If the stop sequence is the "skeleton" of a trip, the Shape is the skin and muscle. The Shape is the geographic line that passengers see in the app; it shows exactly which streets the bus travels through. A well-drawn shape is the difference between a professional app and a confusing map. 🗺️✨
1. What is a Shape? 🤔
A Shape is the vector path that connects your stops. It doesn’t just link "Point A" to "Point B" in a straight line; it follows the curves of the streets, goes around plazas, and enters terminals.
Important: Every Trip needs a Shape that touches every stop in your sequence, in the correct order.
2. Navigating the Mapping Screen 🖥️
The Moovit Editor creates an automatic shape based on the stops but before completing a trip, the shape should be reviewed. When you open the "Shape" tab in the Editor, you enter drawing mode. Here are your essential tools:
- Import shape: you have 2 options to import a shape, using a KML file or following the format explained inside the Editor with lat,lon (if you need extra support for this, please contact your Community Manager via Message)
- Copy shape for another trip: It will give you options for you to copy a shape from another trip.
- Enable/disable shape edit: Selecting this will remove the option to edit the shape
- Optimize shape: The editor will run an automatic fix to make the shape easier to edit by having less points
- Invert shape: Useful when you are mapping 2 trips (inbound and outbound) and you want to use the same base of the shape and do a few edits to make sure it goes on the right side of the street
- Reset shape: If you select this option the Editor will make a new shape based on the sequence of stops and street permissions
- Trim shape: Use this tool when you want to remove larger sections of the shape.
To submit any changes made to the shape click Save.
Architect’s tip:
- The shape should always go on the mapped roads
The shape should travel on the correct side of the road, according to the direction of travel of the vehicle
3. How to Edit the Shape 🛠️
To edit the shape manually select the Segments tab and zoom in on the map to see the black path on the map and click the pencil icon to enable editing. Left-click and drag a white dot to relocate the section of the shape. Right-click on a dot to remove that section of the shape from the trip. Click “Save”.
You can also click on the button “reset shape” to correct the imperfections of each segment: