It would be very useful to be able to draw polygons freehand (like you can in ArcGIS Pro), instead of by adding individual vertices. This would be especially useful when creating polygons that are rounded and require many vertices to properly draw.
I am a geologist who uses ArcGIS Field Maps extensively for geological field mapping.
When mapping geological contacts, landslides, alteration zones, faults and other natural features, these rarely follow straight segments. At the moment, Field Maps requires creating lines and polygons by placing individual vertices, which makes capturing natural shapes slower and often produces angular geometries.
I would like Field Maps to include an optional Freehand Drawing mode that allows users to draw lines and polygon boundaries continuously with a finger or stylus while the application automatically creates the necessary vertices.
This would provide several benefits:
Although this feature would be especially valuable for geological mapping, it would also benefit many other field workflows such as environmental surveys, habitat mapping, forestry, agriculture, archaeology, and land management.
I would also like to add that this idea has now been around for almost six years. Given the wide range of field workflows that would benefit from it, I believe this feature could already have made a significant positive impact on many projects and users.
I understand that feature development requires prioritization and resources, but I hope this continued interest helps demonstrate that there is an ongoing need for a freehand drawing option—not only for polygons, but also for lines. It would greatly improve the efficiency and quality of field mapping across many disciplines.
Strongly supporting this idea. Our customers doing bird surveys need to sketch flight lines quickly in the field – freehand drawing is the only practical solution for this. ENH-000177224 has been "In Review" for months with no update. Would love to see this move forward.
Dear Esri,
PLEASE DO THIS I AM BEGGING YOU
It's possible in web editor, it's possible in Survey123, it's even possible in the markup layer in Field Maps - surely it's not a big ask to implement in our feature layers?As others have said - this is the #1 roadblock for getting our survey teams going forward with digital data capture as plotting by vertex is painful.
Thank you,
Joe
Yes! Please allow freehand line drawing so lines are recorded to a feature class instead of Markup. My field team of geologists need to draw lines freehand in a way that can be backed up on AGOL. It's too cumbersome and time consuming for many of them, me included, to draw lines vertex by vertex in the field. Some "fair weather days" are 100 degrees, and mere seconds matter when your iPad is giving you temperature warnings and your sweat is dripping on the touch screen. In the office, it's too cumbersome to export every field worker's Markups to get them synchronized and saved. FYI, our cybersecurity protocols prevent device-to-device sharing...otherwise sharing Markups might not need manual exporting. Freehand line drawing into a feature class would save all of us a lot of trouble and only then will Field Maps be absolutely perfect for us. Thank you!
I strongly support this feature request. Our geologists frequently need to map geological outcrops in the field, and the current method of placing individual vertices results in polygons that are overly angular and don’t accurately represent the natural, rounded shapes of these features.
Because many outcrops are inaccessible for walking around, they can't use streaming or GPS tracking to capture boundaries. A freehand drawing tool—similar to what’s available in ArcGIS Pro—would allow them to sketch more realistic shapes directly on the map, improving both the accuracy and usability of the data collected.
This enhancement would be a game-changer for geological fieldwork and other disciplines that require mapping of irregular, organic features.
Adding our use case for freehand drawing, we conduct vegetation surveys from helicopters where being able to quickly and accurately digitize polygon and polyline features is a requirement. Currently Field Maps and Survey123 do not meet our needs as they don't allow freehand/stylus based drawing. We are still entirely reliant on using ArcPad (now many years retired...) for these projects since it contains this feature.
@DougMorgenthaler Can I read the merging of these ideas as some kind of progress towards a solution??? Or am I being painfully optimistic?
This is looking less hopeful, below is the response from the Q&A from Esri UK's 2023 winter update webinar where 'Will ArcGIS Field Maps ever support freehand drawing?' was the most upvoted question:
Currently, we are not aware of any plans for this to appear in an upcoming release of ArcGIS Field Maps. To help drive the future of our apps and make sure we build the capabilities needed to support your field operations, we encourage people to head to Esri ArcGIS Field Maps Community to submit and upvote ideas. In the ideas you’ll find a couple of existing suggestions for freehand digitising that may fit your use case
I agree with most of the field folks here. I need to add avalanche occurrence polygons to my maps in the field (ideally an apple pencil) and this current method is so time consuming that when we are flying I cannot keep up with the data I need to enter. ESRI, please add this functionality to Fieldmaps sooner than later.
From the "Road Ahead" session at the UC23 the Mid-term items form field data collection includes the following:
Based on context Mid term seemed to be late 2024 or early 2025.
Is this feature on the road map? Or is the idea that we have to purchase Sweet if we want the freehand draw option for polygon/line capture on map based surveys? The lack of functionality in this area makes Field Maps completely unusable for a lot of applications and the additional cost of Sweet is hard to justify if you only require additional drawing tools. We do habitat surveys and the additional time that would be needed both onsite to capture polygons point by point, plus the time to tidy up gaps and overlaps afterwards means Field Maps isn't a viable option. I appreciate there is a Sweet Phase 1 survey at reduced cost but with the move to Biodiversity Net Gain we are now surveying using UKHAB so the Phase 1 option is no good either.
Hello, we are currently using ArcGIS Pro and Trimble TerraSync out in the field. We want to move to just Field Maps, however it doesn't offer freehand polygon creation. We need freehand and can't switch to Field Maps with its current capabilities. We have many layers when working out in the field, so markup is not an option. We work on a boat and it's difficult to stay stationary so we have to work quickly.
Another route to make this happen is to allow the "Copy geometry" operation on the markup layer. You could use the markup tool to draw a line or polygon shape, select the line or shape, then use the "copy features" option currently available for data layers only to copy the geometry to a data layer.
There are advantages to this approach over freehand editing the polygon data in the data layer; it allows you to sketch the shape until it looks right, giving you a drafting ability before the time consuming task of entering data begins.
The limitation I could see is that once data was entered with a free hand option, it could not be edited by free hand option unless there were more advanced editing features incorporated like the "reshape" editing tool available in the desktop software. It would become impossible with the markup workflow described above to salvage data you entered about a polygon or line. Once the geometry was copied from the markup feature, that's it, you can only modify the geometry vertex by vertex (not fun).
Freehand drawing and generally increased line/polygon editing capabilities (split line, snapping, reshape line, reverse direction) would be an immense improvement for the geologic mapping community as well as other users.
We would like to be able to digitize a line, with or without a stylus, as is done with the Markup tool but would like that feature to be stored in a feature service where we can control the attributes and symbology of the line/polygon.
The markup tool draws the way we would like to collect lines, but does not quite cut it because of the way those features are stored, the lack of custom symbology, and the lack of custom attribute fields.
There was a similar forum on this topic in Collector threads that had some steam, but I'm assuming Esri isn't paying attention to those collector threads any more, so I'm reposting here.
Hi @RoseF . No worries, I have already given my "Kudos" to this 😉
@leighlager and @cbp-geus please make sure you have given this idea "Kudos" if you haven't already. This allows Esri to "hear" your support of this idea (I guess comments alone won't do it).
Also consider doing the same for these other, similar ideas if you support them (and haven't already):
https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-field-maps-ideas/enable-touch-to-enter-vertices/idc-p/1251586#M1052
https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-collector-questions/collector-anyone-else-find-moving-the-map-to-add/m-p/1134191#M13567
https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-survey123-questions/support-for-apple-pencil-scribble-handwriting/m-p/1094296#M36877
We support this as well. As a geological survey it is crucial that our field geologist can easily draw out structures and mapping features on the app in the field.
We are considering using the ArcGIS Field Maps for our field tablets, but we need to be able to use the our own line and polygon features with their dedicated domains in the geodatabase for free hand drawing. The markup tool is unfortunately not extensive enough to cover this and the lack of the ability to synchronize and export the markups are problematic.
ESRI ESRI ESRI......anybody listening? Field maps needs the ability to draw a polygon freehand with a finger. We can't use it otherwise. You can do it with markup which does me no good.......need to be able to add irregularly shaped features in the field quickly.........
Free hand polygons and lines in field maps would be extremely helpful for geologic mapping. I would love to see this implemented.
Just adding another voice here. We have non-GIS guys in the field who are screaming for this. We want them to use the tech, but when they can justifiably say that they can draw this stuff on a paper map a lot quicker then it is hard to argue, as time in the field is a lot more expensive than time back in the office digitizing it. Surely it is on the roadmap?! Please give us an indication of when otherwise you risk losing users, who will switch off to the software permanently before you get around introducing it!
Agree with @BlairBox
We need this functionality for Emergency Response in any disaster whether it be Search and Rescue Wildfire Tornados Flooding... etc.
This enhancement would be extremely useful. I am commenting to support this idea.
Please enable free hand drawing in field maps!!!! Many folks are stuck with Arpad until this enhancement is made.
Thanks!
Will echo what has been said here already many times. We are looking to move our forest health division away from arcpad but are struggling with not having the ability to free hand draw polygons and line features. Our teams are capturing this data from cesna fixed wing planes close to the mountains meaning turbulence is a big issue. There is no way they could tap and drag and tap as it currently stands in field maps. No passenger would last more than 30 mins without getting sick or switching back to arcpad. We already utilize survey 123 with this project on the backend (on the ground in the field) of the surveys but would like to start the process from the air using field maps and finally drop arcpad. Having the ability to use contingent values in field maps now is a great addition but until we have the free hand option we are sadly still operating with arcpad. Not sure if this is something that is in the works but if not based on online forms and in here there is definitely a desire to have this available.
thanks,
We really need this! We are capturing polygon data while flying, and using vertices are not very easy.
This would be great to have for use in our geologic applications!
For us it would be very usefull to draw freehand lines! Currently we have to map flight routes of birds with markups. It would be much easier to have freehand lines as saved feature layers.
@JustinP Thanks for the tip! We've noticed the freehand draw option in AGOL and would like similar functionality in Collector or Field Maps for data collection in the field.
Since we know it can be done in AGOL, fingers crossed it will be added to Field Maps soon!
Sign in to post, follow content, and more. New here? Register for free.
