Shapes

Shapes represent the geographical regions that organizations are working with on Mapillary. You need shapes to explore and subscribe to map data in your area of interest—e.g. traffic signs or object labels. Through shapes, you can also subscribe to Mapillary public imagery (that has not been contributed by your organization—your own imagery belongs to your organization and is, therefore, free for you to use and integrate as you wish).

Shapes are only available via Mapillary for Organizations. Switch to the organization profile to create and access shapes either via the Shapes tab or the dashboard (available to admin and member roles: learn more about the specific permissions in this article).

In this article, we cover:

1. Creating a shape
2. Viewing shape details
3. Exploring data available in a shape
4. Editing or deleting a shape

 

Creating a shape

Only admins can create shapes. Both the Shapes tab in the organization profile and the Shapes section on the dashboard have a button for creating a new shape.

After clicking it, you’ll be asked to name your shape. If you skip this, the shape will be given a default name to begin with. You can edit the shape’s name later via the Shapes section of your dashboard—just hover over the shape to access the renaming function. The shape’s name has to be unique in your organization.

Next, you can choose to either search for or draw the area you want to add as a shape. Click on the respective tab to proceed.

For search, start typing in the search box and choose the correct area from the list of search results. You’ll see the summary stats about the imagery and data contained in this area. To add it as a shape, click “Finished”.

If you choose the “Draw” tab instead, click on the “Draw polygon” button to start drawing on the map. Single click to add points to outline a polygon and double-click to finish it. You can also add multiple polygons to your shape if you press the “Add another polygon” button after you finish drawing one.

Single click on a polygon or point to select it—you can select multiple if you hold down Shift while selecting. Click again and drag to change the position of the polygon or point. To delete a feature, select it and press Delete on your keyboard. To cancel drawing, press the Esc key.

As you add polygons, you’ll see summary stats about the imagery and data in the marked areas. When done with drawing, click on “Finished”. You will now see the new shape in the shapes list both on the profile and the dashboard under the Shapes section.

 

Viewing shape details

When you click on a shape in your dashboard or profile sidebar, you’ll see more details about it  (available to admins and members). For example, you get an overview of how much imagery (Mapillary public imagery as well as your organization’s imagery, public or private) and map data it contains (traffic signs and object labels, as well as the length of the road network in it which is the basis for pricing if you get a subscription).

You can go explore that imagery and map data on the map by clicking on the “Explore map data” link under the map data details.

At the bottom of the page, you also see the status of the subscription and data downloads related to this shape. If you don’t have a subscription for this shape yet, click the button to proceed to get one (only available to admins). Read more about subscribing to map data and downloading data files in the respective help articles.

 

Exploring data available in a shape

To explore the imagery and map data available in a shape (available to admins and members), click on it in the Shapes tab of the organization profile, then click on “Explore map data”.

          

You will switch to the map data view where you can get an overview of all the data contained in the shape, such as imagery (Mapillary public as well as your organization’s public and private imagery), traffic signs, and object labels. Use the switches to toggle what you see on the map, and zoom in to examine more closely.

From this view, as an admin you can proceed to get a subscription for map data so you can use it in your workflows.

 

Editing or deleting a shape

Once you’ve added a shape and see it on your shapes list, it’s not possible to change its contours anymore—you will need to delete the shape and create a new one. But you can edit the shape’s name, if you like, by going to the Shapes section on the dashboard. Hover over the shape in the list to see the “Rename” option appear.

In the same place, you also have the chance to delete a shape. You can’t delete a shape that you have a subscription for.

Note that only admins can edit and delete shapes.