step S7,
The processing described with reference to FIG. 3 is executed. That is, the width of the road is designated in step S4, and the road to be converted is designated in step S5. Then, conversion processing is executed in step S6, and it is determined in step S7 whether or not all of these designated works have been completed. If there is another road to be converted, the process returns to step S4 and the processes of steps S5 to S7 are repeated. When the conversion processing of all the roads is completed, the map is displayed on the display unit 1 and the raster data of the redrawn map is stored in the storage unit 8 in step S8.

According to the above-described procedure, for example, a tourist guide map or the like in which the road width is taken into consideration can be easily created by using a road map that is easily handwritten. In this case, in addition to using the digitizer, the same operation can be performed by reading a line-drawn map written on paper from an image scanner or the like. In addition, for railways and the like, it is possible to create a map that considers the width of lines such as double track and double track.

[0016]

The map making device of the present invention described above is
The vector data for displaying the map in which the road portion is drawn with a line without a width is stored in the storage unit, the map is displayed on the display unit, and an arbitrary road is designated using the pointing device. Since the road is redrawn into parallel lines having a width designated in advance, the line map can be easily converted into a practical map in consideration of the road width. In addition, a map drawn by hand using the input processing unit is imported as bitmap raster data, converted to draw vector data, and then processed by considering the above-mentioned width, and then drawn by hand. You can easily create an easy-to-see map that considers the road width based on a simple map.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an embodiment of a map creating apparatus of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a hardware block diagram of an apparatus of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a diagram for explaining the operation of the device of the present invention.

FIG. 4 is an operation flowchart of the device of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Display Section 2 Control Section 3 Pointer 4 Map 5 Pointing Device 6 Input Processing Section 7 Raster / Vector Conversion Section 8 Storage Section 9 Road Width Redrawing Processing Section 10 Vector Data

Claims (2)

[Claims] 1. A storage unit storing vector data for displaying a map in which a road portion is drawn by a line without a width, a display unit for displaying the map, and a map displayed on the display unit. A pointing device that specifies an arbitrary road with the pointer, and a road width redrawing processing unit that redraws the road specified by the pointing device into parallel lines with a width that is specified in advance and generates new vector data for displaying the map. A map creation device characterized by being provided. 2. An input processing unit for inputting bitmap raster data of a map by handwriting, and a draw for displaying a map in which a road portion is drawn by a line without a width from the input raster data of the map. The map creation device according to claim 1, further comprising a raster / vector conversion unit that generates system vector data.