rwsmith123

That's the reason that comprehensive maps don't exist. If you have the data globalmapper can probably read the format the data is in, then you use cgpsmapper to generate the map. Getting the data is the hard part.

If the slow part is doing the actual transfer and not building the mapset then getting a cardreader and xfering the maps to the card directly would be a lot quicker.

See http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...=164162&hl=

Were you able to find it?

When you used to get 2 unlocks per product, then you would go with the non NT version if you had an older GPS that can't use NT maps and one that did since you could use the non NT version on both. You can make a TYP file to customize the way a map looks on the GPS as well as in MapSource. Currently I don't believe that you can generate a TYP file that works properly with the NT version.

The program will put East, West, Alaska & Hawaii into on dataset so you don't have to switch. If you don't want to combine the maps into larger segments, you can just copy all the .img files from the original maps into one directory, and then just do step 3 and 4 from the instructions.

There is a DEM section in addition to the TRE, LBL, and RGN sections. That's the only document that I know of. You can also download the source code for gpsmapedit to see how it parses .img files.

I didn't say the DEM data wasn't used on the GPSr, just that the GPSr doesn't use it to shade the maps. The other use of DEM data on the GPSr is vertical profile of routes, but the DEM data takes a lot of space making the maps a lot larger so if you don't care about the few features you'll lose then you'll be able to load a lot more maps. As for the question about cgpsmapper being optimized or not, I don't know. I am familiar with the .img format and know that it takes a lot more processing to encode the .img format than to decode it (just as it takes a lot more time to compress files into an archive than to uncompress them).

The DEM data (the data which is needed for map shading in MapSource) will be stripped out during the process of combining the segments. You can have both the original Topo 2008 and the new version with larger segments and no DEM data on the PC to use with MapSource. You would choose the original with the nice shading in MapSource to plan trips, etc. You would use the one with larger segments and no DEM data on the GPSr which won't show shading anyway. Without the DEM data you would be able to fit all of Topo 2008 on a 2GB card.

So who's going try it out?

Because I don't want to move to Kansas City. i just find it humorous that an average joe guy can do this meanwhile their software experts cant think of stuff like this. It's not that they can't think of it, it's a matter of having to support GPSr's with limited memory. Someone with an eTrex Legend with 8 Meg of memory doesn't want maps with large segments. One big complaint when City Navigator North America v7 came out was that the map segments were too large.

Because I don't want to move to Kansas City.

As most people know all Garmin GPSr units have a segment limit (ie. the number of map segments that can be loaded to the GPS). For example the 60CSx has a limit of 2025. The US Topo maps have a total of 6639 segments so all the maps can't be loaded to the GPSr even if you have enough memory to hold them all. Tools already exist that someone could use to combine map segments into larger ones to get around this limitation, however doing this manually would be extremely tedious. I've written a tool (CombineMaps) which automates the process. Using the configuration and files supplied with my tool you can combine the 6639 segments into 370 segments (each segment is approx 100 miles by 100 miles). The segments are up to 7.8 Meg in size with the median size being 3.18 Meg. Here is a screenshot of the combined US Topo maps: Even if you don't want to load all the US Topo maps to your GPSr, having larger segments has other advantages. It takes MapSource a lot less time to build the mapset, building the mapset for the new combined US Topo maps only took 16 minutes, doing that for all of the original maps would take many hours. The combined maps for a given area will take up less memory than with the smaller map segments since there is some overhead involved with each segment. And you can even make changes to the features in the combined maps. You can download the instructions from here. The program can also be used with the new US Topo 2008 maps. If someone wants to donate a legal copy of US Topo 2008, then I'll generate the files needed to use with the tool. Rich http://rwsmaps.griffel.se

Did you check the odometer or track log to see how fast she was able to throw it? BTW, the flat rate repair fee applies no matter what condition the unit is in, so you have nothing to loose in trying to fix it yourself.

No, you can show basemap and CN, which is preferred since the basemap will show instead of CN when you zoom out, since the basemap has less detail it makes drawing the map much faster when zoomed out. With the basemap hidden it will draw much more, taking a lot more time, and making the map unreadable when zoomed out. As for having BC and CN enabled at the same time, BC will overwrite CN. Some BC maps cover land areas near the coast and some of the larger maps go inland quite a ways (with no detail), so you most likely wouldn't want both enabled.

I have heard rumor that Garmin would not release MG 2008, due to the patch that give this autorouting. City Navigator Europa v9 was first released on GPS september 2006. First sight of MG v9 was just now in July 2007. If you try to order it, you may still get v8 I bet that they do release MG NA 2008. It has been somewhat common knowledge for years that using sendmap to transfer the maps to the gps will keep routing info. However doing so won't transfer the info needed to do a "find by name" which really isn't a big deal since "find nearest" would still work fine. So someone came up with a convoluted process so that "find by name" would still work. Then someone wrote a program to automate the process, then the .tdb patch. All that so you could still do a "find by name", but people have been using sendmap to load MG maps with routing to the gps for years.

FWIW, v8 has 5,428,786 POI's and 2008 has 6,114,707 POI's, a 12.6% increase. v8 has 6,118,614 miles of roads and 2008 has 6,151,038 miles, a 5.3% increase.

I've never seen a time when they didn't come out with a full version. The update version comes out first, then the full version, then the equivalent MetroGuide version.

Deciding if it's worth the upgrade based on 3 random routes is pretty arbitrary. BTW, v8 has 5,428,786 POI's and 2008 has 6,114,707 POI's, a 12.6% increase. v8 has 6,118,614 miles of roads and 2008 has 6,151,038 miles, a 5.3% increase.

Where did you get #2 from? That's the first I've heard of that.

You can add the registry entry "PartialInstall=1" for the map product to make MapSource happy if you delete any .img files.

Check to see if your local library has computers you can use. If so, use them to print out the cache info.

Just as you could modify the registry to have the old US Topo run from the HD, you could modify the registry to have Topo 2008 run from the DVD. Depending on how the files are stored on the original DVD you may have to write a DVD with the .img files on it.

Only if you want to compare them.

Installing Topo 2008 won't do anything to the old Topo installation, you will be able to use both. To delete the old version, edit the registry to remove the entries for the old Topo, then delete the files from the HD.