Lowrance MapCreate 6.3 Problem

[WR8Y]

I have an Expedition C and recently, I saved all my trails and waypoints to the SD card and then saved them on my PC.

 

Well, I erased all the memory in the Expedition, so I loaded the trails and waypoints back into it from the SD card. Everything was there, except - all the trails had defaulted to solid green!

 

WHen I saved them to the card, I had many of them set to different colors AND different patterns.

 

Why did I lose that information? I had to go back thru and re-set-up each trail with the color and pattern I wanted it to have. Seems silly that they'd write this software - which does SO MUCH, and yet make so provision for the software to remember trail colors and patterns.

 

Any way around this?????

 

THanks in advance,

 

Mark

WR8Y

[+Indotguy]

I have no explanation for why they wrote the software the way they did. On the other hand, what is YOUR explanation for erasing all the data? (hehe, just kidding)

[+user13371]

And the answer is: Lowrance did a silly thing. They have in some areas extended the display abilities of their GPS units and PC software - but didn't update the file formats that store the display styles.

 

When you VIEW trails on the iFinder's screen, you can set the line styles.

 

When you SAVE the data to the SD card, the line style data is not preserved. The trail portion of data file contains only the trail points. So, when you reload data from the save file, the displayed line-styles go back to the default solid lines.

 

Now, as for WHY they did it that way? Just a guess, but they may want the USR file format to stay in a format that's compatible across their whole product line - and that means limiting it to lowest common denominator features suported by the oldest units.

Edited September 16, 2006 by lee_rimar

[WR8Y]

Sounds reasonable to me, Lee.

 

Thanks.

[+knoffer]

Yeah I agree that the software to the Expedition C conversion is lousy. I love the new waypoint markers for Geocaching however when I load that data to Mapcreate I just get the stupid blue and white box marker. Then if I load it back onto the card and pick that .usr file on the Expedition C that is what shows up. What a dumb thing to do. What is the purpose of having these nice Waypoint marker icons if you can't manipulate them in the Mapcreate software. I think they either need to upadte the Mapcreate software or create and addendum for Geocaching.

Just my 2 cents.

[+Airmapper]

Knoffer, what are you using for Geocache organization?

 

Mapcreate is not the best at waypoint management, but Geocaching is a lot more demanding than most people's GPS needs. Use a program like GSAK or EasyGPS to manage your Geocache data, those programs are designed to handle large amounts of waypoints, and keep them organized.

 

I haven't noticed having icons stay at default (Waypoint Type #1) once I set them they stay on that icon (and I use a different icon for each cache type.)

 

EDIT:

I seen you post elsewhere that you use GSAK. I agree MapCreate is clumsy when it comes to managing waypoints. I mostly use it to view waypoint files on the TOPO, and load the mapping. I use other programs for most tasks.

Edited October 9, 2006 by Airmapper

[+knoffer]

Airmapper,

 

Thanks for the feedback and yes I do use GSAK and love it for orginization of caches. It would be nice to create routes using Mapcreate just because of the finer detail and learning the lay of the land as I'm creating the routes. I'm sure I can work around it. The waypoint symbols I'm refering are the new Geocahce specific ones available in the Expedition C and GSAK has the functionality to tie these to the various caches so I can create a .USR file reflecting the cache specific symbols. Just a pet peeve I guess.

 

Thanks

 

P.S. Joined the Lowrance users forum today.