Mapping help

[HoSS]

A request from a friend, any ideas?

Wondering if you can help. There is an area in the Northern Cape called the Richterveld that we really enjoy. It’s a semi desert mountain area that at least the size of Wales but very sparsely populated. There are lots of tracks going to old mines and crossing the area. We have been there about 4 or 5 times with people who know the area well but we want to be able to plan our own trips into the area so I have started to log the tracks in Google Earth. By the time I’m finished, I imagine that I will have +-1000 tracks! The problem is while I can see them all in Garmin Basecamp, I would like to be able to see them all on the GPS and tablet. It’s a too big an area to take screen shots of Google Earth and then overlay the image. Any ideas how I can take all of the tracks and points of interest and do them as a single mask? It does not have to be routable but it would certainly help if I could export it to the GPS as a single KMZ file.

[TSD]

GPSBabel? Bit of a learning curve IIRC but can import/export most things.

(I know nothing about Garmin Basecamp.)

[Retroanaconda]

You should be able to export from Google Earth and then convert into a format that your GPS can understand (GPX is the de facto standard). GPSBabel can do this I think, alternatively there is a program called GPSUtility that we use at work, that can convert most things.

The trick will be whether Google Earth lets you export all the tracks into one file or not.

[Orgasmic Farmer]

Pretty straightforward. Save all your routes in a place folder on Google earth and then save place as (kmz) to your PC then use GPS Babel offline or GPSVisualiser.com on-line if not too big and save the output as a gpx file. You can then import that into the gps program of your choice.

[elbekko]

Basecamp should be able to save it as GPX as well. And send it directly to the device even.

[Dingbat]

Thanks HoSS for posting the question for me.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. I can convert the file with .kmz files in it to a .gpx file using GPS Visualizer but it does not join the various tracks together so that they can be seen as one image on the GPS. Even though it is one file that you upload to the GPS, each track can still only be seen individually. This would suggest that the tracks need to be converted to one track in Google Earth or in Garmin Basecamp before sending it to the GPS. Any ideas how this could be done?

[Diff]

Can you not get all the mapping and info you need from "Tracks4africa"? I have used their mapping for Botswana years ago and it was very good, cheap, and Garmin compatible.

Regards, Diff.

[Dingbat]

After much searching, I seam to have found a way to do it! This will be useful to anyone wanting to make a map of trails or tracks in an area that can be seen as one image on the GPS.

1. Create folder in My Places in Google Earth.
2. Log tracks & way points (make sure that all tracks and way points are in the same folder drop down).
3. Send file to desktop in .KMZ format.
4. Convert from .KMZ to .IMG in GPS Visualizer using GPS Visualizer’s conversion tool.
5. Use GPX2IMG program to convert file to an .IMG file that can be used by Garmin Basecamp.
6. File is sent to Basecamp and can be sent to GPS.

Thanks for the posts. It helped to put me in the right direction.

[Orgasmic Farmer]

That is what I suggested above (without the bit about .iMG file as I assumed Basecamp would read .gpx files). Another option I thought of could be to use NOtebook to edit the gpx files. You can create a file and just copy and paste the "content" of all your various files into a single file. Not sure if it would work but no reason why not.

[henk]

Is something like this no solution?: http://thetrkhub.azurewebsites.net