Tool for a line of identical buildings

[lennart.romberg@…]

I'm lacking a tool for drawing a number of identical and equally spaced buildings,
either because such a tool doesn't exist or I'm not aware of it.

Proposal for a general tool that would do the job:
A tool that distributes a set of selected areas with equal spacing (similar to "distribute nodes" but operating on areas).
The two outermost areas remain at their places, the other areas are moved inline and with equal spacing.

Method of work: Draw one house (or some other non-trivial shape). Make desired number of copies. Put the two outermost objects at
correct places. Select all desired objects. Perform the function "distribute shapes". Done.

Extras, variants (if feasible and desired):

• Operate on any shape, not just identical shapes. Distribute with equal spacing.
• "Chain-house tool". Similar as first proposal, but possibiity to get zero spacing. No overlap, no gap.

[mdk]

I use the BuildingTools plugin:

1. Draw a (rectangle) building outlie all buildings ("Draw buildings" Shortcut B)
2. Select the new building.
3. Use "Terrace a building" (Shift-T) and enter the number of building in "Segments"

As a result the outline building will be split into (equal) buildings.

[lennart.romberg@…]

I'm aware of the terrace tool but it doesn't do what I want. In my region we have quite a few "chain houses" with alternating house and garage in a zig-zag pattern. I have difficulties with them and you often see ugly examples. Asked at OSM talk.se but nobody had any better idea than requesting a new tool.

[GerdP]

Sounds like a very rare use case. When you use paste+copy you just have to move each copy to the right place. Should not take very long unless you have dozens of such identical buildings. Once you have 4 copies you can copy&paste those 4 and so on...

[stoecker]

I'd also say: Use copy and paste. That's what is was made for. Note that paste does care for current mouse position (I hope it still does at least), so with a bit training even the position adjustment may be unneccessary.