Loc,mps Files

[RJHastinger]

I have downloaded waypoints from geocaching.com to a LOC file. I have also converted these to Mapsource format using Babel. However, geocaching only allows you to download a page of waypoints at a time. If I download page 1, then page 2, then page 3 from geocaching (those closest to home), how can I pull these LOC files into one big LOC file OR after converting these to MPS files, pull all of the MPS files into one big MPS file for use in MapSource? MapSource doesn't appear to allow 'adding' of new files. I would like to print maps from MapSource containing all of the waypoints for that area of the map, not just Page 1 from geocaching.com for that area, then Page 2 for that area, etc. Any ideas?

[Swagger]

You could use your favorite text editor to combine the .loc files. Just open one up, select all the <waypoint>...</waypoint> data and paste it into the bottom of another .loc file, just after the last </waypoint>.

 

With MapSource, you can select the items (waypoints, routes, whatever), hit CTRL-C to copy them to the clipboard, then paste them into another instance of MapSource. It's clunky and they really should support a better way of doing it, but it works.

 

You should probably also check out GSAK. It'll do all that stuff and more.

[robertlipe]

Since you're already using GPSBabel, just use the merging capabilities to glom them together. You can do this with any format - loc or mps - but the song basically goes like:

 

gpsbabel -i loc -f file1.loc -f file2.loc -f file3.loc -o mapsource -F blah.mps

 

(If this had been asked in "units and software" you'd likely have had an answer sooner.)

[RJHastinger]

Thanks everyone for the information. I was able to combine the files easily using GSAK, but I'll keep the other ideas in mind. It took some experimentation with GSAK to get the files to load in my GPS with the proper fields from Mapsource but I think I've got it now.

[+Record Holders]

The application EasyMPS is ready made for this task. You simply drag the .loc files into EasyMPS. When they're all there, you click the Open MapSource option. It can't get a lot easier than that (other than MapSource doing it directly!)

[mraymondus]

I second the suggestion of EasyMPS. I was using several tools to get geocaching data loaded into my 60C. I almost paid for ExpertGPS (about$50) just to get USB compatibility - then I found EasyMPS.

 

It's perfect - it can format your waypoints (in a limited fashion). It can load/merge multple .mps and .loc files. And it can automatically open one or more files into Mapsource.

 

Just what I was looking for.

 

Mike