[ibycus]

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.

[KFBradley]

072

[hamgran]

052, it's my moose hunting area.

[ibycus]

In the process of processing 11693 files that cover 072 and 052.

[ibycus]

I'm up to file 4652 of 11693... It has to keep stopping when ever it gets to an element it doesn't recognize.

[hamgran]

How do you 'build' something like that? How does that work? Sounds interesting.
- hamgran

[ibycus]

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 The road data distributed with the topo maps is ridiculously out of date, so I'm taking my roads from a different source (geobase.ca), that is less than a year old.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

[hamgran]

Wow!

[ibycus]

Step 2 completed... Step 3 about to begin (have to download the relevant road data first though)

[Team Three Boys]

How do you put it on your GPS?

[ibycus]

Team Three Boys, on Oct 4 2007, 05:15 PM, said:

How do you put it on your GPS?

Different ways...Sendmap will work (see http://www.cgpsmapper.com) I'm going to make these with an installer, that will install them as a mapsource 'product'.

[ibycus]

Of course both squares happen to lie on provincial boundaries... Makes adding the roads in twice as difficult.

[Team Three Boys]

That program did not work for me!

[ibycus]

Team Three Boys, on Oct 4 2007, 06:52 PM, said:

That program did not work for me!

More details? What didn't work? What error message? (I assume you were using Sendmap)

What options did you select?

[ibycus]

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.

[ibycus]

Up to the stage of uploading to the website (will be uploading when I get home tonight)

[ibycus]

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...

[ibycus]

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)

[Plasma Boy]

ibycus, on Oct 5 2007, 12:02 PM, said:

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?

[ibycus]

Plasma Boy, on Oct 5 2007, 02:36 PM, said:

ibycus, on Oct 5 2007, 12:02 PM, said:

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.

[ibycus]

052 has mostly been uploaded. There are two files that timed out, I'll have to wait until the compile is done before I can see which didn't make it.

[ibycus]

072 just finished uploading. Hopefully they will compile sometime in the next 24 hours or so.

[ve1bvd]

Any chances for 011?

Phil/ve1bvd (who lives there)

[ibycus]

ve1bvd, on Oct 6 2007, 07:46 PM, said:

Any chances for 011?

Phil/ve1bvd (who lives there)

I just so happen to have added that square to my downloaded list... I'm currently in the process of unzipping it to my hard drive.

[ibycus]

In the process of running 011. Going to take me a little longer to get this one done, as I don't have the road network for Newfoundland and Geobase is down at the moment. Could get the roads from StatsCan, but their data is generally as good quality.

[soberrover]

dude! that's so awesome!
I just bought my first GPS a week ago, and I'm far more interested in mapping than geocaching, but I've found 2 caches so far, and it is rather addicting.

could you do 92?

thanks a lot!

[ibycus]

092 is now in progress... File 11 out of 5096

[soberrover]

wahoo, awesome
I guess I should start trying to find out how to upload such stuff to my etrex
I'm on Ubuntu, not Windows... so it might not be easy

[ibycus]

Sendmap works for Linux.... (http://www.cgpsmapper.com)

The files are named as follows:

082 O 01 turns in to

1 082 15 01.img (spaces inserted to show you where the different parts of the name go to and come from. )

[ibycus]

In the process of uploading the installer for 082, 084, 072, 052. It should be done in about an hour (it is ~240MB). There are a few squares missing, but not many.

[ibycus]

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

Go to http://www.ibycus.co...po/TopoMaps.msi

If you have any trouble, let me know.

[ibycus]

I should add... you might want to go to View-->Show GPS Map detail (if you haven't already done so)

[ibycus]

I'm of course always interested in comments anyone who's downloaded it might have.

[hamgran]

Downloaded it once but it didn't work... just trying again, now.

[ibycus]

hamgran, on Oct 9 2007, 05:41 PM, said:

Downloaded it once but it didn't work... just trying again, now.

Yeah I noticed a couple of downloads in the logs that didn't quite finish... The file 251,941,888 bytes (240MB)

[ibycus]

011 and 092 are now uploading to the compiler website...Should be compiled some time in the next 24 hours or so... I'd run in to trouble, as I'd apparently hit the maximum number of allowed maps (1111) on the site, so I had to create a new userid.

[Plasma Boy]

ibycus, on Oct 8 2007, 09:25 AM, said:

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

Go to http://www.ibycus.co...po/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?

[hamgran]

Yeah, that's where I had the problem. I ended up with a 3-file package and couldn't figure out how to launch it.

[Grizzly_Quebec]

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.

This post has been edited by Grizzly_Quebec: 10 October 2007 - 07:15 AM

[ibycus]

Grizzly_Quebec, on Oct 10 2007, 09:08 AM, said:

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.

[ibycus]

Plasma Boy, on Oct 10 2007, 06:54 AM, said:

ibycus, on Oct 8 2007, 09:25 AM, said:

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

Go to http://www.ibycus.co...po/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)

[ibycus]

hamgran, on Oct 10 2007, 07:04 AM, said:

Yeah, that's where I had the problem. I ended up with a 3-file package and couldn't figure out how to launch it.

Strange... Very Strange. What were the three files called?

[bwmick]

Awesome work, any chance for 31 to be added to your to do list?

bryan

[hamgran]

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

[ibycus]

hamgran, on Oct 10 2007, 02:47 PM, said:

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).

[ibycus]

bwmick, on Oct 10 2007, 02:23 PM, said:

Awesome work, any chance for 31 to be added to your to do list?

bryan

Absolutely! I'll put it on my list with the above requested Quebec tiles. (21,22,31,32). I'll do them in English though (hope that's OK)

[Red90]

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!!

[ibycus]

Red90, on Oct 10 2007, 06:14 PM, said:

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.

Quote

- 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.

Quote

- 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)

Quote

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).

Quote

Thanks Ibycus. Much appreciated!!

No problem!

[KFBradley]

There's no topo info over cities?

[ibycus]

KFBradley, on Oct 10 2007, 07:12 PM, said:

There's no topo info over cities?

Sure there is. Where are you looking?