Cities with streets

[AzureIsland]

Hi all. I'm looking for software suggestions. I am looking to draw maps using software which would show roads. I'm not looking to create 3D cities, just cities with roads. Does anyone have any suggestions? I appreciate your help!
Steve

[waldronate]

Any drawing or painting tool should be able to work for you. If you want to do things like associate metadata (names, address ranges, and so on) and allow visual or text search on that metadata, then that's a much more specialized piece of software, like a GIS system. A little more information about what you plan to do with your map and possibly an example of how you would like the output to appear would be useful.

[Redrobes]

Is this for real world cities or for fantasy ones ? You can get at the real world road systems from OpenStreetMap data. Then the next question is do you need the road borders to be shown and when you have an intersection do you need the borders to join up into junctions ?

I use a script to extract OpenStreetMap data and plot it to sets of bitmaps, one per road type. Then I generate the borders from those bitmaps by expanding the widths of the roads, then I composit all of the bitmaps together by first doing all of the borders then doing all of the roads. I doubt that is a normal way of doing it but for pure info thats how I do it.

[AzureIsland]

Any drawing or painting tool should be able to work for you. If you want to do things like associate metadata (names, address ranges, and so on) and allow visual or text search on that metadata, then that's a much more specialized piece of software, like a GIS system. A little more information about what you plan to do with your map and possibly an example of how you would like the output to appear would be useful.

Thank you for responding! It is more for fantasy mapping, that would appear like a road atlas. So the roads would be named if zoomed in on. Any further suggestions? Would something like ARCGis work? We use that at work, and I could get a license.

[AzureIsland]

Is this for real world cities or for fantasy ones ? You can get at the real world road systems from OpenStreetMap data. Then the next question is do you need the road borders to be shown and when you have an intersection do you need the borders to join up into junctions ?

I use a script to extract OpenStreetMap data and plot it to sets of bitmaps, one per road type. Then I generate the borders from those bitmaps by expanding the widths of the roads, then I composit all of the bitmaps together by first doing all of the borders then doing all of the roads. I doubt that is a normal way of doing it but for pure info thats how I do it.

Thank you for your reply! This seems like what I'm looking for! I would have roads that would cross city borders, and have highways as well. Is this software complicated to learn? Again, I really appreciate your feedback!

[Greason Wolfe]

You could try looking for RPG Citymap Generator. It isn't the greatest software, but it is free. Also, have seen a couple of links here on the forum for web-based city generators. Probably in the software or resources sub-forums. Those, along with nearly any graphics editor will get you headed in the right direction. As for being able to zoom in and what not, depending on how detailed you want things to be, you might also look at some AutoCAD based software.

[Tiana]

If it's real roads you want, using OSM data is going to be the best way to do it. You can use a script to pull it into blender, even, but yes, ArcGis and QGis will let you manipulate that information. And yes, I'd call them hard to learn. Of course you can learn anything you put your mind to learning.

To just draw some custom fantasy roads quickly, use a vector software or a mapping software like Other World Mapper.

To just generate a city quickly and free, https://watabou.itch.io/medieval-fantasy-city-generator is a real fun tool.

[auke]

QGIS is highly recommended.