Hide underground features

[forteller]

I appreciate the fact that it is possible to see and add important underground features to OSM! But I personally have no idea where any of it is, and I can't help in that matter. I'm convinced the same is true for at least 95% of all contributors.

This means that the underground features are just in the way, and sometimes really annoying, a great majority of the time that the iD editor is in use. You might find yourself attach other features to them, or they are just confusing or in the way when you try to interpret the background photo. Especially in areas with low quality satelite photos.

I tried to find an option to disable all underground features, but could not find it.

I would appreciate if this would be possible to add. And actually I think the most logical thing to do would be to have this disabled by default, given the fact that I'm quite certain that almost no one can actually help with these things (and the few that can probably has an easier time enabling things than many others have disabling them, if that makes sense).

Thanks!

[quincylvania]

Hmm interesting idea. Do you have an area in mind where lots of underground features are causing issues? I'd support adding a toggle but I'm not sure whether or not it should be disabled by default.

[forteller]

Thanks for your fast and positive replies! :)

Here's the most that I found in one place with just a little bit of searching: https://preview.ideditor.com/master/#background=geovekst-nib&disable_features=boundaries&map=18.30/59.90626/10.74338

It's not that there's such a huge quantity at one place that's bothersome. It's more that almost everywhere I go in my city there's something underground, and it's never useful to me, it's always only in the way.

[forteller]

Here's a better example. This road is clearly drawn to the side of the actual road. Why? I don't know, but it could have something to do with the underground subway platform being on to of the actual road. And anyway, that makes it just a little bit harder for me to adjust the road to be where it should be.

Underground cables are worse, btw, because their lines are so thin, you often don't know their there before whatever you're drawing gets stuck to it. And I'm guessing most volunteer editors don't know about the trick with holding down the Alt key.

[Mannshoch]

I would propose a Vertical Slider with two buttons to drag. Every level between those two could be seen So you could say "show me only elements between +2 and 0".

[forteller]

That's a very cool idea :)

[quincylvania]

Related: #4780. Indoor and underground toggles should probably be part of the same control.

[Unkn0wnCat]

I want to bump and +1 this, as selecting layers and levels is a must have for indoor mapping! I'm working on indoor mapping the university I study at, and can't currently use iD for editing it, as all levels are just drawn on top of each other.

[kjonosm]

I support this request. Hiding underground features also helps to prevent auto snapping to pipelines oder underground cables while mapping highway or related highway features. This could be achieved by adding a respective toggle within the map data panel that simply hides all features tagged with location=underground.