Skip to content
drawtonomy drawtonomy

drawtonomy vs SUMO netedit

SUMO netedit

Section titled “SUMO netedit”

netedit is the graphical network editor included in Eclipse SUMO, the open-source microscopic traffic simulator developed by DLR. It is a 2D editor for building and modifying road networks, and it sits at the front of a full traffic-simulation toolchain.

What netedit covers (per the SUMO documentation):

  • 2D editing of network elements — edges, lanes, junctions, connections, and traffic lights.
  • Traffic demand editing — vehicles, persons, routes, and vehicle types.
  • Additional infrastructure — bus stops, detectors, variable-speed signs.
  • OpenDRIVE import and export through netconvert (OpenDRIVE 1.4 is generally supported; the conversion is lossy — curves are sampled to polylines and junction shapes are regenerated).
  • Open source under the Eclipse Public License; desktop builds for Linux and Windows.

For building a road network that you intend to actually simulate traffic on, netedit is the editor that comes with the simulator that runs it.

Where drawtonomy might fit alongside it

Section titled “Where drawtonomy might fit alongside it”

drawtonomy is a browser tool for 2D top-down driving scenarios. It has no SUMO-style microscopic traffic simulation — the demand-modelled flows of many vehicles that netedit and SUMO are built for. It does run authored OpenSCENARIO scenarios in the browser (a scripted storyboard of a few named actors, executed on esmini-WASM), which is a different kind of simulation. Per its exporter documentation, its OpenDRIVE 1.8 / OpenSCENARIO 1.2 export covers a subset of the spec — lanes, traffic lights, crosswalks, basic objects — and does not yet emit junction primitives or traffic signs as <signal> entries.

A few things drawtonomy can add alongside netedit:

  • A browser-only surface, with nothing to install, for laying out a junction or a lane merge before building the simulated network.
  • A .drawtonomy.svg editable figure source for the diagram of a network that you describe in a paper or slide.
  • Authoring an OpenSCENARIO scenario and running it in the browser, when you want a scripted storyboard on an OpenSCENARIO player rather than SUMO’s flow model. See the scenario editor.

A reasonable pattern when both are available: netedit for the network you simulate, drawtonomy for the figure that explains it.

In the same open road-network ecosystem

Section titled “In the same open road-network ecosystem”

netedit and drawtonomy both work in 2D and both touch ASAM OpenDRIVE — netedit through netconvert, drawtonomy through its exporter. SUMO is a microscopic traffic simulator, so the broader relationship is closer to interoperation than competition; see the SUMO ecosystem page for how the two layers connect. Other tools that read or write OpenDRIVE from different angles include LaneMaker, Truevision Designer, and Blender DSC. We work on different parts of the same ecosystem.

Section titled “Related reading”