Ahoy!

We are currently starting to make navigational charts from scratch, as for the destination we are investigating, there are no reliable charts available. Our idea to get to a reliable chart are this:

we start with making an vector map of the area, using all available resources like sattelite images, historical data, etc.

as soon as these charts (made in Illustrator) are ready, we will have a detailed coastal map, with reef systems, shallow etc.

we can then go do the soundings.

My question is: are we on the righ track? are we forgetting something? and can we merge the sounding data with the SVG file in Reefmaster? Or do we have to do it differently?

All help greatly appreciated,

Cheers,

Jan-Jaap
Amsterdam, the netherlands

Hi Jan-jaap, and welcome to the forum - sorry for the late reply!

The main thing you want to prepare for ReefMaster maps is the shoreline, and it sounds like you are going about this in the right way. ReefMaster can use the shoreline to limit the mapped area, and a depth can be assigned to the shoreline which is then used during map generation. This will allow depths to be interpolated to the shoreline depth (typically 0), as otherwise you will get an empty area here. Shorelines can be imported from Shapefile or Google Earth KML files, or an existing track within the ReefMaster workspace can be assigned for this purpose (which would allow GPX and CSV import as well).

If you have existing contours, they can be added to a finished map if you import them as a map layer. These contours can be included in map exports "as is", but they will not contribute any depth data to the map generation process. If you wanted to use known depth data in combination with your own recorded data, you would need to import the known data as a "track", which is just a set of positions with known depths. You could do this, e.g., by creating a CSV file.