MANUAL TOC
2.2. RESTORE
2.2.1 RESTORE POINTS
2.2.2 STEP BACK
2.4 DATA
2.4.1 LABELS
2.4.2 ICONS
2.4.3. LINES
2.4.4. AREAS
2.4.5. POINTS
2.6 TOOLS
2.6.1. RUN AND CLOSE MAPSEND
2.6.2 POLISH TEXT TO ESRI SHAPE FILE CONVERTER
2.8 KNOWN PROBLEMS
2.8.1 DIRECT ROUTE
2.8.2 S&D AUSTRALIA
2.7 Import Garmin maps
Both Garmin and Magellan maps are vector maps, they consist of set of polylines, areas and points. In spite of both Magellan and Gramin maps have the same *.img (*.imi for Explorist) extension format of them is absolutely different. To import Garmin map to Magellan map, Garmin map should be first extracted to the set of objects and then each object must be assigned to layer, group and drawing type of the Magellan map.
For Garmin maps so called polish_text_format (or Polish Map Format (PMF)) was developed by Stanislaw Kozicki (author of the cGPSmapper program (www.cgpsmapper.com) for custom Garmin maps creation); in this plain text format every object (line, area, point) has the LABEL, TYPE and LEVEL. Unlocked Gramin maps can be converted to PMF and vise versa (i.e. PMF can be used to build garmin *.img map). Full description of the PMF can be found at www.cgpsmapper.com.
In Polish Map Format the TYPE is a hex value (there are tens of them) that determines drawing type (color, type of the line, thickness etc) and the LEVEL determines appearance of the object on the map (zoom at which object is visible). LEVELs are similar (but not the same) to Magellan layers. When we put some object to Magellan layer; it automatically defines how the object will look on the map and at what zooms it will be shown on the map (in dependence on detail settings (high, low, medium etc) which can be set in the receiver). In PMF drawing is independent on LEVEL, look on the receiver’s and PC screens is the same and defined by “TYPE=”. If some object must be shown at several zoom levels it must be defined for each LEVEL (Levels start from 0, the most detailed layer (shown at higher zoom)).
The following figure shows this difference. Object L1 exists in 0,1,2 levels, it is explicitly defined for all these layers in PMF, this object will be shown on both receiver and PC screens with the same line type (TYPE=0x1). Object L2 exists in the same levels, but its drawing type is different (TYPE=0x2), the same 0x2 type will be used for the receiver and PC. When L1 and L2 objects are assigned, for example, to MapSend “Streets” layer; they will be shown by the same line on the receiver (type is defined by specific MapSend), but on PC map they can be drawn differently. Visibility properties are defined in MapSend for each layer (zoom range when they are visible on the map; the range depend on specific MapSend). For each layer there are several ranges of zoom (corresponding to detail, medium, high etc. settings in the receiver).
Please find more info on Garmin format at www.geopainting.com and www.cgpsmapper.com.
To import Garmin map the following steps must be performed:1. Garmin map (*.img) must be converted to Polish Map Format (for example with GPSmapper program (www.geopainting.com)). Alternatively, many custom Garmin map can be found in PMF, in this case no conversion is needed.
2. Convert PMF to ESRI shape files with AddMagMap’s built-in tool (Menu-Tools). The shp file (for each type of object (line, area, point) has 3 fields: LABEL, TYPE and LAYER.
From the above example the shp line file will contain 10 objects:
LABEL
TYPE
LEVEL
L1
0x1
0
L1
0x1
1
L1
0x1
2
L2
0x2
0
L2
0x2
1
L2
0x2
2
L3
0x3
1
L3
0x3
2
L3
0x3
3
L4
0x4
4
3. Assign one instance of the object (to avoid duplication) to some MapSend layer
4. Define how this object will look on PC.
In Polish Map Format the objects can be also defined by start and end levels (without duplication the record for each level), in this case only one instance of object will be included to shp file. For our purpose there is no difference between these two types of definition, in any case we are using only one instance of the object.
AddMagMap has advanced filtering system to simplify import of Garmin objects. AddMagmap has also an option to substitute hex values of PMF types to real names and has also statistics screen to find instances of the objects. Please see “Data:Lines:ESRI shape files” 2.4.3.5 section and Examples document to see how it works..
Many free custom Garmin maps (*.img or/and PMF) can be found at http://mapcenter.cgpsmapper.com/