IndyJpr

Downloading NED (Elevation) Data NED data can be downloaded from the National Map Seamless Server: http://seamless.usgs.gov/website/seamless/viewer.htm The viewer seems to work the best using IE, once the viewer starts up look at the right hand side: Click on the Download tab and make sure that 1/3" (10m) NED is the only item selected. Now look on the left hand side at the Downloads section: Click on the second icon, "Define Download Area By Coordinates" and the following dialog will open: The dialog will initially open with fields for Degrees, Minutes, Seconds - click on the bottom link to swith to Decimal Degrees (as shown in the figure). Here you enter the coordinates for an area (remember that east and west values have to be negative) and click on the "Add Area" button. The system will break the area into chunks and present Download buttons. Once you hit a Download button the system will work on extracting the data and eventually present you with an actual download link - click that and download the data. Some Notes - The system will let you select area via the UI but it won't let you select the whole state (there is a MB limit), therefore using the coordinate entry dialog is the best way to get complete coverage (with no gaps or overlaps). - I've found - for a typical size state - that using 100k quad areas is a good balance between area covered and number of tiles to download per area defined. But any size works as long as you can keep track of it all... - 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.... If anyone knows an easier way to obtain this data (while still being free) please share!

You guys (except superduty1) are missing "the catch": The elevation data is on National Map Seamless Server, the hydrography data is on the NHD Viewer - it's there, anyone can get it. I've done it for 3 states but I'm hoping to not do it again anytime soon.... The issue is that both use an interactive based UI that IS NOT geared towards large data extraction (probably on purpose). So it takes an evening or so grabbing the data, chunk by chunk, to get an entire state. I can give instructions on what steps to do - just somebody else needs to do it...

Hello All, I've been working on a Utah Topo mapset and should have it completed next week. After that I'll be doing a major revision on the Colorado mapset and then a clean-up revision of the Wyoming mapset. Here's a link for the information on the CO & WY mapsets: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...11&t=183357 What's next? In parallel with the above revisions I could start another state. I've had a lot of posts, emails, etc. suggesting which state I should do next. I don't really have a preference - my goals were CO & UT - so I thought I would let others pick the next state and help me out at the same time. Here's the proposal, the first person (group?) to send me a DVD with the NED & NHD data for their state will have that state done next. No special skills or software required - just a little time and patience (a fast Internet connection and DVD burner will also help). Currently I am only interested in the western US (MT, ID, NM, AZ, CA, NV, WA or OR). If anyone is interested let me know and I'll give you the specifics of what I need. If I receive multiple states I'll do them all (in the order received). If nobody is interested I'll probably take a break and work on some other projects... Thanks for all of your feedback and your help,

Does the Topo 24K from Garmin have DEM? Do you see it in MapSource? As far as I know Topo 2008 is the only mapset with DEM so my best guess is no, there would be no DEM with a 300 + Topo 24K...

What do you mean exactly by the above statements? You definitely have to select them all at once and upload them to your GPS. I can't image that there are any overlap issues since one is US and one is Europe but you might try hiding/showing mapsets as described here: http://www.miscjunk.org/mj/mp_mapset.html Hope that helps,

Hi -Oz-, It's really hard to say. I usually can only work on them - at most - for 2-3 hours a day and a little more on weekends. At that rate it takes about a month for a state although things are getting faster as I iron the kinks out of my workflow... Wyoming has some but I don't think CO has many. Hopefully for future revisions I'll be able to find some decent trail datasets or be able to hook up with some hiking clubs/forums to get access to their trail libraries. Thank you.

Hi snowfleurys & myotis, Thank you for the feedback. There are several known issues with the Wyoming mapset, most of them resulting from some oddities contained in the the Tiger dataset used to create the mapset. In the upcoming revisions I will try to clean-up the issues as much as I can. I had hoped to get the higher resolution hydrology into the mapsets on the first round but I simply ran out of time and/or energy. The current plan is to get CO updated during the next revision and WY sometime in the future. These state mapsets will probably never be "done" but I do hope to make iterative improvement as time (and motivation) allows... Thanks again for the feedback,

Just a little preview of what's coming for the Colorado mapset. n0wae is sharing an extensive track/waypoint collection that he and others have collected over the years and I'll be adding them to the mapset utilizing some custom line/points types. Here is the current mapset: Here it is updated (just a test, the road names may or may not be correct):

It looks like you have shapefiles...as far as making maps you're halfway there (versus starting from raster maps). Here are a few resources that will show you what is involved and/or get you started: http://home.cinci.rr.com/creek/garmin.htm http://www.gpsinformation.org/adamnewham/a...1/gpsmapper.htm http://cypherman1.googlepages.com/Creating...hMapSetTool.pdf

Custom types work - here is a map with custom lines and points: This map was overlayed on Topo 2008 on a 400t - hence the hill shading...

Hi Poenix2001, Thank you for the feedback. I went back and looked at the raw data and saw the issues you are seeing. I recall seeing some of this when I built the map. The two road layers, local and forest, were both obtained from CDOT. They do tend to overlap in a lot of areas but the local covers inner city residential roads (which forest does not) and the forest has a lot of rural roads that don't seem to be on the local (but I'm not sure if they still exist). For the rural roads, the local one actually seems to be more accurate (as you saw) but has poor labeling - just county road numbers (the 3 & 1008 you saw). The forest one has better label but it seems those labels may not be accurate... I'll just have to keep my eye out for better layers... Thanks again,

Thank you very much! I'm glad to hear you find them useful - thanks!

What tools do you use? Where do you get your data from? I'd like to produce my own topo maps, but I'm not sure where to start. Hi bargel, The tutorial that MtnHermit pointed to is a good one. You can also Google for the keywords: custom garmin map Software wise, the old standbys are GpsMapEdit (UI) and cGpsMapper (compiler). You can try those out without spending any money. I've never used it but I've heard good things about Mapwel - it is an all in one UI/compiler and supposedly has some pretty good tutorials. It has a trial version and a cheap personal version. Another one to check out is MapMan, I believe (like GpsMapEdit) it uses cGpsMapper as the backend (compiler). Hope that helps,

Hi yogazoo, How big is your MP file? What error is it spitting out? Thanks,

Hi jmedlock, The tutorial that MtnHermit pointed to is a good one. You can also Google for the keywords: custom garmin map Software wise, the old standbys are GpsMapEdit (UI) and cGpsMapper (compiler). You can try those out without spending any money. I've never used it but I've heard good things about Mapwel - it is an all in one UI/compiler and supposedly has some pretty good tutorials. It has a trial version and a cheap personal version. Another one to check out is MapMan, I believe (like GpsMapEdit) it uses cGpsMapper as the backend (compiler). Hope that helps,

You may be right, but I have a hunch that the DEMs are embedded in the Colorado basemap. Clearly more testing is needed. Agree on the "Yet". Yeah, I don't know - I'm currently leaning to the "embedded in the map (img) file" camp only because when I turned off the "Topo 2008 maps" on the 400t my maps were flat. They only showed the hill shading when the "Topo 2008 maps" were turned on... Yes, I think they unofficially support raster maps (one of the base maps on one of the 300s is a raster file). But Garmin has not released any products to take advantage of it and of course no one has figured out how to use custom rasters.... ("yet ") Well, the problem is if I charged for them people would (rightfully) expect a higher level of support that I'm just not able to offer... I figure if people find them useful they'll donate, even if it's just $5-10. Any amount helps (and it adds up...) I've looked at the high res hydro data before but unless I'm missing something it seems to have the most painful UI I've ever seen in respect to trying to download a whole states worth of the data. I'll have to take another look at it one of these days... Thanks,

See the "win the lottery" requirement in the above post.... Thanks,

Hi yogazoo, Now don't get me wrong, money buys toys, is a great motivator and I'll happily accept donations but I think I would have to win the lottery to make any money at this... That looks like a good set of data so that shouldn't be a problem. Sure, I can consider it...can't promise anything. It takes me about a month (a few hours a night plus a little more on weekends) to do a state start to finish. I've got Utah to finish and Colorado needs an updating so it would probably be mid to late March before I could even consider it... Thanks,

Hi n0wae, I'm glad you like the maps, thank you for the kind words. I am interested in your track library. After finishing Utah I was planning on going back and doing another revision of Colorado, some misc. clean-up and incorporating the 4wd trails I had from my other mapset (CO 4WD trails). If you could help with providing trail data I would certainly try to get them put into the mapset - I would of course give credit to you/your club (and any others) as source of the data. What I would be looking for as far as data would be: - relatively clean track data (not raw track logs but somewhat processed to remove track backs, etc.) - trail name - waypoints indicating obstacles, landmarks (and other POIs) would be nice but not required - and of course I would need permission from the owners/source of data for me to use it If you're still interested, shoot me an email to the contact email on my website. Thanks,

Hi yogazoo, A lot of people make large (state size and bigger) mapsets without breaking up the data but I was never a fan of that. I always break mine up in small chunks so that if there are any issues in compiling the maps I find it in minutes instead of hours... Here's some timing information from my projects, all pure computing time: - compliling 40ft elevation contours from 10m DEM for an entire state, 6-10 hours - exporting MP (polish) data from final data, 1-5 minutes per tile, 1-3 hours for an entire state - compiling the GPS files from the MP data, 5-10 minutes per tile, 5-10 hours for an entire state And of course before any of the above happen there are high 10's of hours in manually finding, downloading, processing and configuring the data... Thanks,

You don't have to do it one at a time...when you are at that screen hit the menu key again and use the Show/Hide options... See here: http://www.miscjunk.org/mj/mp_mapset.html

Hi MtnHermit, It is my custom map (the CO mapset) but it is draped on top of the Topo 2008 DEM. The shading is from the underlying Topo 2008 DEM - my mapset does not have any DEM. (As far as I know no one has figured out to embed DEM in custom mapsets - yet.) I believe in my CO mapset they are both set to National Forest so they should appear as the same color. The 400t seems to have its own ideas on coloring features so I'm not sure why they appear as different colors. I would do some more checking but I returned the 400t (I hope to eventually buy the 300 but I'm waiting for some HW/firmware improvements and hopefully raster support...) Thanks,

http://gpsnow.com/gmmstp.htm

You don't have to do it the segment by segment - when you are at the screen where you do that hit the Menu key again... See here: http://www.miscjunk.org/mj/mp_mapset.html

proimion & cobra-ak - Thank you for the kind words. proimion - As SiliconFiend mentioned transparent maps have a lot of advantages, mainly that you can overlay them on any other map and still have your data set. I'll contact you offline over the weekend. Thanks,