Editing Lanelet2 maps in the browser
The standard tools for authoring Lanelet2 maps are:
- TIER IV Vector Map Builder — free, browser-based, designed for Autoware, supports lanes plus regulatory elements (traffic lights, stop lines, crosswalks, parking, …) and a point cloud reference layer.
- JOSM with the Autoware Lanelet2 plugin — the classic desktop OSM editor extended for Lanelet2.
For any non-trivial Lanelet2 work, those are the right tools. drawtonomy is much narrower in scope.
What drawtonomy actually does with Lanelet2
Section titled “What drawtonomy actually does with Lanelet2”Per its exporter documentation:
- Reads a Lanelet2
.osmfile and renders lanelets as drawtonomy Lane shapes. - Lets you reshape boundaries (drag points, smooth boundaries, basic geometry edits).
- Re-exports the result. Regulatory elements and other tags that drawtonomy doesn’t manage in the UI are preserved through a sidecar that round-trips the original
.osmcontent.
What drawtonomy doesn’t do
Section titled “What drawtonomy doesn’t do”- Creating or editing regulatory elements in the UI — traffic-light groupings, right-of-way relations, speed limits, stop-line / lanelet bindings. Vector Map Builder and JOSM are the right tools for that.
- City-scale maps. drawtonomy is tuned for small scenes.
- Survey-grade authoring against LiDAR / aerial imagery.
- Bulk operations — no filters, no batch edits across thousands of lanelets.
- Point cloud reference layer. Vector Map Builder supports tracing on top of a PCD; drawtonomy does not.
Where drawtonomy can still save time
Section titled “Where drawtonomy can still save time”- Inspecting a Lanelet2 map quickly without installing anything.
- Light geometric tweaks — fixing a boundary that wandered, smoothing a jagged segment — on a small map.
- Cropping a region from a larger sample map for a paper figure or teaching example.
- Producing a clean figure of a small piece of an existing map.
If your edit needs regulatory elements or you’re working at city scale, use Vector Map Builder or JOSM. drawtonomy is for the geometry / visualization side only.
Concrete workflow: a small geometry fix
Section titled “Concrete workflow: a small geometry fix”- Import → Lanelet2 OSM.
- Pan / zoom to the lanelet you need to touch.
- Click to select; drag boundary control points; use the Smooth Boundary button.
- Export → Lanelet2 OSM.
- Diff input and output to confirm only what you intended changed.
The sidecar mechanism means tags and regulatory elements outside drawtonomy’s UI scope are preserved as-is on re-export, so the rest of the map is untouched.
See Import Lanelet2 OSM maps for the import details.