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Hi pasayten_pete, Since you have a lot of GIS knowledge/experience you should consider working with shapefiles (versus the MP polish format). Information and examples can be found here: http://cgpsmapper.com/esri.htm A tutorial is here: http://cgpsmapper.com/ESRITipsANDTricks.htm Regardless of which format you choose to work with, the work is the same: - determine what data sets you want - find the data - clean the data (this can take a lot of work) - process the data (generate contours for example) - determine your zoom levels (this will probably have to be iterative but you need something for the next step) - map the data you have to the corresponding Garmin type - compile you map I realize that's a very high overview. There are a lot of tutorials out on the web plus I'll try to answer any questions you may have. Hope that helps,

Utah Update Getting a lot of messages concerning Utah. I'm currently set - barring any issues - to release the Utah mapset this Saturday (probably afternoon/evening).

So far I haven't found any reference whith the NHD zip files that indicate the quad...the way I check is to load them up into GM and see where the gaps are. They may trickle in later - I wouldn't worry about them for now.

Hi Oz, I have a 100K index of the US (got it somewhere in Google land), I simply selected all the quads in a state, save the subset to a shapefile and the open the corresponding dbf file within my favorite spreadsheet application. Here's one for AZ: http://www.miscjunk.org/forum/ned/az_quads.xls Hope that helps,

Downloading NHD (Water) Data NHD data can be downloaded from the NHD viewer: http://nhdgeo.usgs.gov/ The viewer - when it works - seems to work the best using IE, once the viewer starts up look at the left hand side: Click on the "Zoom to State" tool and select your desired state. Now look at the layers dialog on the right hand side: The square check boxes determine what layers are visible while the round radio buttons determine what layer is active. The following settings are needed: Active: 100K Quad Index Visible: 100K Quad Index, States (at a minimum) Note that the active layer is indicated at the top of the layers dialog. Please note: Zooming will sometimes cause your visible/active layers to be changed. If you zoom make sure to check your visible/active settings. With those settings the display will look something like this: Now on the left hand side select the "Polygon Extract" tool: Now in the main display select a 100K quad region. To select a 100K quad region left click and drag a small box inside the region of interest. Please note that if you simply click inside a quad you will get erratic results - you need to drag a small box. After selecting a quad the following dialog will open: Select high resolution in the top section, shapefile in next section, leave the third section unchecked and put you email in the fourth section. Hit the Extract button and you should get a confirmation display. At some point in the future (it could be minutes, hours or days and sometimes never) you will get an email with a link for downloading the data. Some Notes - The 100K quad downloads are required so that I can somewhat easily correct some overlapping issues the data has. - The system sometime crashes - you'll know when it happens - just check back later and they usually get it reset pretty quickly - The server can be really slow during prime time, performance is much better late at night or early in the morning. - Some states, for example Utah, have agencies that have this data available via FTP which is MUCH, MUCH easier. So before you start on a state do some Googling.... Let me know if you have any questions....Thanks

Hi Phil&Phil2008, No, I haven't worked that far east yet. Other than a few midwestern states I'll probably be sticking to the western US for the near future...

Hi CallawayMT, Are you talking about something similar to the Cadastral data found here? http://nris.mt.gov/nsdi/cadastral/ Is that the 100K data you mentioned? I took a look at the statewide set and wow is that a dense set of data but very cool! I think that the data may be too dense if setup with the current zoom levels of the state mapsets. One of these days while I'm waiting for something to compile I'll try making a transparent mapset out of it to see how that works.

Hi snowfleurys, Thanks for the info! I'll have to check this out. Yes, I had already noticed this and was wondering if it was going to cause problems... I'll have to do some testing. Thanks again,

Hi Oz, Well since Utah is my first application of the high res data I'm still doing some testing. Fortunately - for Utah - there seems to be an extra attribute, "IsMajor", which roughly distinguishes between perennial and intermittent streams... I'm not sure what I'll do on the other states...

Is that 10 minutes for the entire quad (all 4? chunks) or is that for one chunk? If indeed for the entire quad than that is a nice connection you have (and the seamless server must be lightly loaded)... You guys are going to have the NED done really fast. I didn't want to scare you off before but the NED downloading is the easier of the two.... The NHD (water) data is downloaded by an irregular area (subbasin) so there isn't an easy way to go through the chunks - pretty much have to do some screen prints and mark off the ones you have downloaded. And the process is asynchronous - you pick the chunks and the server says thanks - we'll get back to you..... They do get back to you, sometimes in 5 minutes, sometimes in a couple of hours and sometimes in days... The GOOD NEWS is that there is a lot less data - it'll be 100's of MB for the water data versus multiple GB of elevation data. I'll post the instructions for the water data this weekend. Thanks,

No need to split apart and/or merge them as long as there is some attribute that indicates the "owner". The work is done in Geo Lat/Lon (WGS84) but whatever the native projection/datum is for the data is fine, GM will convert as necessary when loading in the layers. Thanks,

Hi yogazoo, Thank you for your help. I should be able to start on MT relatively soon, no promises on a completion date. It will be done in parallel with the CO update but I will need a week or so to get everything setup and moving on the CO work. Do you have the flowline (streams) and area (rivers) datafiles? I know what you mean about the streams but I can adjust zoom levels to keep them from coming on too early. And the high res stream data seems to a highly desired item on these maps. If you wouldn't mind sending that data I'll see what I can do with the zoom levels... Thanks again,

Cool! I'll take everything you want to send... I'll send you my mail address. Thanks,

Sorry to hear about your problems....but all is not lost! If you open the zip file and look at the file "Metadata.xml" there is bounding information specified. The file should be located in the following location: \00821674\00821674\Metadata.xml (for a zip file named 00821674.zip) If you look in the file and search for "bounding" you will see that it has the coordinates of that chunk of data. Let me know if any of that doesn't make any sense...

DVD via mail will work, I'll send you my address.

Hi, I think it works as two parts, the first being the vector data (roads, points, contours, etc.) and the second being the elevation data (which is just a big grid of numbers). Garmin maps (the vector data) can be transparent but I've never seen that other than on custom maps built by people. So the CN vectors and non-transparent "background" cover the vectors of any other map present on the unit (there is also a map priority involved which determines in what order the maps are layered)... On the other hand, the elevation data can be easily applied to any (and all) maps loaded.

It works for me on both of the following: IE 6 on XP (w/ SP2) IE 7 on Vista It doesn't work for me in Opera...

Hi Superduty1, No options need to be changed. At what point in the process do you get the error? What internet browser are you using? Thanks,

To get a screenshot, press and hold the right "soft key" button. There is no indication that anything happened but when you connect to a PC the screenshots will be in the internal memory.

Looks good. Here is a gradient representation of the raw data: And here are 40ft contours generated from a portion of that data:

Hi Barrikady, The data in columns B and C are not used - I should probably have hidden those columns. The data in columns D, E, F, and G are entered into the Lat/Lon boxes of the dialog: Column D goes into the top box. Column E (keep the negative sign) goes into the left box. Column F (keep the negative sign) goes into the right box. Column G goes into the bottom box. Hope that helps,

Hi pasayten_pete, For Canadian topos you should check out the following effort: http://www.ibycus.com/ibycustopo/ I don't know the details but there are a couple of threads on this forum discussing it.

Hi pasayten_pete, Just to warn you I have no formal training in GIS or cartography - please take it easy on me How do you like the 400t? I played with one for a week and saw a lot of potential...I'll probably end up getting a 300 at some point. If you'd like to help with the data collection and processing for WA (and possibly more) that woud be great... I use GlobalMapper for generating contours, most processing and generating the final MP (polish) files. I use Manifold for some complex processing (when needed) and cGpsMapper for the compilation into Garmin img files. As far as data I usually try to use the best available... I'll send you an email in the next few days.... Thanks,

Hi Marky, Wow - CA is a big state but if you want to give it a try see the NED instructions above to get started (I'll add one for the NHD data later). Here's a spreadsheet with the coords for each 100K quad in CA: http://www.miscjunk.org/forum/ned/ca_quads.xls Thanks,

Hi -Oz-, Hopefully your road data has some type of attribute that indicates road type or classification. I don't know what datasets you are using but for example, the Tiger datasets use Census Feature Class Codes (CFCCs) to indicate types of data. So in GlobalMapper (GM) I would used the Search->Search by Attributes... function to find all roads of a certain type, for example where the CFCC matchs A1* (which are Interstates). Once the search is complete you have a couple of options: - set the type to a GM type (which will get mapped to a MP type upon export to MP) - add a MP_TYPE attribute and set it to the MP type you want (this over-rides GMs mapping mentioned above) If your dataset does not have any attribute indicating road type then your only choice is to visually select roads and manually assign types - this method would only be practicle on very small areas... Hope that helps, let me know if you have any questions. PS: A nice tutorial on using GM for making Garmin maps can be obtained here: http://www.globalmapper.com/helpv9/cGPSMapper.pdf