NCGISguru

Thanks for the replies guys. rws, could you be more specific about the "custom typ"? I'm not sure I follow you. Topo does include state and national park boundaries. The polygons in this layer are a compilation of basically every piece of property that is under some sort of conservation easement in North Carolina. It is produced by the NC Natural Heritage Program. Consequently, they tend to be very nice natural areas to visit and its useful to be able to see their boundaries while in the field.

Yeah, I thought I could just hide or show it as I needed, but I'd prefer to get it to project right. I want to be able to see the other aspects of the Garmin Topo software without my custom map obstructing it. In other words, my custom map is just a bunch of polygons (like to mark state, national park boudnaries) , and in areas where they would have roads going through them, the roads are covered by the polygons. I want the roads (from Topo) to overlay on top of the polygons. I assumed "making custom maps transparent" did that. Do I have it backwards?

I've noticed that custom maps I've sent to my Garmin along with topo 2008 maps always appear on top of and obscure the topo 2008 maps. I thought that creating the maps transparent solved this problem, but I'm not getting the results I thought I would. I've even checked the code on the .mp file to make sure the line says "Transparent=Y" before running it through cGPSmapper. Anyone else run into this problem?

Nevermind. I got it to work today. I think I had the shapefile in a coordinate system that the Garmin didn't like, and it just wasn't showing up because it was probably being put somewhere else. Who knows where?!

Yeah I've read many tutorials. Levels: see above; original post edited. I'm using cGPSmapper to compile and convert to an .img and M3 to create the registry and send it to mapsource. I'm using mapsource to load it to the GPS.

Edited: Meant to add that second screenshot of the map properties.

Hi all, I'm new to the forum, but by no means new to GPS and GIS. I graduated last year from NC State and took many of the courses through their geospatial program. I have access to the ESRI Arc suite and have stockpiled all kinds of shapefile data. If anyone ever needs any NC shapefiles let me know! I haven't really gotten into geocaching per se; I use mine more for marking locations of reptile and amphibian (mostly snake) records as a personal herp log and to report findings to the NC Museum of Natural Sciences. I've recently been toying with creating the custom maps through GPSMapEdit, cGPSmapper, and M3 (those are the programs I use). I'm still pretty new to this topic, though it fascinates me, and I've hit a roadblock on one of my projects that I am seeking help about. I've successfully created a map of a couple of longleaf pine savannas (polygon layer created with ArcMap), loaded it to the GPS and it worked great. My current project is trying to load a layer of Natural Heritage sites (statewide polygon layer) to the GPS. I've gotten all the way through the map building process and sent it to the GPS via MapSource and it fails to show up in the GPS. I suspect it’s a "levels" problem, but the problem is I don't know how to rectify that. Can anyone provide some guidance? Here is some general info: GPS: Garmin GPSMap 60CSx SHP: NC Natural Heritage Significant Areas (roughly 30k polygons across the state) SOME SCREENSHOTS: Like I said; the map compiles fine and then doesn't show up in the GPS itself. When I import the shapefile, it only has level 0 and I add the other levels and import the same shapefile to populate them as well (the map disappears as I add new levels. Am I even doing that part right? I've tried compiling the map with just the level 0 as it comes with, but I get an error saying that the detail is too high I believe. Also, I've noticed that sometimes in the .img version of the map, the "mini preview" screen in the top left corner of GPSMapEdit will be all black except for a tiny box in the middle, which is I'm assuming my map. Which setting am I getting wrong? Levels, limits? Is the shapefile too big? Is there a "too big?" Any general info will be great as well. Thanks for any help!