Conventions have been developed for

1. Competition maps for traditional foot-orienteering, designed to be printed at scales of 1:15,000 and 1:10,000; essentially the international standard.
2. Maps for MTB-Orienteering. It turns out that these maps are also suitable for street and trail orienteering on foot, and small rogaines. Designed to be printed at scales of 1:20,000 and smaller.
3. Maps of large urban parks and riverside areas. Designed to be printed at scales of 1:7500 and 1:5000.
4. Maps of small parks and schools. Designed to be printed at scales of 1:4000 and larger.

1. Competition Maps for Traditional Foot-orienteering, to be printed at scales of 1:15,000 and 1:10,000

Not much to say here: follow the International Specification for Orienteering Maps! On the IOF website or get a nice colour booklet from the MAPsport Shop.

Although OCAD 8 has symbol sets for both 15,000 and 10,000 there is no point in the latter. It cuts off the possibility of printing a 15,000 version. Whereas setting the scale at 15,000, the map can be printed at either 15,000 (standard symbol sizes) or 10,000 (symbols automatically enlarged by 50% as the ISOM requires). It is often required to have 1:15,000 for elites and maybe course 2 and 1:10,000 for the others in consideration for their aging eyes. The maps can also be printed at 1:7500 for beginner courses, in which case the symbols will be even bolder.

There are one or two things that need to be changed when printing at these larger scales.

• The north line spacing for 15,000 is 500m, for 10,000 it is 250m.
• Text which is a good size for 15,000 (eg legend) will look a bit children's-book-ish when printed at 10,000.
• And although ISOM says you can have enlarged or not enlarged course markings at 10,000, it is recommended that we stick with the 6mm circles etc. This means defining 4mm circles, smaller start triangle, connecting lines and control numbers for printing at the larger scale. Don't change the standard ones (or you'll cut off the possibility of printing at 15,000); define new symbols.

Basemaps for these maps will normally come from commissioned photogrammetry, or from previous maps which have started as photogrammetry. Fieldwork is recommended at 1:7500 to prevent putting too much on the map. However there is a case for fieldwork at 1:5000 for those without perfect eyesight or using less than perfect basemaps, eg OCAD prints off a home printer.

2. Maps for MTB-Orienteering, Street and Park-Trail orienteering on Foot, and Small Rogaines, to be printed at scales of 1:20,000 and smaller

Use the MTBO specifications and a scale of 1:20,000. But basically the urban area is a stick-to-the-tracks situation so the MTBO recommendations are fine for street events. The runners have shown no signs of even noticing!

There is a version of the MTBO specifications in the printed ISOM but there are later ones on the web, and there are one or two NZ recommendations. Link to these from the MTBO Resources page on the MTBONZ website.

There are heaps of private areas in suburbia and neither the khaki green nor the vertical black stripes looks great when there is a lot of it. We have used a special colour 50% grey which is placed at the bottom of the colour hierarchy so that it can be drawn under the whole map. All other colours appear on top and when a boundary changes there may be one object to change rather than two adjoining objects. A byproduct is that white has to be explicitly drawn, it isn't just an absence of anything else as usual. That's OK, there isn't much of it.

There's sometimes a need to print at a larger scale in a detailed area (eg 15,000) or smaller scale if you want to cover a bigger area or keep the paper size down (eg 25,000). For larger scales you can just do it at the print stage (in which case the symbols will look bolder).

For smaller scales you CAN'T just print smaller as that would make the symbols too spidery. You have to "change scale" and uncheck the "enlarge/reduce symbols" box. The consequence of this is that close-together symbols cover a larger area on the ground and can overlap and blur together. An example is SH2 and the railway. Such areas have to be carefully drawn with this in mind if printing at a smaller scale is envisaged. We can probably get away with 25,000 but anything smaller is going to be problematic and inserts of detailed areas at a bigger scale are going to be needed.

There are one or two things that need to be changed when printing at larger scales. Text which is a good size for 20,000 (eg legend) will look larger when printed at 15,000. And you don't want larger circles and control numbers, so you need to define proportionately smaller circles etc so they enlarge to the right size at the print scale.

Basemaps for this mapping are usually the topo maps. We have got a big chunk of the region into OCAD as DXF files, one of the few formats that OCAD can import. They are royalty-free but we had to find someone who had the files to carve out the area required and to convert from other formats into DXF. This is not a trivial operation, and eventually our contact urged us to define the total area of interest, for a "big hit". We have obtained everything west of the Akatarawa Hill Road, and south of Waikanae, an area of about 1500sq.m. This had been carved up into half a dozen OCAD files, but all on the same coordinate system so that they fit together perfectly.

The origin of these files means the contours are 20m and don't have all the small reentrants etc, which is fine for MTBO, rogaines and street events. The mapping was meant for 1:50,000 and when enlarged to 20,000 you find that eg road bends are somewhat rounded. These can be improved, and other detail added, from aerial photos available on the LINZ website. These photos have had distortion removed and can be used as templates in OCAD. The resolution is a bit grainy for buildings but linear features show up well. We can also add details from conventional foot-o maps, taking care to prune the detail. Bear in mind that people are going to want to print at smaller scales even than the 20,000.

All of this means that we have been able to map large areas without going out on the ground. The track classifications have been added from our earlier maps where they exist, the memory of members, and by progressive visits when required for specific events. There is one aspect where the requirements of MTBO conflict with foot-o: vegetation. The MTBO specification says you can use both green or white for forest. Initally we did all forest medium green, as being more intuitive for bikers. With other areas using white we scratched our heads and decided that what it looked like from the track was important, so we would do open-looking forest as white and dense forest as green. This then enabled us to convey information to off-track users of these maps. It's a bit rough, but then if you want accurate foot-o then you have to do a traditional foot-o map. Over time we can "fill in" the forest where it is important. What isn't filled in with white or green or yellow will show as grey, the same as private or residential.

Since the white is drawn with a specific symbol rather than just being the absence of other colours, we sometimes change it to light green as being more intuitive.

Fieldwork is recommended at 1:10,000.

3. Maps of Large Urban Parks and Riverside areas, to be printed at scales of 1:7500 and 1:5000.

Since this section was written, the IOF has published an "International Specification for Sprint Orienteering Mapping". We need to re-write this section taking it into account.

Neither the ISOM 15,000 mapping nor the MTBO-standard mapping is suitable for parks, where there is heaps of interesting detail. Over the years we have mapped parks at 1:5000 or even larger. With park maps adjoining the riverbank now expanding to the point of overlap, we have started a project to join them all together. Other park maps might as well follow these conventions.

The scale chosen is 1:7500, so that we can cater for long yellow courses (by printing at 7500) as well as beginner white and yellow (by printing at 5000). The 5000 prints will have bolder symbols (just like printing a 15,000 map at 10,000). And compared to the ISOM the 7500 scale provides 4X the paper area for a given ground area to show detail. So the cartographer should select 7500 as the scale in OCAD, and the 15,000 (standard) symbol set. And when printing at 5000 think about the smaller text and course marking symbols so that they will come out at the right (scale-independant) size. Include plenty of north lines.

The basemaps for these come from the 1:20,000 MTBO/street mapping above. This ensures that everything fits together properly. Previous maps of small areas have used dubious basemaps and photos with distortion, and particularly when expanding outwards the geometry is out of whack. For a new area the 20,000 provides the framework, and fieldwork can be done on aerial photos from the UHCC website and the LHCC office (its website is less good but they are very helpful if you go in). This fieldwork is then used in OCAD, adjusted to the framework which we have confidence in. The photos are not distortion-free and the scale is approximate, but as we deal with a small bit at a time, the OCAD template adjustment process takes care of it well enough.

Existing park maps are harder. The UHCC/LHCC photos are opened as templates and fitted to the framework and a bit of significant detail traced using temporary lines. Then the old maps are opened as templates and everything adjusted to the lines from the photos. If the old map is in OCAD already, it may be possible to bring it in chunk by chunk. It might be necessary to change its scale and rotate it a bit to get a good fit. Or it might be so distorted that everything has to essentially be redrawn. After such an exercise it needs to be checked in the field; it makes you wonder whether starting again might be easier!!!

Here are some of the conventions adopted for fieldwork so far. The starting point is of course the ISOM. We shouldn't be putting smaller features on the map; rather the opposite - because there are likely to be more features on the ground we may have to be stricter about what the minimum size is! This is especially the case for man-made objects. A fieldwork scale of 1:4000 is recommended.

• Contours. We should standardise on 5m, but its going to take some getting right. The framework only gives us 20m with no fine detail. Old maps give us some information but of dubious origin. Where maps join the contours aren't going to be consistent. For the valley floor, fieldwork significant ground shapes as contour segments and we'll draw them as formlines. Don't have formlines close together unles there would be a 2.5m height difference.
• A concrete wall that is climbable is shown as a passable rock face. Any sort of unclimbable wall or bank is shown as an impassable cliff.
• On the riverbank there are big concrete blocks here and there. They are represented as boulders, boulder clusters or (don't know of any) boulder fields.
• The river at normal flows has dry stony areas. These should be shown as open stony ground. The precise edge doesn't matter as it changes with flow and even over time. Note that the "open sandy ground" symbol has the same sized dots and with these you can cover an area without having to draw the individual dots.
• The edge of the water in the river being a bit variable, it doesn't seem so appropriate to use the black "bank line". A thinner black line (cultivation boundary) is used for the edge of the river bed. It is envisaged that specific event instructions would advise whether the river is crossable.
• Streams only have to be 2m wide before the actual size exceeds the standard "crossable watercourse" symbol. So the actual width needs to be mapped for some cases.
• The "spring" symbol is used where stormwater culverts exit (or enter for that matter).
• Areas of trees which are mowed underneath are shown as "scattered trees". Individual trees within such areas may well be distinct enough to show individually, there would have to be only a few though.
• The edge of mowing is a frequent case for using the "distinct vegetation boundary".
• Trees have to be very distinct (big, or only one or two for miles) to show as distinct. Similarly for stumps.
• Roads are wider at this scale than the standard symbols. But it is desirable to show other features near roads, so we don't necessarily draw them to full scale. Note that to be consistent with the rural situation it is the road surface width that is represented, and often the existence of footpaths alongside is implicit. It would be silly to draw a path on either side of every city street for example. We have a widened motorway symbol and a wide road symbol that are 1mm wide, which represents 13m across. A suburban or city street can be at least that wide including the parking but that's wide enough we feel. Another wide road symbol 0.75mm is used for modest width streets but still with room for parallel parking, and 0.5mm (the usual major road) for a two-way road with no room for parallel parking. The minor road symbol of 0.3mm is used for a one-vehicle width road. All these are the "peanut butter sandwich" symbols, the pure black line isn't used at all.
• For safety reasons we use road symbols with red instead of brown ("tomato sandwich") to mean "do not use or cross". Particularly so for the bridges across the river, and on these we do need to show the footpaths on one or both sides.
• Tracks are as usual. Note that many footpaths would be "large path", a practical definition would be a vehicle width (even though vehicles don't travel on them).
• Power lines aren't shown. Except for double power poles which occur on the riverbank in places, which are shown as man-made objects.
• Tunnels are shown by a 30% black line (grey). Larger areas where passage is possible underneath something (carparking building, riverbank under bridge) are shown by areas of 30% black. Not necessarily to the full width of access if it would obscure detail.
• Fences are not shown on the private property, but they do occur on parks, and there are short sections of post and wire for flood protection on the river bank.
• There are heaps of private areas in suburbia and neither the khaki green nor the vertical black stripes looks great when there is a lot of it. We have used a special colour 50% grey which is placed at the bottom of the colour hierarchy so that it can be drawn under the whole map. All other colours appear on top and when a boundary changes there may be only one object to change rather than two adjoining objects. A byproduct is that white has to be explicitly drawn, it isn't just an absence of anything else as usual.
• The paved area symbol is used for concrete, asphalt, gravel and bark "paving". The latter is often used under playgrond equipment. (Well, it's brown isn't it???) The paving is edged with the cultivation boundary symbol.
• The feature that most needs careful discrimination is the man-made object. There are huge numbers of them and they don't stand out as they do in a rural area. The minimum size is generally the park bench. So picnic tables are in, rubbish bins are out. Play equipment is by judgement, there is often a lot close together, a few representative crosses may be used. In some situations it may be better not to put any crosses at all. Point features are only useful if the object stands out from other things around it. If there are too many objects, ask yourself which one(s) stand out from the rest. Put them in, and forget about the rest.

For smaller parks and schools, the area may be lost on an A4 or even A5 sheet. A large scale might as well be used and will be easier to read for beginners. These will be made by a variety of people, there is unlikely to be any overlap of them, so at this stage coordination is not justified. Do what you think is advisable. Some of the maps above may provide a base, and the UHCC and LHCC photos will probably be very useful.