by ribuck » Mon 11 Dec, 2017 6:38 pm
Like tastrax says, direct export from OpenStreetMap is geared up for use in GIS programs. QGIS is free and powerful, but it's a complex piece of software and will take time to learn.
Here's the approach I would take, to turn a track that is mapped on OSM into a downloadable GPX file:
1. Go to gpsies.com
2. Register an account and log in
3. From the "Create" menu, select "Track Creator"
4. Make sure you select "Follow Roads" on the right-hand panel
5. Scroll/zoom the map to the bit you are interested in
6. Click roughly along the route. The website will follow the track, so you only need to click at junctions and at a few intermediate points and the website will fill in the other bits by following the map.
7. Click "Save". Now this route is stored in your Gpsies account, and you can export it to your computer as a GPS with various options
In your initial post, you thought that you might want to update the track on OSM (presumably after you have walked it and recorded its route). After each bushwalk I tweak the map to fix errors or add more features, and this is how I do it. There are plenty of other ways that suit some people better. I prefer to use the in-browser editor for all straightforward edits.
1. Put your GPX trace on your computer
2. Register and log in at OpenStreetMap.
3. Go to the OpenStreetMap website and scroll/zoom to your area of interest
4. Click "Edit" and from the drop-down select "Edit with iD (in-browser editor)", then give it a few seconds to load
5. Click the "Help" icon (the bottom of the right-hand vertical toolbar) and read it all (it's brief, and includes a guide to editing roads/tracks)
6. Click the "Map Data" Icon (second-last icon on the right-hand vertical toolbar).
7. On the pop-out panel, locate the "Local File" line and click the arrow on that line to select your GPS file and display it on the map.
8. Now you can see the aerial photo in the background, then the map features, and your GPS trace on top.
9. Edit the track by hand to match the background photo, your GPS trace, and your survey notes.
10. Click "Save" and add a brief description of what you have done.
There are fancier ways to do this, but I prefer to manually edit the track because my GPS tracks tend to include glitches that I would not want to automatically transfer to OpenStreetMap.
Additionally, after saving my edits, I like to upload my GPX file to OpenStreetMap as a show of good faith that I have been to the area, and to assist future mappers. Click the "GPS Traces" link, then "Upload a trace". (If you want to display other people's uploaded traces while you're editing the map, there's an option for that on the icon that looks like a stack of papers, but it slows down the map rendering considerably.)