Using the ONZ MapFramer
What is MapFramer?
MapFramer is a Windows app developed in 2018 by Magnus Bengtsson. It simplifies the process of adding borders, club logos and images to your orienteering map.
Before
After
Where do I get the app?
You can download the app from this link (drive.google.com)
Save it to your PC and unzip the folder.
How do I use it?
Have a look through the sample-event folder in the zip file to familiarise yourself with the layout.
Copy the Maps subfolder to where your course planning (condes/ocad) files are stored.
Part one - preparing your folder structure
How do I use it?
Once you have planned your courses, remove (or use a white box to cover) any legends, borders and large North arrows as these will be already included in the Frame.
Then, export the course maps to .pdf as usual from Condes or OCAD.
Save these map files to the PDFs subfolder created in the last step.
Part two - preparing your map
How do I use it?
Portrait and Landscape templates have been created for Orienteering Wellington in Figma, a free online image editor.
These templates will work for maps with a standard size (such as A4 and A3), but you can modify these if your map is a custom size.
To use the template, click on the header bar, then select “Duplicate to your drafts”. Click “Open” when prompted.
Part 3a - preparing your frames
How do I use it?
Update the map and competition names, scale, contour interval, and logos. Common logos can be used by toggling their visibility on the left hand side.
You may need to move elements around so that the frame will fit your course layout.
When you’re ready, File>Export the frame to your Frames folder in .png format to retain the transparent area.
If your courses use different parts of the map, you may need to create multiple frames with different layouts.
Part 3b - preparing your frames
How do I use it?
Now you need to tell the tool which files to process. This is done by editing the config.json file we copied previously.
This example tells MapFramer to:
See the next slide for how to update it for your maps.
Part 4a - Configuring the MapFramer
How do I use it?
Open your PDFs folder and look at the file name of your first course pdf.
Where the example opposite says MillCreek2021_Orange_0604.pdf (highlighted a and c) replace these with <your map file name.pdf>.
Make sure to add Framed_ to the start of the output filename (c) - if you forget, it will overwrite the input file. If you overwrite the original, you can always re-export from Condes.
Now replace 7500.png (highlighted b) with the file name of the frame (in your Frames folder) you want to overlay onto your map.
Part 4b - Configuring the MapFramer for a single map
How do I use it?
You can also tell MapFramer to process multiple maps at once, by copying and pasting the section edited on the last slide.
Here we have told it to:
Once you have set up the configuration file, save it to your Maps folder.
Part 4c - Configuring the MapFramer for multiple maps
How do I use it?
Once you are happy with your configuration file, navigate to the folder Downloads\MapFramer\ONZ.MapFramer-1.1.0
Part five - Run MapFramer
Done
You should see messages in the MapFramer window saying “Writing to <output path>” and “Done!”
If you see “...skipping”, check your .json file to make sure your file and folder names are correct.
When you now go to the PDFs folder, you should see your map files with the frames on them!
Check the maps to make sure they look OK. If there is white space or some of the map outside the border, your map is probably not a standard size (A3/A4). Either review the map in Condes/OCAD, or update your template.