Yup, we can do Bottom Hardness on Garmin Marine units. Not sure if I need to put a line around these areas to improve clarity. Not as versatile as Lowrance, but then not everyone has 2 grand to chuck in the lake.





T

Here they are with lines around. A little better. There are (I think) 3 different patterns, but the colours/pattern of two are so similar as to make it difficult to separate them. I think you'll be limited to 2 hardness types. Far better than no hardness at all though. I've blown the image up a little as its a screenshot from a 4 inch screen. This would look really good on one of the 7xx units, but is still very useful on the cheap and cheerful Garmin models.

Looks good! Don't have any (useful) Garmin device right now, but interesting info.

When Matt has finished everything else on the "todo"-list maybe RM can implement some "polygons" that in fact are several polylines appearing to be an icon-filled poly? IIRC you had pretty much freedom with lines in Garmin right? Will not scale that well, but better than nothing.

Martin,

whatever is used has to be in the Garmin marine object set, you cant use custom objects as the Garmin Marine units don't recognise them. This would also probably preclude quite a lot of otherwise useful colours if compatibility with GME is required. GME doesn't import shapefile attributes, so setting style and color would be of no use. The direct export using cgpsmapper would probably work just as well as the IMC export, although the final results aren't quite up to the same standard. Lowrance vector graphics have the edge, at a price.

There are no mp editors that support the Garmin Marine object set, so I've adapted my own GME as much as possible.

The free version of cgpsmapper doesn't support ESRI input, but if Matt can come up with an mp format export it would probably open a good few doors. Once you start playing with GPS vector graphics it opens a whole world of caffeine, early mornings and head banging.

T

I have done lots of Garmin mapping previously (didn't have any Lowrance stuff back then) and up until the release of IMC and AT5 I think Garmin had "the edge" with much more options compared to the LCM on Lowrance that was very crippled. I had to scale down and remove stuff from my Garmin-maps as the LCM didn't have any good possibility to show it as well as the Garmin did. Maybe no good WYSIWYG-editor available back then but with mp-files, GPSMapedit and cgpsmapper as a compiler it worked fine. But as you say now - with AT5 - Lowrance definitely has the edge now!

AnglingCharts wrote:
Didn't quite notice that earlier. So the current Marine units can't use any "non-marine"-objects at all? I made maps for etrex devices and in those I could mix both marine and "normal" objects in the same map (normal objects sometimes didn't show too well on water, but mostly it worked).

/Martin

That's correct. Marine units do not display custom objects / non-marine charts, but some handhelds (GPSMap60csx etc) will display Bluechart charts as well as standard charts. You'll find the full list of Marine and Non-Marine objects in the cgpsmapper manual




Newer units apparently have some specific objects which can be customized, but I've not come across them yet. Its a sensible move, IMO require a standard chart display format for marine chartplotters, and it makes sense to have a standard format for non IMO units as well, otherwise chaos, and accidents, will ensue.

T

Matt sent me some test shapefiles (American Lake) this morning, so I quickly rattled off a Garmin chart for him, and have made the whole lot, including the chart files and mp files available on my website. If anyone has a go at this they'll be astonished at just how easy it is. I normally spend months getting a Garmin chart right - this is a whole new ballgame.

T

Looks great Trevor!
Is this going to be an option on Garmin handhelds, do you know? Or is it limited to marine devices?

Matt

This will also be possible on any handheld that is Bluechart compatible. The list is available here. I'd say its just about the whole Garmin handheld range.

T

Hello boys and girls, i'm new to the world of making my own maps but i really seem to like it :P
Just bought Reefmaster last week, and got to make some maps, gotta say it's an awesome program once you get the feel for it, i use a Garmin Echomap 50s sounder.

I have read this topic, and this tutorial www.anglingcharts.com/tutorials/reefmastergarmin.html

As far as i understand to get the maps to work on my garmin unit, i need to buy the GPSmapedit software as well, and use the shapefile from RM to create the map?

Kind Regards from Denmark.

Hi,

that's correct. Its well worth it though. You'll need cgpsmapper (the compiler) too.

all the best

Trevor