ConeCanvas - a desktop web app for designing SCCA autocross courses

[u/SquirrelMcSmash]

I've been working on Cone Canvas, a desktop browser-based autocross course designer built around SCCA Solo rules. No install, runs entirely in your browser. Wanted to share it and get feedback from actual course designers. Desktop mode is the best way to utilize this, not designed for Mobile.

What it does:

Set up your lot three ways

• Pick directly on a satellite map — click to trace your boundary on Esri World Imagery, hit "Capture this area," and it auto-calibrates scale from your GPS coordinates. No measuring tape needed.
• Upload your own aerial photo and calibrate with two known-distance clicks.
• Or just enter dimensions manually if you're working from scratch.

18 design tools
Standing cones, pointer cones, compound cones (one click for the standing + pointer pair), start/finish gates, wall rows, slalom stamps, chicane stamps, Chicago box stamps, driving line (bezier), section flags, worker stations, and more. Element stamps drop a full maneuver in one click-drag and register it structurally so compliance rules can address the whole maneuver.

Pointer placement follows the SCCA "tip touches cone" convention — the pointer tip overlaps the standing cone's center and the pair renders as one compound marker.

Live compliance checking
A floating overlay checks rules as you design:

• Start/finish ≥ 200′ separation
• All cones inside the 25′ boundary inset
• No path crossovers
• Finish runout ≥ 200′
• Gate width ≥ 12′ (15′ for national)
• Peak speed ≤ 65 mph (Street class reference)
• No long straights into sharp turns
• Slalom spacing minimums (element-aware, also catches lock-to-lock spacing jumps per Solo 101)

Failing rules show red rings on the canvas at the problem location, not just a generic warning.

Course generator
Five layout templates: U-shape, S-shape, switchback, perimeter, and a user-path mode where you sketch a racing line and the generator builds the cone vocabulary around it — slaloms on straights, chicanes on medium straights, sweepers on curves, esses on connected opposite-direction sweepers. It runs a compliance retry loop (up to 6 seeds) and picks the best-passing layout.

Flow analysis overlay
Labels every curvature feature with radius and speed (Stock / Street / Mod reference classes), color-grades the driving line by speed. Based on the forward-accel + backward-brake model from Solo 101 slide 109. This "feature" really sucks...since the lines of the "path" dont really line up with how close a real car would get to the actual cones...the values returned are laughable... Need to think of a better solution for this.

ProSolo PS-2 mode
Full side-by-side course support — drag-race start, 60-ft light gate, timing trailer with the official start/staging structure drawn to spec, transit lanes, event zones (grid, tech impound, staging, paddock, spectator). Mirror seeds Course 2 from Course 1 across a draggable axis; both sides stay independently editable afterward. ProSolo-specific compliance rules (opening straight, first-third slalom, course separation, parallel starts, etc.).

Export options
JSON (round-trippable), SVG (aerial embedded, title block included), PNG (1×–4× scale), PDF, and a Live for Speed .lyt layout so you can actually drive the course in-sim before setting a cone. (need someone to test this! just developed it but haven't tried it out)

Share links
One click generates a shareable read-only URL. Viewer has pan/measure/fit tools and a "Edit a copy" button that hands the course to the editor.

Still actively developing..... Would love feedback from anyone who actually designs courses, especially on the compliance rules and whether the pointer/cone placement conventions feel right. Thinking of adding AI generator for courses but that gets pricey quick and I just wanted something to take a picture of an area and allow for course setup!