AddMagMap examples:Import Garmin maps (complex)

1. Convert “Saint-Petersburg.mp” to ESRI shape files (lines and areas, menu “Tools” of AddMagMap, similar to previous example)
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2. Import the obtained file “Saint-Petersburg_A.shp” to AddMagMap (Import-Import Files-Lines). Double click to the “Object properties” cell. The shp properties dialog will be shown, set LABEL for the “Object name”, TYPE for the “Filter 1” and LEVEL for the Filter 2, click "Garmin Types" checkbox:

This file contains 15 different types of objects, and in contrast to the Mexico map from the previous example it has 5 different Levels. As it was discussed in the manual, the same objects can belong to the different levels to show up at different levels of zoom. For example if some streets belong to the 0,1 and 2 levels it will be shown at the highest (most detailed) zoom (level 0), and at one- and two- steps off (zoom out). When the map gets zoomed less then 0,1,2 levels (less detailed) the object is not shown on the map. The other objects (e.g. highway may start at level 2 and higher to not to be shown at high zooms). Since Magellan layers works differently (please see manual for details) we must put only one instance of the object (say at the lowest level) to some of the Magellan layers. If there will be several duplicated instances of the object nothing very critical will happen, map will look the same, but in the Search object labels will be duplicated.

Our goal is to find the origin level for objects; apply filters to select single instance of the objects; assign the objects to some layer of Magellan map and define their look on PC screen.

We can do this job by several different ways. Let us try first with the assumption that author of the Garmin map used Garmin types correctly (i.e. streets are drawn as a “Residential street” type, trails are drawn as a “Trail” type and all objects starts form the very detailed level 0). This intuitive way works for most of the maps.

3. Let us select TYPE=”Principal highway” and “Other highway” for Filter 1 and LEVEL=0.

4. Import another instances of the file and select corresponding types in the SHP filter dialog. Assign Magellan objects and drawing types for each type of the line.

SHP TYPE	SHP LEVEL	Magellan LAYER(Group)	Drawing type
Principal highway, Other highway	0	Highways (Roads)	24
Arterial road, thin	0	Major Roads (Roads)	29
Residential street , Unpaved road	0	Streets (Roads)	28
Trail	0	Trails (Roads)	5
Railroad	0	Railroads (Railroads)	25
River, Steam	0	Hydro_lines (Waterways)	23

Double click to cells in the first column to see bounding box and define the Map S.Ptb with the coordinates that includes the bounding box: XLeft=28, XRight=32, YTop=62, YBottom=57.

5. Click “Create map” button. While execution you will see the messages like this 3 times:

This happened because no objects were found with the filter settings (LEVEL=0) (I especially do this to show what will happen with wrong filter settings, alternatively you can do statistics (see below) to find where is the origin level for the object).

After completion the message will be shown:

The successfully imported layers are deleted from the AddMagMap grid, the rest 3 objects were not added, because no objects were found at the filters settings:

It means that these objects do not start from Level 0. With the statistics window we can find that the origin level for these objects is 2. Change the Level to 2 and click create map. The objects will be added to the map. Run MapSend ( ) and see result. We will see that most of the streets are shown as a major roads the other wrong assignment is also obvious. This happened because we rely on the Garmin map type, but author of the map used them not straightforward.

Perform “Step Back” 2 times (because we build this map in two steps, for each the “Step back” was saved. This will remove “S.Ptb” map from MapSend (or just click Restore point “original” if there are no other custom maps exist). Then you can open saved at the first step job, correct filter settings and assignments and build the map again.

6.2 Statistical way to import Garmin map

With the statistics window we can do some preliminary conclusion of what is the real type of the object and what is the level of origin (the most detail level where the object appears first time).

For the Saint Peterburg map import line shape file, double click to the “Object properties cell”, Select LABEL for “Object name”, TYPE for Filters 1 and LEVEL for Filter 2.

To find the levels where the specific objects are; we can use statistics screen of the AddMagMap. From the SHP filter dialog select one, or several types of interest, select some level (Filter 2) and click the statistics button ( ). Let us try “Principal highway” and “Other highway” (check the corresponding boxes for Filter 1. Set Filter 2 (“LEVEL’) to 0 (most detailed) we will find that there is no “Principal highway” and “Other highway” exist at level 0. Check LEVEL=2, press . We found that these highway object appear starting from Level 2.

Do the same for other objects. We will find:

Garmin TYPE	Level	Objects without labels	Object with labels
Principal highway	2	42	10
Other highway	0	133	0
Arterial road, thin	0	4434	5742
Unpaved road	2	513	0
Trail	2	19	0
Residential street	2	221	0
Ferry	2	547	0
River	0	220	0
Stream	0	0	9
Intermittent stream	2	5	2

From the results shown in the Table we conclude that most probably, streets are drawn with “Arterial road, thin” Garmin type, because many of them exist at Level 0 and this object type is the most numerous. “Unpaved road” and “Trails” most probably some duplication or wrongly assigned types (there are too few of them and they starts at low zoom levels (remember, when Garmin maps are created some automated processes are used to draw objects, this can be the reason of wrong assignment).

Based on the obtained results we can do the following assignment of Garmin objects to Magellan objects.

Garmin		Magellan
Garmin type	Level	Layer(Group)	Drawing type
Principal highway, Other highway	2	Highways(Roads)	line 24
Unpaved roads, Residential Streets	2	Major_roads(Roads)	line 29
Artrerial roads, thin	0	Streets(Roads)	line 28
Railroad	0	Railroads(Railroads)	line 25
River, Stream	0	Hydro_lines(Waterways)	line 23
Intermittent stream	2	Hydro_lines(Waterways)	line 23
Ferry	2	Trails (Roads)	line 5

Note: Drawing types and layers are different for specific MapSend, this example is for Topo3dUD. There are no layers for Ferry in MapSend Topo3d, we put Ferry to the "trails" layer (to be shown by dashed line in the receiver), the Ferries will be in a Roads search group.

Do similar for polygons objects (file Saint-Petersburg_A.shp). the statistics is:

Garmin TYPE	Level	Objects without labels	Object with labels
River	0	93	606
Ocean	0	0	595
Forest	2	175	0
Lake	0	1187	32
Man-made area	0	20505	28804
Wetland/Swamp	2	205	0
Cemetery	2	24	70
Scrub	2	4	0
National park	0	5603	417
City park	0	14	6

We see that there is a huge number of objects of “man-made area” type. If we build the map with these objects we will see that they are houses. There are no layers in Magellan for similar type of objects, so let us do not import them at this stage. Based on statistics we assign the Garmin objects to Magellan objects the following way (taking into account available layers for this MapSend, for polygons we have only: “Hydro_polygons”, “Other_Hydro” and “Parks”):

Garmin		Magellan
Garmin type	Level	Layer(Group)	Drawing type
River, Ocean, Lake	0	Hydro_polygons (Waterways)	area 1
Wetland/swamp, Cemetery, Scrub	2	Parks(Parks)	line 68
National park, City park	0	Parks(Parks)	line 68

Below is the map we just created. Object labels will be in the "Roads", "Waterways", "Parks", "Railroads" search group as indicated in the table (on PC map "Railroads" group is not presented, this is definition of this specific mapsend (TopoUS3D), but the group will be shown in the receiver)..

We may also want to add the houses (“man-made area” of the Gramin map); since there are no layers for such objects (MapSend topo3d). We must select between available layers: "Hydro_polygons" (shown in blue in the receiver) or "Parks" (dotted green area). For PC map we can select some gray color area type. Here is part of the map on PC screen with houses (I don’t think this is a good idea to create Magellan maps with houses with using in the receiver; first, there is no good layers for them and second, drawing the houses slows down the map drawing)

Final remarks. In this tutorial some approaches on Garmin map export were demonstrated. Actually, many different ways, or combination of them can be used to decide how to assign Garmin objects to Magellan object. The most important features of the AddMagMap are: 1) it can add object-by-object (not necessary build the map in one step) and 2) you can always revert back to the previous step with “Step back” operation. So you can simply add some layer and try every time the result, if its OK then add the next layer, if not, step back and change the settings. At any moment you can also create Restore point. Garmin maps can be seen with GPSMapper program www.geopainting.com ; it may help to find out the types of the objects.