Maps

Making a map

In your event's dashboard, open Documents, press New, and pick Map. The map opens in its own tab, full screen, and saves as you draw. Only your race's directors can open it, and like a document it can be renamed, pinned, filed under a year, moved into a folder, and made private or locked from its ⋯ menu.

The map starts on your course if Course Studio has one, or on your race's address. Use the search box at the top right to jump to an address, a park or a trail, and the + and − buttons (or the mouse wheel) to zoom. Map look switches between satellite, outdoors, light, dark, monochrome and blueprint; everyone who opens the map sees the look you picked.

A blank map offers Start from a layout: a start and finish area, a parking area, or an aid station, laid out around the middle of the map for you to drag into place. Layouts on the left opens the same choices any time. Close the welcome card with its X and it stays closed.

Adding things: the left side

Down the left is a row of tabs. Pick one and its library opens beside it; pick it again to close the library and give the map the room.

• Layouts: a start and finish area, a parking area, or an aid station, laid out around the middle of the map for you to drag into place.
• Pins: restrooms, medical, AED, packet pickup, parking, shuttle, generator, fire lane and sixty more. Search by name or pick a kind, then click a pin to drop it in the middle of the map, or drag it to the exact spot. A pin is named after its symbol and colored by what it is (red for safety, blue for water and course points, green for the start and finish, gray for getting there).
• Shapes: pick one, then draw on the map. A hint along the bottom of the map says what to do, and Esc goes back to picking things.
  • Rectangle (R) and Ellipse (O): drag out a box. Hold Shift for a square or a circle.
  • Area (P): click each corner of any shape, like a parking lot or a vendor village, then double-click, press Enter or right-click to finish. While you're drawing, Undo (Cmd+Z, or Ctrl+Z on Windows) takes back the last corner, one at a time.
  • Line or arrow (L): click the points along the way, then finish the same way. New lines get an arrowhead at the end.
  • Connector (C): click one thing, then another, and a line joins them edge to edge. Drag either thing and the line follows. Drag an end of the line onto something else to re-attach it, or onto empty map to leave it loose.
  • Freehand (F): drag to draw by hand, like a marker.
• Text: a heading, a label or a short note. It lands in the middle of the map with its words ready to type over.
• Pictures: a logo, a sponsor mark, a parking plan or a venue drawing, from your computer or from the pictures already in this race's files. Drag a corner to resize it (it keeps its shape; hold Shift to stretch) and the handle above it to turn it. Pictures sit under the things you draw.

Click anything on the map to pick it, drag it to move it, and use the handles to resize or turn it. Shift-click picks several. Click empty map to let go, and drag empty map to move around.

Everything you add stays put on the ground as the map moves, so a fire lane drawn along a road is still along that road when you zoom in. Text, pins and line widths keep their size on screen so they stay readable.

Changing a thing: the bar above it

Pick something and a small bar appears right above it with what people change most: its color, its words, who sees it, and buttons to duplicate, lock and delete.

• Athletes, Volunteers, Permit, Setup: which views the thing belongs to (see Views below). Green means it shows there.
• Duplicate (or Cmd+D, Ctrl+D on Windows) makes a copy a little to the side.
• Lock keeps it still so it can't be picked up by mistake. Unlock it in Layers.
• Delete (or the Delete key) removes it, and any connector attached to it. The arrow keys nudge the picked things one pixel; with Shift, ten.
• More (the sliders at the end of the bar) opens the full panel on the right: outline width and pattern (solid, dashed, dotted), fill and how solid it is, an arrow at either end of a line, text size and boldness, a pin's symbol and size, a picture's see-through, a name for the thing, and Forward, Backward and To front for what sits on top of what. Shapes show their size in feet; lines show their length.
• Distance along the course: in the full panel, a pin near one of your Course Studio routes can show "mile 2.1" under its label. It's worked out from where the pin sits, so turn it off if it picked the wrong stretch of a loop.
• Undo and Redo at the top (Cmd+Z and Shift+Cmd+Z, or Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Y on Windows) take back your own changes, never a co-director's. The ? at the bottom left of the map lists every shortcut.

Views: one map, four audiences

Directors keep two versions of every map: a public one for runners, and an internal one for the city, the police and the volunteers. Here you draw once. Over the top left of the map are Everything (the whole map, for working), Athletes, Volunteers, City and permit and Setup crew. Each thing picks the views it shows in (all of them unless you untick some); something you add while looking at a view goes into that view. Pick a view when you download a picture.

Layers

Layers on the left lists everything on the map, top to bottom. Click a row to pick that thing (Shift-click for several), the eye hides it while you work, and the lock keeps it still so a background drawing can't be picked up by mistake. Hidden things never print.

Your course underneath

The routes and markers from Course Studio show on the map, read only. Press Course on the left to turn each route, and the markers, on or off for this map. To change the course itself, open Course Studio.

The permit checklist

Permit on the left opens the list of what a city's special-event site plan usually asks for: a fire lane at least 20 feet wide, emergency access, exits, first aid, tents with sizes, generators, extinguishers, restrooms, accessible parking, road closures, trash and more. A line ticks itself when the map has the matching pins; tick the rest by hand, reword any line, remove one, or add what your city asked for. The list is kept with the map, and Back to the standard list starts over.

Printing, documents and emails

Download a picture or a PDF

From the map's ⋯ menu: Download as PDF (one landscape page), or as a .jpg or .png picture. The picture is what's on your screen, in the view you're looking at, with the map's name, the view, the race's date, a legend of the pins and named areas, a north arrow, a scale bar and the map credit. Zoom and pan to frame it first.

Documents and emails

Choose Use in documents and emails in the ⋯ menu and the map keeps a picture of what's on your screen. Then, in a document, Insert then Map drops it in as a photo; in the email builder, open Photos and press Add one of this race's maps. Choose it again after changes to refresh the picture.

Drawing together

Everyone who can edit the map draws at once. A change you make reaches your co-directors within a moment, and theirs reach you; the faces at the top show who has the map open. Version history in the ⋯ menu keeps the map as it was before each round of edits, and Restore puts one back as a single change you can undo.

On a phone

Open a map in your phone's browser and it fills the screen: drag to move around, pinch to zoom, and swipe the row of views along the top. Drawing areas, lines and layouts is for a computer; a phone is for looking, and for small fixes on race morning.

• Tap a thing to open its card: its label, who sees it, and Delete. Change the words right there.
• Add pin at the bottom, pick a symbol, and the pin lands near the middle of the map.
• Move a pin or text: tap it first, then drag it. Nothing else moves under your finger, so looking around never shifts your plan.
• Layers, Permit, Course and Undo sit beside Add pin. Each opens from the bottom of the screen, and the Permit list shows every line in full to read and tick.
• Labels: on a small screen, labels that would run into each other step aside. Every pin still shows; zoom in, or tap a pin, to read its label.