Hacker News Reader

Comment by ardy42 | Hacker News Reader

> As I'm working with CAD for a long time, I would recommend to install next three FLOSS apps (keep them all side-by-side on your PC):

Do any of these easily let you build a map from only the distances between two landmarks? I've been wanting to make an accurate map of the trees in my yard. That should be pretty easy to turn into a map using basic trig, but I don't want to do it by hand.

View on HN

> Do any of these easily let you build a map from only the distances between two landmarks? I've been wanting to make an accurate map of the trees in my yard.

Use QGIS[0] or OpenOrienteering Mapper[1] (simpler than QGIS) app for any GIS/cartography/mapping tasks.

JFTR, GIS apps are "CAD for cartography"; FreeCAD/QCAD/SolveSpace are "CAD for civil engineering", but could be used for some GIS tasks.

Anyway, OpenOrienteering Mapper & QGIS are CAD apps You are looking for!

[0] https://qgis.org

[1] https://www.openorienteering.org/apps/mapper/

They're not really the same thing. I haven't found GIS apps to have the _parametric_ abilities that would allow the GP to perform the sort of constraint-based modelling they desire.

Get an older Garmin Etrex with a digital compass. These models have a sight line on the housing. You use this to project waypoints along a heading. If you traverse a base line and make two projections beyond the tree you will have four waypoints. The target will be at the intersection.

Could use Geogebra.

https://www.geogebra.org/

FreeCAD has a 2D constraints-based solver (the sketch workbench) which could be used for this.

SolveSpace in same time has 2D & 3D constraints-based solver ("libslvs").

> FreeCAD has a 2D constraints-based solver (the sketch workbench)

Fun Fact: SolveSpace solver "libslvs" used by 'realthunder' for Assembly3 Workbench for FreeCAD.[0,1]

[0] https://github.com/realthunder/FreeCAD_assembly3/wiki/Build-...

[1] https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic.php?p=204024#p204024

Reply on news.ycombinator.com