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Free Topo Maps for Garmin GPS

ibycus

By ibycus
in Canada

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ibycus

+ibycus

Posted
Posted

I'm a little bored. I'm trying to decide what area to make some topo maps for that I can load to my Garmin GPS.

 

I have the data downloaded for 031, 032, 033, 034, 042, 043, 044, 052, 053, 054, 062, 063, 064, 072, 073, 074, 082, 083, 084, 092, 093, 094, 102, 103.

 

I've already built 082, 083, 084 (they need some work, but I can't get them to upload and replace the originals, so I'm leaving those to one side for now).

 

First person to reply asking for an NTS grid in the above list, I'll build the topo maps for (and put them online). Anyone have any suggestions?

 

This link http://www.geobase.ca/geobase/en/browse.do...p;decoupage=50k shows the NTS grid system for Canada, showing the areas covered by each of the above squares.

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ibycus

+ibycus

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I've got a set of 3 programs (that I wrote) that I run on the data.

 

1. Determine contour intervals. This allows the assigning of major/minor contours.

2. This program reads all the input shape files, and determines, based on file name what output file to translate them in to. It also needs to make entity type assignments. The file format I need to upload to mapcenter has a different set of allowable elements than the input file. Every time I hit an element type that I don't already know, a message box pops up and asks me what I want to assign it to in the output file (so the input could be something like "wat_dis_l", and the output something like 0x0013).

3. The final program adds in the road data. The road data distributed with the topo maps is ridiculously out of date, so I'm taking my roads from a different source (geobase.ca), that is less than a year old.

 

Last but not least, I have to write a little script to (one at a time) rename each of my map files to build.mp, then individually zip them, and upload them (using cURL) to mapcenter for compilation. I mostly use excel, and wordpad to make the batch file.

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ibycus

+ibycus

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Boy the Ontario Road Network is HUGE.... About 1/2 x the size of the largest of the others that I've downloaded (strangely the number of km isn't that much more....).

 

I'm curious to see what's in there. Here's hoping there is something interesting in the DBF.

 

Anyways, I've added the roads for the sections of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Just waiting for the Ontario roads to download.

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ibycus

+ibycus

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As I'm just about done with the above two grids, I'm willing to entertain suggestions for others.

 

082-->084 is also out, as I've already done those, just have to figure out the best way to upload them. If you're good at scripting, and want to give it a shot, let me know, and we can chat...

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Plasma Boy

+Plasma Boy

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I'm now in the process of uploading the two NTS grids to http://mapcenter.cgpsmapper.com. Could take a while though, as they total about 1.88GB of data (uncompressed) after zipping, they should be about 1/3 of that (compiling them will make them much smaller still)

 

Question. I have Topo Canada. It is a few years old. Are the maps you produce more up to date? More detailed? Are they a better alternative to the TOPO Canada set or are they similar?

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ibycus

+ibycus

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I'm now in the process of uploading the two NTS grids to http://mapcenter.cgpsmapper.com. Could take a while though, as they total about 1.88GB of data (uncompressed) after zipping, they should be about 1/3 of that (compiling them will make them much smaller still)

 

Question. I have Topo Canada. It is a few years old. Are the maps you produce more up to date? More detailed? Are they a better alternative to the TOPO Canada set or are they similar?

 

The road data on my maps was released by the Canadian Government in June. Depending on the area, the data has varying dates (oldest is August 2002, newest is February 2007).

 

The topo data is (as far as I know) as detailed as it gets. I don't have Topo Canada, so I'm not sure of how the detail compares generally, but in the areas I've seen my contours seem smoother.

 

Problems with mine... no autorouting, no road names.

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Grizzly_Quebec

Grizzly_Quebec

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Hi that's very good maps. Good job Ibycus!

 

I did download the "TopoMaps.msi" in 3.5hrs !

Install went well.

Just click on the file, and let Windows installer go... Lauch MapSource, and the Topo maps should show up in the maps selection dropdown menu as "ibycus Topo 1.0"

 

Ibycus, any plan to add 21-22-31-32 (Québec) in the selection?

 

thanks.

Edited by Grizzly_Quebec
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ibycus

+ibycus

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Hi that's very good maps. Good job Ibycus!

 

I did download the "TopoMaps.msi" in 3.5hrs !

Install went well.

Just click on the file, and let Windows installer go... Lauch MapSource, and the Topo maps should show up in the maps selection dropdown menu as "ibycus Topo 1.0"

 

Ibycus, any plan to add 21-22-31-32 (Québec) in the selection?

 

thanks.

 

Eventually, I plan to add all of Canada. I've been holding off on Québec a little, as I think I should do it in French, rather than English, but my dataset isn't split by province, its split by NTS grid (except roads... roads are split by province).

 

I might (for the time being) do it in English (as thats the dataset I have downloaded), and see about re-doing it in French at a later time.

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ibycus

+ibycus

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By the time you read this, the upload should pretty much be done (~3 minutes left).

 

Go to http://www.ibycus.com/ibycustopo/TopoMaps.msi

 

If you have any trouble, let me know.

 

Before I DL and install this rather large package, what will I get at the end? Is there an exe that will launch like mapsource and load maps?

 

At the end, you'll get a Windows installer. Run the installer, and you'll end up with another package in Mapsource (similar to how you'd see TopoCanada).

 

If you don't have Mapsource (or Trip and Waypoint Manager), you have to jump through a few hoops to get it on your GPS, but its still do-able (using the above mentioned Sendmap program)

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ibycus

+ibycus

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I got it!

I didn't realize I needed to look in Mapsource to find it, but there it was! It looks great. Thanks!

- hamgran

 

Horray! I appreciate any feedback you might have as far as things like layering (what shows at what zoom), and entity classification goes (i.e. if I've done something silly like call a river a road or something like that).

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Red90

+Red90

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It installed fine for me.

 

Looks great. Better than Topo Canada. The extra information over Topo Canada should be handy in many instances.

 

Some minor roads are showing up as 0xb (Major Highway Connector) and level 2. See 10821516.img as an example.

 

On levels.

- Cutlines show to level 2. Level 0 would be OK IMO.

- Minor roads show to level 1. Again level 0 would be OK, but I understand the problem with the limited road classification in the data.

- Use label "cutline" for the cutlines. Without a label they display with the label "powerline".

 

Some minor roads are showing up as 0xb (Major Highway Connector) and level 2. See 10821516.img as an example.

 

Thanks Ibycus. Much appreciated!!

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ibycus

+ibycus

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It installed fine for me.

 

Looks great. Better than Topo Canada. The extra information over Topo Canada should be handy in many instances.

 

Some minor roads are showing up as 0xb (Major Highway Connector) and level 2. See 10821516.img as an example.

 

On levels.

- Cutlines show to level 2. Level 0 would be OK IMO.

 

Fixed... This was a matter of not noticing.

 

- Minor roads show to level 1. Again level 0 would be OK, but I understand the problem with the limited road classification in the data.

 

At least for now, I think I'll keep this like this. (pending what other people think) I've always thought mapsource maps cut out the road data way too early.

 

- Use label "cutline" for the cutlines. Without a label they display with the label "powerline".

 

Kept forgetting about that. (I know you mentioned it way back) I've fixed this (I hope... it involved a registry edit with some non printable characters, so hopefully they cut and pasted OK)

 

Some minor roads are showing up as 0xb (Major Highway Connector) and level 2. See 10821516.img as an example.

 

Changed this. These were "Resource / Recreation" roads. Looks like it was a matter of me not reading in a straight line. I've made them 0xa (unpaved road).

 

Thanks Ibycus. Much appreciated!!

 

No problem!

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