Geometry in Giraffe
At an abstract level, a Feature (aka a Section) is a geometry with some properties. It’s saved in Giraffe as a GeoJSON feature. Some common examples in Giraffe are a building, a stretch of road or a tree. These are simply geometries: a polygon, line and point respectively; along with some Properties such as the building’s height, the road’s width or the type of tree.
Sections belong to a project. You can copy them to other projects, but you can’t share the same section between projects.
Flow Chart of the Giraffe Data Model. Does a picture really say 1000 words?
A polygon is a plane shape (two-dimensional) with straight sides. Most Giraffe features start as polygons.
In Giraffe, you can create polygons in the following ways:
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Polygon Tool
Access the polgyon tool from More or by using the hotkey P
Edit an existing Feature
Add or remove nodes. Push and pull. Create any shape you can imagine.
Copy Shapes from the Map
Right click on any map shape to copy it into your project
A rectangle is a special type of polygon with four 90 degree angles.
In Giraffe, many of the drawing tools default to Rectangle.
Leave the polygon 2D to represent flat areas, such as:
Make any polygon 3-dimensional by adding a height property such as:
A line is a continuous extent of length, straight or curved, without breadth or thickness
Lines are great for displaying a:
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A point is an exact location. It has no size, only position.
Points can be used to place single objects, such as a:
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