Mapbuilding

From Mapwiki

In this page I will attempt to right a how-to for building my complete park maps. Starting out crude, I'll add more detail later.

First, you need to figure out some sort of base reference of your park on google earth. A past ride, a friends ride, a ride you downloaded off of garminconnect, anything. You just need to figure out where the actual trails are on google earth.

Take that map in .gpx format (so google earth can read it, kml/kmz also works and http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ is an awesome online file converter if you have it in some other format like tcx or something), and import it into Google Earth. I typically put each park in it's own folder.

Here's 2 rides I did at Stewarts this year. This is JUST A REFERENCE for the map building, we won't actually use this map.

Now, find your map online somewhere in .pdf or .jpg. If it's a .pdf you'll have to convert the .pdf to a picture, .jpg. You can find a how-to on that too I'm sure somewhere else. Here is a map of Stewarts I found online.

Now in Google Earth right click on your park folder, "Add", "Image Overlay" Browse to your image and you'll see it appear on your Google Earth. Now before you hit OK, use the onscreen tools to move your picture, skew it, stretch it, rotate it or whatever you need so that your existing trail now syncs withe trail map you just imported. A trick here is to use the Opacity slider to help you figure out where your image needs to be. The diamond is the grab to rotate, and the edges help you stretch it. After a few minutes of struggling you'll figure out how to line up your image directly under the existing map where your tracks are exactly on top of the trail on the map. You can use other solid points around the map like street intersections if they are on your trail map and use the opacity to line up the intersections with what's on Google Earth. For whatever reason you have to be in the properties of the image to manipulate it. Click "OK" now.

Now I normally turn off the my existing trials in Google Earth by unclicking the checkbox next to the track. They just tend to get in the way for the next steps. Now make sure not to move your picture! Now click on "Add", "Path". A window will pop up. Give your path a name if you want, this is going to be the complete path of the park. More importantly click on the "Style,Color" tab and select a brighter color, usually I go with bright green and change the line width to 5. With the window still open Start in a corner of your map and draw the path. Now this is the ridiculous part. Because paths have a beginning and an end, your ENTIRE map has to be drawn with ONE path. Really crazy and annoying but it's the only way I know of to make this work. So pick your starting point carefully. Draw out the trails, the major ones and all the ancillary trails. Most of the time this requires you to double back on the trail you just drew, there is no way around that. You can add trails by holding down the mouse and dragging as well as moving the mouse to the next point and clicking. Helpful for straight path sections. Remember to zoom in pretty close, detail counts but don't get crazy. Use your center mouse scroll button to zoom in and out, it's a great trick while drawing. Also once you put the track down, you can hover over it with your mouse and the cursor turns into a pointing hand. Use the hand to push the trail around if you make a mistake. Experiment with the Del key also. You can subtract points off your path with it. You will also add track to where your mouse was last left off. You really have to click the start or finish of the track and draw from there, if you selected the middle of the track you'll just add points in the middle. Helpful to add a small loop you forgot in the middle though. Play around with it and you'll get the hang of it. When you are done, you have this overlay of green lines. Again, it's a HUGE pain that this is one single line with all the backstepping over other lines but trust me, it's the only way until someone proves me wrong.

Now, export your new trail map. Right click on your path map in Google Earth and "Save as" and save it as a .KML file. Now open up http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ and import the .KML file and export it as a .GPX file. It will spit out some text at you and a link on the top for you .GPX file, right click save as. Now open up your garmin software Mapsource. Open up the new .GPX file. VIOLA! It's ready to go into your Garmin! You can actually just move or copy that .GPX file right into the GPX folder on your garmin. You can navigate to your garmin on your computer, inside the garmin director there is a GPX directory. Any GPX files stuffed into that folder can be used in your garmin device. But, I normally like to add to this map using the Mapsource program. You can open multiple instances of Mapsource which is nice so go ahead and open a 2nd one. Now you can open up downloaded popular loops, race maps, or anything else in .GPX format. I'm adding the 09DarkhorseGallop race loop into this file so it's also available on my garmin device. Note that they are layered on top of each other alphabetically. So I name my complete map 00Stewarts so that it's always on the bottom. You can right click on the track to rename or recolor your track. To copy a device onto the first map, select the track you want to add and right click and "copy", then in your complete map right click and paste into the track tab.

Now even though both the complete map and the race loop are contained in the same .GPX file, they will appear on your garmin as 2 different files. This is why it's so important to keep your complete map one single line. But it is nice here to be able to compile all of your loops and in your garmin select which one you want to display.

Now you can either save this file in mapsource as a .GPX and stick it in the GPX folder on your garmin or you can use the "send to device" feature in mapsource to load it on.

To see this map on your Garmin 705, unplug your device from your computer and turn it on. Hit the menu button and select "Where To", "Saved Rides", and find your new map. It's going to be the name of the track in Mapsource so you actually want to name them something pretty specific so they are easy to find.. Select the map and select "Map Setup", check the box "Show On Map" and change the Color to something else, I like green or blue. Hit "Map" and confirm that it shows up, hit the mode button on the side of the garmin and then select "OK". DONE! Now if you added more than one track like I did with the 09 race loop, you'll have to go back to "Where To" and go through the same routine and turn on the map for the race loop. I normally then select a different brighter color like red.

Now you are done, your map is now stored on your garmin and you can view it as you ride. No need to turn on navigation or anything. The map for Stewarts is a little extreme, there are a LOT of trail in there it's pretty intense of a map.