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06 Custom Drawings, Polygons, and Routes

Overview

AXIS Maps provides tools for drawing custom shapes and defining routes on the map canvas. These tools enable designers to highlight areas of interest, trace movements, and build complex narrative maps.

Custom Drawing / Polygons

The Custom Drawing feature allows users to highlight areas of interest using both pre-defined polygon shapes and freehand drawing. All polygon shapes support custom fill color, stroke color, opacity, and line weight.

Using Pre-defined Shapes

  1. Click the Polygons tool in the Feature Panel.
  2. Select a pre-defined shape (rectangle, circle, triangle, or other available shapes).
  3. Click and drag on the map canvas to draw the shape.
  4. Use the Style Panel to set fill color, stroke, and opacity.

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Freehand Drawing

  1. Click the Polygons tool and select Freehand.
  2. Click on the map canvas to set anchor points or click and drag to draw freely.
  3. Double-click to close the polygon.
  4. Adjust styling using the Style Panel.

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Common Use Cases

  • Conflict zones and areas of military control
  • Electoral districts and political regions
  • Natural disaster or weather affected areas
  • Sports stadium footprints or event boundaries

Routes

The Routes feature allows users to define, visualize, and annotate a route between multiple points on a map. Routes are a core feature for broadcast storytelling.

Creating a Route

  1. Click the Routes tool in the Feature panel.
  2. Click Create New Route.
  3. Click on the map canvas to set the starting point or use geolocation to find a starting point.
  4. Continue to add waypoints.
  5. Double-click to complete the route.
  6. Adjust line style, color, weight, and arrowhead direction using the Style Panel (Work in Progress)

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Note: Routes are calculated based on road networks. For non-road paths (e.g. flight routes or sea routes), use the Freehand drawing tool to manually trace the path.

Combining Annotations

Multiple annotation types can be combined on a single map. Best practices for combined annotation maps:

  • Use locators sparingly — 3 to 5 is typical for readable broadcast graphics.
  • Ensure polygons and routes use contrasting colors to the base map theme.
  • Check against safe title overlays (configured in Styles Editor) to ensure labels do not overlap broadcast-safe areas.