Capturing and editing features

This is Groundwork’s day job: adding the new tree you just planted, fixing a wrong species name, removing the record for a stump that’s been ground out.

Adding a feature

The + button sits beside the layer name at the top of the feature list — hover it and the tooltip names the layer, Add Tree in our example. Click it, then follow the hint that appears:

Points: click the location on the map.
Lines and areas: click to start, click to add each corner, double-click to finish.

While you’re drawing, the + turns into a ✕ in the same spot — click it to abandon the new feature. Once the shape is finished, the new feature’s details open, ready for you to fill in its attributes.

Editing details

Select the feature, then click the pencil button beside its title to start editing, and change its values in the detail view. The pencil is replaced in place by two buttons: a tick to save and a cross to cancel. The tick stays greyed out until you have actually changed something, so it doubles as a reminder of whether there is anything to save. Cancelling asks you to confirm before throwing away changes.

Your browser’s back and forward buttons (and the Android back gesture) do the same thing as the cross while you are editing: they leave edit mode and ask first if there is anything unsaved. Neither will navigate away from an open edit, so a stray press cannot lose your work. The one exception is pressing back immediately after opening Groundwork, before you have moved around in it — there is nothing to go back to, so the browser’s own “leave site?” prompt is what you get, the same as when refreshing or closing the tab.

Because the buttons sit up beside the title rather than below the attributes, they stay in view on a phone even when the panel is only part-way up the screen.

Use the arrows beside the title to move straight on to the next feature — useful when updating records one after another in the field.

Editing a shape or position

In the feature’s detail view, switch on edit mode with the edit button. The feature gets a visible editing highlight, and you can drag it (or its corner points) on the map. Right-clicking while editing offers the geometry actions that make sense where you clicked — Move point here for a point, or Add vertex / Delete vertex on a line or area.

Deleting a feature

Open the feature’s detail view and use the delete button. The feature is removed from your copy of the layer straight away, so double-check you have the right one selected.

Where your edits live

Coming soon — saving straight to Dropbox. Groundwork will shortly save your edits back to the shared folder itself: save as usual, and a moment later the change is in Dropbox for the whole team to see. Dropbox keeps the version history, and if someone else changed the same data while you were working, Groundwork asks before overwriting anything. You’ll need to be signed in as a member of the folder with edit access.

For now, your edits are saved automatically in your browser, on this device, and restored when you come back later. Until cloud saving arrives, two things follow from that:

Your edits aren’t visible to your teammates, and theirs aren’t visible to you.
Opening the map’s folder link again replaces your copy with the published version, discarding local edits — download your work first if it matters.

Sending your work back

Until cloud saving arrives, hand your work over by exporting the layer and sending it to your administrator: layer ⋮ menu → Download GeoJSON. The downloaded file contains the layer as you see it, edits included.

Once cloud saving is live, that step disappears for signed-in folder members — saves land in the shared folder automatically. Download GeoJSON stays useful for keeping your own copy, and for maps opened from a view-only public link, where saving back isn’t possible.

Next: Troubleshooting.

Viewing and finding features Troubleshooting