Nod1.6.3 - App Store

Nod uses the GPS capability of an iOS device to make it simple to plot outdoor spaces and display this on a map or export to share with others.

It is for anybody who has a need to record a real life location on a map or compare locations on a map back to real life. This could be farmers, builders, scientists, archaeologists, systems developers or anybody with an interest in maps.

At a glance:

+ Use your position on the ground to mark areas of a map

+ Draw and create geographic data straight onto a map or satellite image

+ Import and visualise geographic data

+ Use the app to perform length and area calculations

+ Use on screen 'rulers' to quickly measure real life features

+ Tamper evident

+ Share geographic data with others in various formats

+ Optimised for touch screen devices

Nod also shows the users location in relation to the survey making it possible to make virtual boundaries and perimeters, for example to mark out a physical boundary where is is difficult or not possible to remain within line of sight of marker posts. Data can be imported in the common open source GeoJSON format.

Geographic data in the app is made up of multiple layers. Layers group together collections of features. A feature represents some real life geographical feature as a list of coordinates. Features can be line strings, polygons, points and so on. These features are then drawn onto a map. Polygons can contain inner polygons which are 'cut outs'.

Individual points in features can be adjusted with high accuracy using the app 'draw' mode. Draw mode adds a 'loupe' to make accuracy easy on a touch screen device by magnifiying the map underneath it.

The loupe also provides access to the ruler system. Rulers can be added to the map to mark out temporary measurements and angles. They are guides and are not included when data is exported.

Complex and accurate features can be created by combining multiple features and applying geometric operations such as difference, xor and others. Messy data sources can be processed and made orderly with convex and concave hull operations

The Nod file format (.nod) stores a complete hashed history of the actions taken to create it. This means it has a complete undo history but also provides confidence that the data is as the original creator intended. Exported data in file formats that do not supoport this facitilty should use other means to prove authenticity.

Data can be exported in GeoJSON, CSV, HTML, COLLADA (DAE) formats. COLLADA files can be used when generating data for scaled 3D modelling applications.

Please note:

The app only uses the device GPS system when it is in use. In addition the GPS system is manually operated in order to conserve power. The user also has control over the desired accuracy of the GPS to further reduce power consumption if necessary. When activated and on maximum accuracy the app will draw considerable power as a result of GPS updates. Care should therefore be taken to reduce energy consumption when this is an issue.

Version History Minor compatibility update. The main highlights are:

+ Fixes and issue where sometimes points would be hidden from view unless scrolling
+ Fixes an issue where a polygon with 2 points would report its length as 0. This behaviour has been changed so that a polygon with 2 points is treated as if a line string for the purposes of determining length. 1.6.3 09/28/2021 GeoJSON Import Compatibility Update:

+ Improves compatibility when importing GeoJSON data. In addition to the usual FeatureCollections, files containing individual Features can now be imported. This makes it easier to work with other applications that export GeoJSON features as individual objects. 1.6.2 06/24/2021 Image Location Metadata Update:

This update adds the ability to access location data from within images stored in your photo library.

+ Mark points in features from image locations
+ Search document features using image location data 1.6.1 06/16/2021 Search Update:

This update concentrates on improving the ability to search for locations and features within the app. It also includes support for the Geohash encoding of geographic coordinates. Points can now be added to features manually by searching for either a coordinate directly or either a natural language search or Geohash search. All search results now include nearby features from the current document.

+ Search for a location or feature by coordinate
+ Search for a location or feature by geohash
+ Search features by title or description
+ Adds tool to show current coordinate for loupe
+ Shows search results as coordinates, geohash and natural language (if used for search) 1.6.0 04/14/2021 History Viewer Update:

This update concentrates on making the entire document history easily viewable. A new tab can be optionally enabled to allow scrubbing through all the states the document has been in. The document can be rolled back to any point in its history with one tap.

+ New Settings menu to show / hide history tab
+ New History tab with 'History Scrubber' to quickly move around the various history stages of the documents creation
+ Hidden feature selection is now persisted between document loads
+ File menu history sort order persisted when drilling into history items 1.5.0 04/04/2021 Geometry Manipulation Update:

+ Adds a new rotation gesture to the map to allow features to be rotated.
+ Adds Geohash coordinate representation to exported data.
+ Adds current device heading to the Stamper Toolbar.

Users with a keen eye may notice that rotating selected coordinates is achieved via the use of a new 'UpdatePoints' action. (This can be seen in the document history after performing a rotation). This is a new action and so not present in previous versions of the app. Therefore, documents created in this version, that use the rotation feature, will appear different if viewed on older versions of the app. For this reason it is highly recommended for all users to install this update. 1.4.1 01/27/2021 Export Options Update:

This update focuses on exporting data for further processing or usage in other applications. The ability has now been added to export individual Layers and an extra file format of CSV (Comma Separated Values). This makes it really simple to export a document or part of a document into an application such as a spreadsheet for processing or recording.

At a glance:

+ New option to export as CSV file
+ New ability to export individual Layers 1.4.0 01/05/2021 Performance:

+ This update features a massive performance boost for dragging and scaling features around the map. It includes a new 'wireframe' mode so features can be accurately smoothly positioned.
+ The improved wireframe dragging logic also cuts down on unnecessary 'noise' in the native 'nod' file format, reducing the final file size and improving saving and loading times.
+ Overall reduced file sizes for improved save and load times.

Fixes:

+ Fixes an issue in which some polygons, created using the Geometry Tool, would fail to have the closing line rendered.
+ Fixes an issue in which some 'nod' documents would fail to render correctly.
+ Fixes an issue in which exporting a version of the document into the app documents folder would cause duplicate files to be created.

Accessibility:

+ Improves consistency of text for users with large text enabled 1.3.0 12/21/2020 + Fixes an issue on iPhone where starting to type a new document name with the onscreen keyboard would hide the characters being typed.
+ More 'under the hood' stability and performance enhancements 1.2.1 10/30/2020 + New geometric and polygon clipping operations added for transforming and computing feature data
+ New Layer Explorer to make editing and reordering features within layers even easier
+ New feature view within Layer Explorer brings together common feature operations into a single place
+ Unifed settings menu 1.2.0 09/17/2020 Improves support for viewing feature metrics with imperial measurements 1.1.1 05/28/2020 Performance and stability improvements to the Internal workings of the app. 1.1.0 04/27/2020 Includes new file format to export a text based representation of a document, as a self contained HTML, that can be viewed in any web browser 1.0.4 03/23/2020 Improved compliance with the GeoJSON Format RFC 7946
Copied features can now be pasted into other apps as GeoJSON formatted text 1.0.3 02/18/2020 This is a minor update to support iOS 13 and dark mode. 1.0.2 11/22/2019 Minor performance and stability upgrade 1.0.1 09/05/2019 1.0.0 08/27/2019