Make disconnecting areas from streets easier

[tordans]

AFAIK there are two mapping styles when it comes to streets next to areas. Eg fields or commercial districts.
a. Use the area to mark the sidewalk kurb, thereby giving shape to the road.
b. Connect the area to the street. And thereby allowing the renderer to cleanly draw a street over the area.

Apparently there is no consensus on how to map those situations.

Whenever I experience case B, it is very painful to change the mapping, eg. move the area, make it smaller or bigger.

The main issue is, that I need to disconnect the area-nodes, which are a lot of then. But the disconnect-feature does not really work well if there are multiple elements – eg a road (node 1), a second road (node 2), two areas (node 3+4); so I have 4 nodes above another.

Example:

What would be an easier way to solve this situations?

Update: It might also be, that my problem is - in part - because the area is part of a relation? There seems to be no way to disconnect this node …
(Source)

[tordans]

A bit of brainstorming …

Idea 1

Can we use the "detach node" feature that was recently added to help here?

The problem I see is, we need to know what part of the 4 nodes we want to detach.

Idea 2

When I right click on a node with multiple elements, the Detatch choise could be a kind of dropdown that allows me to specify which node I want to detach. Afterwards the node should stay selected so I can move it to the new position.

Idea 3

Could this be build in a way that allows multiselect on nodes and then detach? There is so multiselect, so I guess not …

Idea 4

Maybe solve it from the other side: I select the area, then there is a detach-option. And if there is more then one way to be detached, I have to specify which in a dialogue?

Idea 5

More of an association: At some point powerpoint had an order-feature that used a 3d-ish view to help selecting elements that are stacked: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOhienhY4PI. But it seems they removed that in favour of a simple list https://support.office.com/en-us/article/change-the-order-in-which-stacked-objects-placeholders-or-shapes-appear-on-a-slide-9a3b64b2-f1ac-42bc-ad97-ab30fad93de4 (last part of the video).

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Also: Is this issue the same that is discussed at #4245, but from the other point of view (areas, not ways)?

[quincylvania]

Update: It might also be, that my problem is - in part - because the area is part of a relation? There seems to be no way to disconnect this node …

Hi @tordans. In this specific case, you can disconnect the node this way:

1. Select the area
2. Shift + right-click on the node
3. Select the disconnect option

[bhousel]

Also: Is this issue the same that is discussed at #4245, but from the other point of view (areas, not ways)?

I think it's the same issue..