Hello everybody,
for a customers large-scale web project I am trying to "smoothen / adapt / snatch" vector objects of an given svg map to a regular grid (of squares, or ideally hexagons). Difficult to explain, please just look at the examples: I do have an svg map with geographically detailed regions, thus totally free paths: http://www.mccarroll.net/snippets/svgworld/cameroon.svg. As a final result, I would like to have these paths smoothend or snatched to a given grid overlay, like in this project: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2015/may/07/live-uk-election-results-in-full (nice grid of hexagons).

With some simple algorithm I would be able to generate the grid out of independent hexagonal objects. In my idea, this grid (or in fact, the two underlying coordinate systems of the SVG's of equal size) would have to be laid over the map, and each Hexagon would get the ID of the region-object underneath that covers the greatest part of the hexagon.

I have got no idea, if there is an inkscape or, more generally speaking, a vector software solution to that, or if it can only be sorted out by algorithms. I think this is an interesting and challenging project, I am really glad for any ideas. Maybe we can even develop a solution which can be adapted and reused for similar projects (would be an interesting "Effect or Filter".

Curious to read your input, thank you in advance

Cheers Thorsten

Hello there,

interesting topic.

An idea: use tiled clones, with the trace tab set to colour on input and output.
http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL.html