Mapping Hacks

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Chapter 5, Mapping with Gadgets

#54 Create Your Own Maps for a Garmin GPS

HACK

You may have to tell the device to use the map you’ve added, but as

Figure 5-20 shows, the map is now installed and ready for use.

If you want to use Garmin’s MapSource program to upload

maps you created yourself, visit http://www.keenpeople.com/

index.php?option=articles&task=viewarticle&artid=4&Itemid

=3 for a description of a registry hack that will let Map-

Source work with your maps.

Hacking the Hack

Using other people’s data to create maps is great, but sometimes you’ll need

to use your own. To put a map of a small trail into my GPS, I hiked the trail,

pulled my tracklog out with MapSource, saved it to a file, and then opened

that file in GPSMapEdit. The tracklog looked like Figure 5-21.

To turn this into a trail, I shift-clicked on both parts of the log (the GPS lost

satellite at one point), then right-clicked to bring up a menu. I chose Con-

vert To

➝ Polyline. I picked “0x0016 Trail” from the list of possible types,

shown in Figure 5-22, and GPSMapEdit created a trail on top of the track-

log.

The tracklog is still there, though; I had to cut the trail to reach the tracklog

and delete it. After doing that, and selecting Modify

➝ Label from the right-

click context menu to change the name, I had the trail map shown in

Figure 5-23.

Putting this map onto a GPS requires a few more steps, all of them under

Map

➝ Properties. ...