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Author Making my own street maps.
shivapd

2005-10-15, 5:48 pm

I got a Garmin Vista C recently and I thought I'd try to make my own
street maps. At this point, it seems like the best thing to do would be
to use the ESRI shapefiles that are based on the TIGER data. Using
ArcExplorer I am able to view a street map of my county. However, I
don't really know where to go from there.

I know that I need to convert the shapefiles to the *.img format that
the GPS understand and then use MapSource (or some other utility to
upload it). The problem is, I can't find anything to do the shapefile
-> *.img conversion. Any suggestions?

I've tried qgis (http://qgis.org/). It does a horrible job of
displaying the shapefile (it shows the name for each street several
times which results in a big jumbled messs). Also, qgis doesn't allow
me to export to the *.map format.

Thoughts?

richo@mcn.org

2005-10-15, 11:48 pm

It's a little complicated. My book (http://www.makeyourownmaps.com) has
step-by-step directions, but the short answer is that you need to use
MapEdit (http://www.geopainting.com/en)and cGPSmapper
(http://cgpsmapper.com/) to convert from .shp to .img.

HTH

Rich Owings
http://www.MakeYourOwnMaps.com/
http://www.GPStracklog.com/

"We were desert mystics, my friends and I, poring over our maps as
others do their holy books." - Edward Abbey

shivapd

2005-10-15, 11:48 pm

You're not kidding when you said it's complicated.... nonetheless....
I'm gonna give it my best thanks for the link.

Shiva

shivapd

2005-10-15, 11:48 pm

Hmmm... is there any way I can do this for free? Looks like MapEdit
isn't freeware and cgps mapper wants me to use to shareware version to
use *.shp files. - Shiva

shivapd

2005-10-15, 11:48 pm

Ok... it looks like I can use GPSMapEdit to convert the ESIR shapefiles
into *.pl files and the cGPSMatter to convert that into *.img files...
I'm getting somewhere.

On thing though... GPSMapEdit shows the street name a bunch of times...
I'm not sure this will still be the case once I make my maps but anyone
know how to stop this?

Shiva

richo@mcn.org

2005-10-15, 11:48 pm

AFAIK, both offer free downloads. You can use MapEdit to convert .shp
files to .mp format, and then use the .mp files in cGPSmapper to
convert to .img files. Here's another resource...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/map_authors/

There is extensive discussion there about the process.

Rich Owings
http://www.MakeYourOwnMaps.com/
http://www.GPStracklog.com/

"We were desert mystics, my friends and I, poring over our maps as
others do their holy books." - Edward Abbey

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