# Mapping Resources > Mapping Elements >  Diagonal lines (Rhumb/Nav Lines)

## aeronox

On maps, besides the long/lat grid, there is often diagonal lines that radiate from multiple points on the map... often with a fancy rose at the center.

What are they for?

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## Robbie

I believe you're referring to ley lines maybe?  which are lines drawn connecting ancient sites...

Or nav lines...which I'll quote from the profantasy tome of ultimate mapping:



> Navigation lines (navlines) were used on early maps to give sailors waypoints and bearings
> when traveling relatively short distances. They only appear over bodies of water. They give
> a map an authentic historical look. If you prefer purely functional maps, youll probably want
> to do without them.

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## Robbie

I also see them referred to as Rhumb lines...but I dont' think thats correct, because a rhumb line is a line of constant bearing on a sphere (loxodrome)...kind of spirals around a map or something...but if the lines are drawn using rhumb line formulas (cosines and crap) then that makes sense.

I think its something worth looking into, because there may be a useful science we've all been overlooking here that could improve all our maps.

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## Gamerprinter

I was reading about Rhumb lines today - er, yesterday while researching pirate maps.

True Rhumb lines are 11.25 degrees of a compass, so 32 lines form a star (?). They are used for dead reckoning between known locations using a sextant. Rhumb line centers in the maps I found were located near major known ports of the Caribbean - Havana, Santo Domingue, etc.

I'm sure there's more science than that.

After the adoption of Parallels and Meridians, Rhumb Lines were nolonger used.

On my regional map for the December challenge - there's only 6 Rhumb lines, but I based that on an actual 1761 map of St. Christopher, with center of Rhumb lines near the port area. So that's what I chose to do.



The second map has true Rhumb Lines on it.

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## pyrandon

What a sweet thread!  Interesting, scholarly, and useful!  Thanks, aeronox, for posting it!

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## Midgardsormr

Wikipedia has a nice article on Rhumb lines: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhumb_line

According to that article, even following the adoption of parallels and meridians, Rhumb lines continued to be useful, since they could be used calculate a straight-line course based on an angle of bearing from a parallel.

Additionally, and not to be contrary, there are examples of maps that place navigation lines on land.  I have a book in front of me right now with a map of Africa from 1529 that has them emanating from Ethiopia.  Those lines appear to be decorative, though.

I saved the following useful post from the CC2 discussion list a few weeks ago:

----
Look at some old Charts for placement.. NAV Lines were used to aid in 
Plotting Course. Often used in conjunction with tables of values to help the 
Navigator maintain their bearing or determine their location in reference to 
a Navigation Line. The Rosette of the Nav Lines would normally appear at a 
Rally Point or Navigation Beacon. This could be the entrance to the Channel 
to a Harbor or a point off shore where the Navigator would set the long 
range course. In the latter cases, the Nav Lines would only radiate in the 
Safe Sailing directions (not back to Port) These sometimes would be used to 
indicate distances or time between Ports, though those type rarely included 
the Rosette or the Starburst of Lines along the Cardinal directions.. 
(rarely was a Port directly along one of the Cardinal Directions from 
another Port!). The type of Nave line included with CC is more decorative. A 
similar type was used to provide a Reference as to Compass Bearing on a 
Chart at any point, so the Navigator would not need to refer to the Compass 
Rose when plotting.

Placing them on a Map as a decorative feature should be used so as to not 
distract from the Map. Placing one under the Compass Rose for the the Map, 
if that is on the Sea can be effective... using two on opposite corners to 
Frame the Map are also effective in looks. If recreating the Chart Look, 
make sure you have the other features associated with Charts. NAV Lines 
should never cross land, no matter how small... Technically they should 
never break for Land (no Island breaking a Nav Line) With that said, I have 
seen this on a few Charts of the South Asia Islands, but I am not sure if 
they were true Charts or Decorative Charts to be hung up as art... (I have 
seen some Decorative Charts that moved Land Masses or deleted them all 
together so the Nav Lines added would be unbroken)

You can use the Trim To Command and select the Lines and Trim (either 
shortening or lengthening) the lines to an entity, such as the Coast Line or 
the Map Border.

John Csaky

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## ravells

Cool topic. Rhumb lines / nav lines are a perennial source of enquiry and it's good to have all the explanations in one place. One of the master mariners at my office showed me how compass roses and graticules are used with parallel rulers to mark courses on sea charts. I guess the they used rhumb / nav lines for the same thing.

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## arakish

Sorry for the necromancy on this topic, but I found it interesting to read what others wrote about something I already knew.

On the wikipedia link above, they have a diagram that show what I made in images some time ago (perhaps years) when a friend asked me why put them on a map I made for him.  As mentioned in a previous post, rhumb lines cross latitudes and longitudes at a constant angle.  But when you look at it on a globe, the line spirals to the pole.  Attached are some images I made showing this.

rmfr

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## Hai-Etlik

> Sorry for the necromancy on this topic, but I found it interesting to read what others wrote about something I already knew.
> 
> On the wikipedia link above, they have a diagram that show what I made in images some time ago (perhaps years) when a friend asked me why put them on a map I made for him.  As mentioned in a previous post, rhumb lines cross latitudes and longitudes at a constant angle.  But when you look at it on a globe, the line spirals to the pole.  Attached are some images I made showing this.
> 
> rmfr


That's not actually a true loxodrome.  Your map is in Equirectangular projection and a diagonal in it is not a line of constant bearing.  A true loxodrome in this projection has decreasing slope as it gets closer to the poles.  You need a Normal Mercator projection to get all loxodromes shown as straight lines.

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## Blacky

I have what's I'm sure is a pretty dumb question. But hey, we're here to learn.

What Photoshop technique do you use to draw your nav lines? I'm thinking about this for some time now, and for the life of me, I can't find a nice tool to say to PS: draw n infinite lines from this point each with the same angle...

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## Plutonium Blonde

> What Photoshop technique do you use to draw your nav lines?.


For this map I just made two lines that crossed at right angles then copied that layer and rotated it 11.5 degrees and then did that six more times.

Edit: oops, yeah that should be 11.25 degrees.

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## Blacky

I knew it was something so simple my brain would be ashamed to hear of it...

Thanks!  :Smile:

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## ravells

> I have what's I'm sure is a pretty dumb question. But hey, we're here to learn.
> 
> What Photoshop technique do you use to draw your nav lines? I'm thinking about this for some time now, and for the life of me, I can't find a nice tool to say to PS: draw n infinite lines from this point each with the same angle...


The easiest way is to do it in something like inkscape (or illustrator if you have it) and import it into PS.

If you want to do it in PS, then try this:
Make a new layer.
Select the pencil or a hard round brush of the appropriate size. Hold down the shift key to draw a horizontal or vertical line.
Duplicate the layer 3 times.
On the first duplicate layer Ctrl-T to activate the transform tool.
Hover the mouse just to one side of a corner bounding box until it turns into a curved double headed arrow (rotate).
Hold down the shift key (to constrain rotation to 45 degree increments) and rotate the line by 45 degrees. Hit enter to accept the transformation.
Do the same again with all the other duplicate layers. 
If you have fingers like an octopus, instead of duplicating the layers you can press Ctrl-Shift-Alt-T which will make a new line on a new layer for you to rotate.

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## Midgardsormr

You could get some nice tapering lines using the Shape Tool. Set it to polygon mode, 16 sides, and in the option drop-down (a down arrow at the right end of the list of modes in CS4), tick "Star" and set the indent to 98%. Hold down shift while drawing your star to constrain the angle.

edit: Oh, and I think you'd want 11.25 degrees, not 11.5 for that earlier tactic.

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## Hai-Etlik

I don't know if you would find this easier or not, but I wrote a program for generating Rhumb lines: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...Line-Generator

It produces SVG images as output so you can scale and work with them in a vector program like Inkscape and then export to a raster if you want.

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## sambrookjm

Huh...I'd written this script for a completely different purpose, but it fits here as well as anything else.  This GIMP script (JMS-Rhumb.zip) can draw any number of Rhumb Lines from 3 to 360, from nearly any point on the map (10%-90% in the X and Y directions)  The map can be just about any size.  Unzip it, and put it in your GIMP script files folder.  It will appear in the Filters-->SambrookJM menu...feel free to change that to wherever you would like.  I've also attached a sample gif of what it looks like with 32 lines.

Getting rid of all of the commented code will connect each of the lines to the ones next to them to get a nice curved surface.

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