Isn't it time Garmin changed the way maps are loaded?

[Michael Cook]

I'm sitting here waiting for my Mac to finish loading maps onto my 60csx and musing on why I have to reload all the maps when I'm just adding two new segments.

 

Once upon a time, Garmin GPS units didn't have much room to store maps on. When you needed maps for a particular place you were going to visit, you loaded just those maps. When you made a trip somewhere else, you would load the maps for the new trip, automatically replacing the previous ones.

 

And that was OK, because you didn't have much room on the unit. It meant you had to reload maps pretty often, but it didn't take long so that wasn't too bad.

 

Since those ancient days, things have changed. Now you can have a card in the unit that can hold lots and lots and lots of maps. So that's nice: you load all your maps onto the unit and you don't have to bother with loading new maps for each trip.

 

At least, that's nice as long as the card on the unit can hold all the maps you've got. But what happens when the card doesn't have room for all your maps? Let's look at my situation: I have a large portion of City Navigator Europe loaded onto the 2 GB card in my 60csx. I also have maps from Topo Germany covering just the Rhein-Neckar region, where I live. There's not enough space left on the card to put all the Topo Germany maps.

 

What happens when I decide to take a trip to another part of Germany and need to load a few Topo map segments for that region? In order to add those few segments to the maps already on the card, I have to reload all the maps that were on the card, together with the few new segments. This is what I'm doing at the moment. The process has been going on for more than 4 hours on my Mac and Mapinstall tells me that there's still 1 hour and 52 minutes to go.

 

It's time Garmin changed the way map segments are handled on the device. Now that we can have so many maps on it, we need to be able to add or remove a few map segments without having to reload all the maps.

[+AndrewRJ]

I'm sitting here waiting for my Mac to finish loading maps onto my 60csx and musing on why I have to reload all the maps when I'm just adding two new segments.

 

Once upon a time, Garmin GPS units didn't have much room to store maps on. When you needed maps for a particular place you were going to visit, you loaded just those maps. When you made a trip somewhere else, you would load the maps for the new trip, automatically replacing the previous ones.

 

And that was OK, because you didn't have much room on the unit. It meant you had to reload maps pretty often, but it didn't take long so that wasn't too bad.

 

Since those ancient days, things have changed. Now you can have a card in the unit that can hold lots and lots and lots of maps. So that's nice: you load all your maps onto the unit and you don't have to bother with loading new maps for each trip.

 

At least, that's nice as long as the card on the unit can hold all the maps you've got. But what happens when the card doesn't have room for all your maps? Let's look at my situation: I have a large portion of City Navigator Europe loaded onto the 2 GB card in my 60csx. I also have maps from Topo Germany covering just the Rhein-Neckar region, where I live. There's not enough space left on the card to put all the Topo Germany maps.

 

What happens when I decide to take a trip to another part of Germany and need to load a few Topo map segments for that region? In order to add those few segments to the maps already on the card, I have to reload all the maps that were on the card, together with the few new segments. This is what I'm doing at the moment. The process has been going on for more than 4 hours on my Mac and Mapinstall tells me that there's still 1 hour and 52 minutes to go.

 

It's time Garmin changed the way map segments are handled on the device. Now that we can have so many maps on it, we need to be able to add or remove a few map segments without having to reload all the maps.

Not sure about adding several segments to a mapping product already installed like you are doing, but the Colorados already alow you to just add extra maps. Out where I live we have the NW trail mapping project that gets updated every few weeks or so and on a Colorado you can just update the one file and do not need to update your city select or topo maps.

 

I wish the 60 series did this as well. I am in the same boat as you are.

[+StarBrand]

While I agree with what you are saying... there is a simple solution.

 

Get more than one memory card and load the maps as needed onto the unit. The cards a very cheap these days.

[+g-o-cashers]

Another option is to use something like GMapTool. You can use it split and join maps into an existing image w/o having to rebuild every time.

 

I haven't actually tried it myself but several users on my wiki's have suggested it and I'm thinking about putting a "howto" together.

 

The new easy to use GUI based version of gmaptool is here:

 

http://www.anpo.republika.pl/files/wgmaptool039.zip

 

GO$Rs

[sokolo0]

Simple and fast: gmaptool

Try GmapTool. http://www.anpo.republika.pl/download.html#gmaptool

It is very simple programme. Read readme.txt from unpacked file.

Joins .img files generated by Mapsource and creates one gmappsup.img file ready to transfer to GPSr.

 

Creating that one gmapsupp.img takes about 30 -60 seconds.

Copying on SD card (micro-SD) in computer card slot - 1 - 2 minutes.

Installation in GPSr - 1 minute.

END

 

But - it works on PC.

 

Christopher

[Ken in Regina]

Does the Gmap tool include all the location and POI data? Eg. if you combine a bunch of Garmin's .img files into a gmapsupp.img file, will you be able to search city names, addresses, intersections and POIs?

 

...ken...

[+splashy]

You can compile a map to your 2 g SD copy that map to the computer rename the gmapsupp.img map with the right name of that segment, so you know what's what.

Compile the next map you might need and so on until you have all the maps you need.

By the time you need another map just copy the map to the sd or gps and rename it gmapsupp.img

[sokolo0]

You can do nearly everything with .img files.

Version working from command line is in catalogue GMT ( file gmt.exe). You can find "readme" files with instructions in English.

Version working in Windows : GMapTool v. 0.3.9 is in Polish, but you can change in seconds through "Opcje> Język >" ( "Options> Language>") into English.

 

If you like illustrated instructions - look at this post in one of Polish GPSforums "Garniak" : http://www.garniak.pl/viewtopic.php?p=24392#p24392

screenshots from command line version. Just for orientation.

Some posts in this thread are in English.

 

Christopher

Edited November 24, 2008 by sokolo0

[Michael Cook]

Not sure about adding several segments to a mapping product already installed like you are doing, but the Colorados already alow you to just add extra maps. Out where I live we have the NW trail mapping project that gets updated every few weeks or so and on a Colorado you can just update the one file and do not need to update your city select or topo maps.

Thanks, I didn't know that. That would be a good reason for buying a Colorado. But apart from this annoyance I'm happy with the 60csx, and I don't have the money for a new GPS.

 

Another option is to use something like GMapTool. You can use it split and join maps into an existing image w/o having to rebuild every time.

Too bad: I'm on Mac. It would be great is somebody made Mac versions of tools such as this.

 

You can compile a map to your 2 g SD copy that map to the computer rename the gmapsupp.img map with the right name of that segment, so you know what's what.

Compile the next map you might need and so on until you have all the maps you need.

By the time you need another map just copy the map to the sd or gps and rename it gmapsupp.img

That's a partial solution that I have indeed used. I already have a few different versions of gmapsupp.img that I keep in different folders. But if, like today, I need to add a few segments I've never used before, I'm stuck with loading the maps with MapInstall.

 

Thanks for the ideas. I might buy a couple more SD cards.

[Ken in Regina]

Not sure about adding several segments to a mapping product already installed like you are doing, but the Colorados already alow you to just add extra maps. Out where I live we have the NW trail mapping project that gets updated every few weeks or so and on a Colorado you can just update the one file and do not need to update your city select or topo maps.

 

I wish the 60 series did this as well. I am in the same boat as you are.

I think we may be talking about two different things here. Do the Colorados come with preinstalled maps?

 

On those units, like Nuvis and Mobile PC, that come with preinstalled maps the preinstalled map file is named gmapprom.img. So this allows you to also have a gmapsupp.img and replace it as often as you like with anything you like, without affecting the maps that are in the gmapprom.img file.

 

That means you can have, say, City Navigator road maps preinstalled on the unit. Those maps are in gmapprom.img. Then you can use Mapsource to add, say, your NW trail maps into the gmapsupp.img file. Both will coexist and you just switch between them on the unit, using "Manage Data", "Mapsets", or the equivalent commands on your unit.

 

This isn't the same as being able to just add individual .img files to an existing gmapsupp.img file without recompiling the whole thing.

 

...ken...

[+JSWilson64]

Another option is to use something like GMapTool. You can use it split and join maps into an existing image w/o having to rebuild every time.

Too bad: I'm on Mac. It would be great is somebody made Mac versions of tools such as this.

 

It would be great if there were enough Mac users out there to make it worth the programmers' effort.

[+GeekBoy.from.Illinois]

I think we may be talking about two different things here. Do the Colorados come with preinstalled maps?

 

On those units, like Nuvis and Mobile PC, that come with preinstalled maps the preinstalled map file is named gmapprom.img. So this allows you to also have a gmapsupp.img and replace it as often as you like with anything you like, without affecting the maps that are in the gmapprom.img file.

 

That means you can have, say, City Navigator road maps preinstalled on the unit. Those maps are in gmapprom.img. Then you can use Mapsource to add, say, your NW trail maps into the gmapsupp.img file. Both will coexist and you just switch between them on the unit, using "Manage Data", "Mapsets", or the equivalent commands on your unit.

 

This isn't the same as being able to just add individual .img files to an existing gmapsupp.img file without recompiling the whole thing.

 

...ken...

 

The Colorado supports the pre-installed maps (gmapprom.img for the 400t, gmapbmap.img for the 300) as well as the user installed maps (gmapsipp.img) stored in the internal memory. Additionally, the Colorado supports the user installed maps (gmapsupp.img) stored on an SD card in the card slot. This allows the Colorado users to have two different user map files (one in internal memory and one on the SD card) at the same time. I take advantage of this feature every time I use my Colorado 300.

[+splashy]

Gmapsipp.img on internal mem. is not seen by my Oregon.

[+g-o-cashers]

It should be gmapsupp.img not gmapsipp.img.

 

But I think the OP's original question was around gmapsupp.img. I have a 400t with gmapsupp.img loaded which is basically City Nav NT. A new topo map came out that I want to use. I was faced with rebuilding a new gmapsupp.img to include CN NT and the new topo map. By using GMapTool I simply built the topo map as a separate gmapsupp.img and joined it with the old gmapsupp.img to create a new image with both map sets in a matter of minutes.

 

GO$Rs

[Ken in Regina]

Thanks GO$Rs. That makes more sense to me. I couldn't figure any way the Colorado was special because, so far, Garmin has never made any device that can do anything to compile/re-compile/modify its own mapsets. You're still stuck with compiling a gmapsupp.img mapset with Mapsource. In that regard, GmapTool sounds very interesting.

 

I don't suppose it can also peel a specific map product (say, Metroguide Canada v4) out of an existing combined gmapsupp.img file (say, with MG Canada v4 and Ibycus Topos) so you can use it to add an updated version (say, Metroguide Canada v5) without having to recompile the whole thing?? That would probably be hoping for way too much!!

 

...ken...

[sokolo0]

On Colorado we can have 2 gmapsupp.img files. One in internal memory, second on SD card.

1. It is important to avoid keeping the same map ( part of map or older version of map ) in both gmapsupp.img files. Result: long start, slow work, and very often freezing of GPSr.

2. Colorado works with maksimum 9 or 10 different .TYP files. So if you merge - say - over 20 maps, it may happen that some details will present on screen differently than in original (Colorado will work with this map using other .TYP file).

Christopher

Edited November 28, 2008 by sokolo0