IndyJpr

The first revision for Utah has been completed. The mapset is created from freely available GIS data and has the following data layers: - Interstates, highways, railroads, county, local and forest roads - High resolution water data (lakes, rivers and streams) - Land use, metro areas - Elevation contours (40ft intervals) - Points of interest (summits, mines, falls, dams, cemeteries, towers, populated places, etc.) http://www.miscjunk.org/mj/mp_uttopo.html

Hi Oz, GM uses Levels (or Endlevel) statements within each item's definition to specify what levels that item should be displayed on. GM's default settings are OK but you'll eventually want more control over how things are displayed. The optional DICTIONARY section in the header section of the MP file lets you set up zoom/levels on per type (not per item like above) basis. For example you can say that all items with type 0x05 appear on such and such levels. If you want to tweak your zoom/level setup you just change the DICTIONARY section and recompile. With the Levels (or Endlevel) you would have to go back and edit each item's defintion. Hope this helps, the cGpsMapper manual has a decent section covering the DICTIONARY.

Hi Oz, Probably not the answer you want but I don't do it in GM, I use another GIS type program that lets me run database SQL type queries/updates like below: UPDATE nhdwater SET mp_type = "0x51" WHERE ftype = 466; I have a series of these update statements to do all of the type mapping. It's possilbe to do it in GM but it's not exactly ideal. I believe you mentioned that you had a version of ArcView - I don't know anything about that software but I would guess that it has similar capabilities to what I mentioned. Hope that helps,

Hi Oz, Currently I just crop the data to the outermost 100k tile - that does mean some tiles are half full/empty..

Hi pasayten_pete,As far as I know that isn't possible using separate files. Like Oz said you have select all the maps you want and send to GPS. If you add another map you have to repeat the entire process. You can use the renaming technique you mentioned to save some time. Put all the maps you want into your GPS and backup that gmapsupp.img file. Do wantever stuff you want to do with custom or new maps (which of course overwrites your gmapsupp.img file). When you're done playing with the custom/new maps copy your backed up copy of gmapsupp.img to your GPS - copying is a lot faster than regenerating/resending from MapSource. Every now and then regenerate your main gmapsupp.img file to include any new maps you want to keep on the GPS. Hope that helps,

Looks good. Be warned that once you start making custom maps it's hard to stop!

I do most of my processing in GM and when finished I will export a clean shapefile. I also generate contours and export shapefiles.Then I have a master GM "workspace" where I load in all the finished shapefiles. Once I have all the data I want I export MP out of GM (gridded) and compile. Yes - I know what you mean

Hi pasayten_pete, If you're doing GM -> shapefile -> GpsMapEdit then I'm not sure how to get the zoom levels in there...I've not done that before. I use the DICTIONARY in the header that sets the zoom based on MP type - this way you don't have to set zoom levels for each item. I'm not sure I'm understanding the question completely so let me know if I'm off track... Thanks,

Pick your maps from West, switch to Central, pick your maps from Central, upload ALL your selections to your GPS.

Where's the challenge in that (for you)??? Get your file here: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/display/conve...45023-25893.gpx Not sure how long it will be there. I got it using this one which is a little more robust on the input file: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert Hope that helps,

Try this: Excel -> csv -> GpsVisualizer -> gpx -> MapSource http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/gpsbabel/ Input: comma separated values Output: GPX Xml You'll need to get your csv to resemble: 35.97203, -87.13470, Mountain Bike Heaven by susy1313 36.09068, -86.67955, The Troll by a182pilot & Family 35.99627, -86.62012, Dive Bomber by JoGPS & family 36.03848, -86.64862, FOSTER by JoGPS & Family

Try this: Excel -> csv -> GpsVisualizer -> gpx -> MapSource http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/gpsbabel/

Hey, my home state too! Here are some tutorials that will give you an idea of what's involved: http://home.cinci.rr.com/creek/garmin.htm http://www.gpsinformation.org/adamnewham/a...1/gpsmapper.htm http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=146955 There's also a good pdf linked to earlier in this thread. Hope that helps,

Well, if you're only wanting to do small areas, there's GpsMapEdit, MapMan and Mapwel:http://www.geopainting.com/en/ http://www.mapman.org.uk/ http://www.mapwel.biz/ Larger areas (states) will inevitably require some type of processing - working with shapefiles, DEM files, etc. GM is very handy for this but there are also some freeware/open source GIS applications out there. I haven't used any of them so I don't have any recommendations...

I process them all separtely and in the end load them together and export to MP. I loaded up the whole state and suffered through the slowness to separate the perennial from the intermittent. From there working with the perennial wasn't too bad. One GM trick you might already know - zoom in extremely close before doing the search by attributes, the processing still takes time but this removes the long screen refreshes... Thanks,

I'm gridding to 100K tiles - 1 deg x 1/2 deg. The settings (all default) for GM are: Resoultion X: 0.000104605841386575 arc deg Y: 0.000081169112836251 arc deg Interpolate... checked Smooth... checked Simplification 0.50 I also use the "Export Contours Directly to Package Files..." option.

Hi Oz, I think your problem is too much detail. Here is a portion of your contours at 1:5000: Here is a portion of one of my contours at 1:5000: Each "dot" is a vertice. Now my example contours are probably not detailed enough but I think yours are way too detailed - they look fantastic but I have a feeling that it would take "forever" to compile and your img file sizes will end up pretty large. Also, I'm not an expert on the compiling, but I think your resolution is probably greater than what the GPS is capable of so the compiler will probably spend a lot of time simplifying the data anyways... Maybe you could take a small area and do some testing - see how long it takes and what the file sizes end up being... Hope that helps - let me know what you find out (if you do any testing).

Here's a non-garmin option: http://rwsmaps.griffel.se/

I used the following referencehttp://nhd.usgs.gov/NHDinGEO_FCodes_by_layer.pdf to decode the ftype/fcode from the shapefile. I don't have my laptap booted yet - where my notes are - but from the top of my head the waterbody mapped pretty well: glacier lake, wetlands... For area I believe I mapped almost everything (paths, canals, connectors, etc.) to small streams...

I haven't added the NHD data yet. That was just contours. 40 ft contours, interpolating if needed.Wow, that is big just for contours... Did you adjust the simplification in GM or leave it at default? And this was for a 100K quad - 1deg x 1/2 deg? If you want and if you have a server you can put it on I could download it and take a look... I haven't finalized by mapping yet. I kept most of the area/waterbody data but simplified it down to only a few types. For the flowline data - not final - but I'm pretty sure I'm going to leave the intermittent stuff out...it's just a little to much.

Sounds reasonable. I just checked WY and it took ~25 hours to generate the contours. To force your quads to line up to the 100K, use the Export Bounds tab in GM, set the West to the left most quad, East to the right most, etc. That seems too big. My WY 100K MP files averaged about 30MB. Now those didn't have the NHD data but I wouldn't think that data would increase the MP by a factor of 10... Let me know if any of that doesn't make any sense...

Thanks for the tip! That will help tremendously. No, I don't have any special sources. I generally look for the following (in my preferred order): - state GIS agency - state DOT - other (Google) - Tiger CO it was DOT, WY was Tiger, UT was state GIS... Thanks,

You can send it all - I should be able to sort it out pretty easily. Are these DEM or shapefiles (contours)? Shapefiles shouldn't be a problem. If it's DEM I can give it a try - I've never tried a file that big.

Hi pasayten_pete, I use GlobalMapper (GM) and several of its features to generate contours. I'll describe the process I use and the corresponding GM terminology but I'm guessing most GIS applications have equivalent functionality. - I add all of the NED DEM files into a GM catalog. The catalog is simply an index of all the data files and can be configured as to what zoom levels the data appears. The catalog can then be loaded into GM and manipulated or utilized as any other data layer. The key feature is GM will only load into memory those tiles of the catalog that need to be for the current view or process. - I use GM to generate the contours into shapefiles for the entire state. I have GM grid the output back into 100K tiles and also compress the shapefiles into a zip like archive. I've checked the seams between tiles on various occasions and never noticed any issues.

I checked my Garmin GPSmap 76CSx. It had all those except: - no French - no OSGB - no single Indian, several India Zone XX Hope the helps,