Hello.
I am very interested in learning more about map creation and coverting the maps I make to a format I can see on my HDS and Droid phone......wish I could find an ACCURATE handheld that could see and use these maps I am making. Most of the things I am trying to map are 1-3 m in size.
I see terms thrown about; vector, raster, shapefile and it is mostly Greek to me. (My apologies to Greece but I don't understand you either)
I've spent literally hundreds of hours collecting data on my lake and although I have a map to show for it, it is not as nice as the map I made with the Genesis program. I am sure, however, it is not because Geneisis is better, but because I don't know how to work with this stuff and it does it for me.
I can look at a map I've created on my home PC in google Earth and drool over it, only to send it to my phone and see a white rectangle with some depth lines and a screen cluttered with waypoint names. I would like a bottom hardness to show up along with waypoints and depth shading.
I know I have the data to make a great map and from what I have seen, THE BEST mapping program out there. (Thanks Matt!!) I think I just don't know how to fully utilze it.
Please help me learn more.
Where can I go to get educated????
Please help.

I attached an image of my map so far. It is 840 acres in size........yeah, alot of passes with the boat to cover this baby.

Hi,

What device do you want to see your final map on - your phone? It would be useful to see a snapshot of what you see on your phone, and how that compares to what you see on GE for desktop. It could just be that the map is too big for the power of your phone?

Another option for a handheld might be something from the Garmin range. I don't know too much about creating maps for Garmin, but Trevor has put together a tutorial on it over on his site, here. The maps produced by this process are compatible with a wide range of Garmin handheld devices.

I'd be curious too to know in what way you think the Insight Genesis map is better - can you post a comparative screen-shot? If there is something we can improve on, we'll do our best to make it happen!

Also, if you want you can send through your kml map to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and I'll see if there is anything obvious that could be improved.

cheers,
Matt

Thanks for the reply Matt. I have to say, I have never seen customer support like you provide before. When RM is huge and you are busy spending all that $ I will miss being able to chat directly...... :)

I wanted to start with my mention of Genesis. This obviously only applies to maps viewed on my HDS as that is the only place you can see them. (My biggest complaint about Genesis and my reason for searching out an better alternative.....RM:) I really like the Structure map feature and vegetation/bottom comp. I can't wait to see your improvments to these!!

I want to use my map for ice fishing, without dragging my HDS unit around. I have a Garmin Legend but I did not thimk I could get a RM map to display on it. I have been using a Droid Razr (Considering your suggestion of the Galaxie but $ low) and have attached a couple screen shots on GE. As you can see, there is no contour shading, just different color depth lines and no bottom comp. The map is a white rectangle which obscures the shoreline and all of the push pin icons have names attached which really clutter screen.







I really hope to have a map viewable on my phone or a Garmin handheld which has depth contour lines, bottom hardness overlaid and waypoints showing. I may need to use a separate map for showing depth shading as it hides bottom hardness.

Here is a jpeg of what is shown in RM





Here is a photo of the map with bottom harness and waypoints as shown in GE on my PC. But waypoints are missing?






Here is the same map as showm on GE on my PC. Waypoints have again left the building?





The completed KMZ maps dont load on my phone now. GE opens up when I click on them but program closes right away.............grrrrr

The KML version shows up on GE with waypoints but half lake is cut off? What is difference between KML and KMZ?? Sorry for my lack of knowledge.

I will sent you a copy of the depth KML map as an email as well.

I REALLY want the waypoints to show up on both the contour and hardness map.

A couple of observations from the KMZ file you sent me:

You are creating 1 foot major contours, with minor contours as well. This is a lot of contours (3 inches apart!), and if you are running this map on an older phone this will hit performance pretty hard. I would suggest either picking a higher major interval, or turning off minor contours. Even though your map is quite flat, I think 3" contours is overkill. You might find that turning these off fixes your problem.

If the map is still too much for your phone even without minor contours, one other thing we could try is to split the map for export. We can do it fairly easily in the map project by using a boundary box configured to act as a boundary, but not to provide depth information or to show in the map. If you cut the map into two or three chunks, you should still have plenty on the phone for whatever area you are in, but would need to switch maps as you move.

Waypoints won't get exported into a KMZ file when you are exporting a map. This is something we are looking to change, but in the meantime you need to export your waypoints separately and combine them using Google Earth. You can do this by opening Google Earth and loading both your waypoints and map files, then creating a new new folder under "Temporary Places", adding the root object of your waypoints and map to the folder (these are also listed under "Temporary places"), then saving the folder that you created as a KMZ file.

We will also look at adding an option for making the waypoints smaller on export, so they do not clutter up the screen so much. Did you add those numbers, or is that something GE has done?

If you send your workspace file through, I will see what I can do and send you an example.

One other thing I notice is that you are not using a shoreline for your map. You probably won't get a huge functional benefit, but your map will look a lot nicer with smooth edges and depths will interpolate up to the zero-depth boundary.

cheers,
Matt

Matt

How about a popup to warn of potential high memory use when setting the contour sliders ?

T

Thanks Matt!
You are right about the contours. I think 3 ft. major and 1 ft minor might be better. It is a fairly flat lake and the subtle depth changes really matter to fish location though.
I have emailed the RMDB file for you to look at..........really appreciate it!!!!
Thanks:)

Thanks for the workspace file - I had a quick look and made a KMZ map, which I have mailed back to you. The map file is just over 500k in size, which is not large - I can display much larger on my phone (Nexus 4) without performance problems, so I would say that if your phone can't handle this file then perhaps it is just not going to be powerful enough. I think just about any current-model smartphone should cut it, though.

I added a (rough) shoreline by tracing in GE, and changed the contour interval to 3 feet, with 1 ft minors that will show as you zoom in (not visible in picture). This keeps the map cleaner at lower zoom levels, and uses less memory also.
I also removed the waypoint names. I did it directly in the workspace database file, which I wouldn't advise, as there is currently no way to change waypoint names in bulk within ReefMaster.

Note also that GE has options for Icon and text size - large, medium or small. Go into tools/options or into settings if using a phone. In the image below, they are on small.
Also, the "effect" whereby bits of background can poke through the map is due to GE's 3D imagery - not always totally successful when bits of the lake are not considered flat. I have turned this off also.

ResQ91 wrote: Nice one how to make a so clean scale without colour grading?

EDIT:
answer my self - just uncheck in the proper leyer the show scale in map option