Initiate polygon drawing from custom button

Question

I love the new polygon drawing options and have been playing with them for a couple of days.

On the official documentation I see that it is possible to initiate the drawing of a polygon by clicking on a button external to the map. Does anybody know how to do this? http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/overlays.html#updating_the_drawing_tools_control

In other words I would like to be able to create a button similar to the "Delete selected shape", but which will instead start the drawing of the polygon: http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/11/make-your-map-interactive-with-shape.html

Answer 1

Use setDrawingMode() function of the google.maps.drawing.DrawingManager object.

In the button click event handler, call:

drawingManager.setDrawingMode(google.maps.drawing.OverlayType.POLYGON);

To quit the drawing mode, call:

drawingManager.setDrawingMode(null);