My Garmin Tracks

[ozzman69]

I have a Garmin Legend Hcx. I have made some tracks from our hunting area showing all the trails. When I use Mapsource, I can have them all together on the screen but when I send them back to the gps, I have to bring them up separately by name to find one at a time. This is quite annoying. When someone sends me tracks of theirs and I put them into the gps, I can just zoom into the area and I see all the tracks at once. What am I doing wrong with my tracks? Am I saving them in Mapsource as the wrong file type? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also does anyone have Garmin's new hunting waypoint icons? I wanted to add them to my gps. Thanks.

[+twolpert]

Not familiar with the HCx. However, it sounds like you may have separate tracks in MapSource, which are then being downloaded to the device as separate tracks. You might try joining multiple tracks in MapSource before downloading. However, you will then likely have to watch for the upper limit on the number of trackpoints in the HCx.

 

You might also consider simplifying your tracks in MapSource and turning them into routes. This is only going to work if the resulting routes have many, many fewer points than the tracks. The HCx probably has much lower limits on the number of waypoints (turns in the route) and routes than it does trackpoints.

[Ken in Regina]

Hi Tom,

 

Your guess is correct. If you have multiple tracks listed on the Tracks tab in MapSource and download them to the Legend HCx (I have one) you get multiple tracks on the handheld and, therefore, the problem described in the original post.

 

Your solution is the one I use.

 

For the original poster ... Just select the tracks on the Tracks tab that you want joined into a single track, right-click and select "Join tracks ...". It's really that simple. You can review the combined track and if you're happy with it, name it something meaningful, transfer it to the Legend HCx and you're in business.

 

If there is extraneous stuff in one or more of the tracks you want to join, you can use the Track Properties window to delete the segments you don't want. Once you have the individual tracks cleaned up the way you want, you can do the Join, etc. MapSource has some very powerful track management features if you take a few minutes to explore them.

 

...ken...

[roybassist]

I don’t have a Legend, but I don’t think there is much difference between it and the 60/76 series when it comes to how they handle tracks; so I’m going to base my answers on how the latter operate and I think it will apply to your situation.

 

I have a Garmin Legend Hcx. I have made some tracks from our hunting area showing all the trails. When I use Mapsource, I can have them all together on the screen but when I send them back to the gps, I have to bring them up separately by name to find one at a time. This is quite annoying. When someone sends me tracks of theirs and I put them into the gps, I can just zoom into the area and I see all the tracks at once.

How do other people send their tracks to you? As a MapSource file? I presume that’s the case.

 

What am I doing wrong with my tracks? Am I saving them in Mapsource as the wrong file type?

I wonder if what you’re doing is giving the tracks in MapSource a name that doesn’t start with ACTIVE LOG. Naming them something else causes tracks to be loaded as Saved Tracks when you send them to the receiver. (It will also truncate tracks if they have more than 500 points.) Saved tracks don’t automatically show up on the receiver unless you highlight the track, press ENTER, then check the box on that page that says Show On Map. You can also change the color there.

 

If I guess correctly, the tracks you have received from other people have not been renamed in MapSource, so the names still start with ACTIVE LOG. When track names start with ACTIVE LOG and you send them to the unit from MapSource, they are loaded into the (surprise! ) Active Log. These automatically show up on the map screen.

 

If I guessed correctly that the tracks from other people are coming to you as a MapSource file, look at the tracks tab in their file and see what the names of the tracks are. Compare that with your own files and see whether what I’ve said might apply.

[geopony99]

 

If there is extraneous stuff in one or more of the tracks you want to join, you can use the Track Properties window to delete the segments you don't want. Once you have the individual tracks cleaned up the way you want, you can do the Join, etc. MapSource has some very powerful track management features if you take a few minutes to explore them.

 

...ken...

I would like to show the tracks on the topo maps as just lines instead of the dots and lines, then print them out. Is there a way to do this?

[GeoBobC]

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=206359