If you were to include a "Marine" attribute, populated with "Y", making a Garmin marine chart that runs on any Garmin Marine unit (gpsmap 4xx, 5xx etc) is dead simple. You could actually do it directly from RM, using cgpsmapper in exactly the same way as the IMC.
This will make use of the "Type" field.
It would mean that your exported shapefiles could also be pulled straight into GME, the charts can be played with by adding buoyage, POIs etc, then exported directly using cgpsmapper.

A huge number of the waterborne fishing public use Garmin chartplotters, so it would be a shame to leave them out when making bathy charts for them is now so simple.

This now makes bottom hardness charts a reality on Garmin chartplotters, but you'll need to give me a while to play with it. I'll put a tutorial up on my website when I've got it in order, but the chart export itself works perfectly already.





T

That chart looks great Trevor - as ever!
Let me know what we can do at this end to make this process as easy as possible for Garmin users.

Matt

These are screenshots from a Garmin GPSMap551s using the shapefile output from RM. The only object I needed to edit in GME was the Shoreline, and it was a trivial edit.

The sequence is simply RM - GME - export via cgpsmapper - place card in GPS - go fishing.

It would be very simple to skip GME and export directly through cgpsmapper directly onto a card.











T

Still cgpsmapper for Garmin right? Free version enough or has it watermarks? It was some time ago since I made Garminmaps...

Hi Martin,

Still cgpsmapper for making Garmin Marine charts. I use the shareware version but the free version supports extended and Marine types as well. You'll need to make sure you have Marine = B in the "extras" in "Map properties" in GME. The free version has watermarks, the shareware or personal versions cost the same as a few pints (here), or 1 pint (there)

T

OK, thanks for the info.

I read something about Mkgmap some time ago, not an option? IIRC there was another compiler as well but I cannot remember the name...

/Martin

Edit: Now read Mkgmap only takes OSM-files as input...

Thanks for posting this Trevor (along with all the other guides, hints and tutorials), much appreciated. Wondering if you are manipulating polygons at all to have the data display with the blue to white colour gradient?

I'm working on a tutorial right now, the bones of which is up on my website now in the tutorials section. Its a way to go yet - but 6 Nations Rugby calls.......
I'm not manipulating any isobath polygons. In marine mode Garmin has 5 different shades of blue as depth area objects, and white as the deepest, plus a light green intertidal area object.

Only cgpsmapper supports marine chart objects at the moment (AFAIK), of all the Garmin compilers available, the rest seem to be concerned only with terrestrial routing and hiking.

It really is remarkably simple to produce these Garmin charts, it simply needs some "type" information in the export from RM, and that's it.

I'm hoping to be able to use some of the overlay textures (separation zones etc) as bottom hardness, but we'll see how that pans out.

I'll have the basic tutorial finished tomorrow I hope.

T

Craig - just to be clear, Trevor is using a beta version of RM that exports isobaths as well as contour lines, which I think are quite important in this process. Won't be too long (a week or so) before this one goes live!

Matt

Sorry, should have made that clear. The tutorial images are all up, just awaiting text, and by the time the next version comes out very shortly the tutorial will tie in perfectly with it.

T

Awesome, that makes me feel a little better about my (weak) abilities :).....I couldn't figure out what I was missing looking at the attributes of the exported polygons.

Can't wait for the feature!

If you wanted to, and had access to a shapefile editor, (QGIS, GM, Arcmap) its a simple matter to populate the TYPE field manually. Drop me a line if you want the settings.

T