FAQ — drawtonomy whiteboard for driving scenarios

Can I use drawtonomy to draw figures for an autonomous-driving paper, slide, or document?

Yes — it’s one of the main use cases. Lanes, intersections, vehicles, and pedestrians are built-in shapes, so a driving-scenario figure that would take half an hour in a generic drawing tool comes together in minutes. Export as drawtonomy.svg, PDF, or EPS for LaTeX, slide decks, and Markdown.

Is drawtonomy free to use?

Yes. drawtonomy.com runs entirely in your browser. There is no account, no install, and nothing is uploaded. The SDK and extensions are open-source on GitHub.

Is drawtonomy a free OpenSCENARIO and OpenDRIVE editor?

drawtonomy is a whiteboard that exports to ASAM OpenDRIVE 1.8 and OpenSCENARIO 1.3, including a single zip bundle ready for esmini playback. You sketch the scene visually — lanes, intersections, vehicles, paths — and drawtonomy generates the .xodr and .xosc files. See Export to OpenDRIVE / OpenSCENARIO / esmini.

Can drawtonomy edit Lanelet2 (.osm) maps in the browser?

Yes. drawtonomy can import Lanelet2 OSM files (including Autoware sample maps), edit lane geometry and connections visually, and export back to Lanelet2 OSM. For best performance, keep imports under roughly 500 lanes per scene. See Import a Lanelet2 (.osm) file.

Can I import a ROS occupancy grid map?

Yes. drawtonomy reads the ROS map_server format (.pgm + .yaml) used by nav2, Cartographer, Gmapping, and similar SLAM tools. The grid renders as a background layer so you can sketch lanes, paths, and obstacles directly on top. See Import a ROS OccupancyGrid.

How is drawtonomy different from generic drawing tools?

Generic drawing tools only know about generic shapes, so a lane is just a rectangle you redraw whenever the road turns. drawtonomy ships lanes, intersections, crosswalks, traffic lights, road markings, vehicles, and pedestrians as built-in shapes, and lanes carry Next / Previous / Left / Right connections. Drag a boundary and connected lanes follow. See Why drawtonomy and the lane connection model.

Do I need to install anything?

No. drawtonomy runs in any modern web browser. Open drawtonomy.com and start drawing. Extension developers can also use the local dev server (@drawtonomy/dev-server), which hosts the editor on localhost.

Can drawtonomy generate a driving scenario from natural language?

Yes. The AI Scene Generator extension reads a natural-language prompt or OpenSCENARIO XML and emits an editable canvas — lanes, vehicles, paths, and pedestrians as regular drawtonomy shapes. It supports Anthropic Claude, OpenAI GPT, and Google Gemini.

What file format keeps a drawtonomy scene re-editable?

drawtonomy.svg. It is a regular SVG file — it previews in browsers, GitHub, slide decks, and Markdown renderers — with metadata that drawtonomy uses to rebuild every shape, connection, shared point, and overlap relationship when you reopen the file. See Export your scene and the drawtonomy.svg format reference.

Can I add my own vehicle or sign templates?

Yes. Templates are SVGs registered in templates/manifest.json. Drop yours into the right folder (vehicle, pedestrian, road_marking, sign, other), open a PR, and it ships in the editor’s menu next to the built-in templates. See Contributing templates.

Does drawtonomy support large road networks?

drawtonomy is tuned for diagrams rather than city-scale maps. For responsive editing, keep a single scene under roughly 500 lanes. For larger areas, split the work across multiple files or import only the region you need.

Can I use drawtonomy diagrams in papers, slides, or documentation?

Yes. The drawtonomy.svg format is valid SVG, so it embeds in papers, slides, Markdown, and websites without conversion. PDF, PNG, JPG, and EPS are also available for traditional publishing pipelines.

Where is the source code?

The SDK, extensions, templates, and this documentation site are on github.com/kosuke55/drawtonomy. The application itself is at drawtonomy.com.