Mapping Software

When researching which mapping software to purchase I went over to the Utah Geological Survey and tried out these products: Maptech, All Topo, and TOPO! (Nat’l Geographic). I also tested DeLorme’s 3D TopoQuads (30 days free).

TOPO! is pretty good but at the time they were limited to the national parks and I wanted all of Utah (this was before Nat’l Geographic owned it I think). DeLorme’s is junk. All Topo is pretty good and have come a long way. One thing I don’t like about All Topo is that you have to create seamless maps and cannot view them like you can with Maptech and TOPO!. We use All Topo in our office because the maps are raw and not copyrighted. This allows us to use them in projects, etc. However, the resolution is not as good.

Here are my reasons I use Maptech: 1)Price. I purchased Utah and Arizona for $150 and I think it is less now. If your friend paid $1000 he got ripped off. They reduced their prices over a year ago through the internet. However, retailers still have them marked up. I still see Utah for $700 in places. 2)Capability of Terrain Navigator is superior to most and definitely was a year ago. Some of the other products have caught up it seems. 3)Good product support with regular software updates. I suggest you download the latest upgrade from their website. Not a patch, an upgrade. I think they are up to ver 5.03. 4)Excellent quality. When I print my maps on an HP1050C, HP8550, or my bubblejet the resolution is very good. Granted, most people don’t have access to a 600dpi roll plotter or 600dpi color laser printer.

The elevations are definitely off but have never really used them. I always go off the contours and it was not a priority for me. My main concern was printing quality, price, and the ability to create routes (waypoints, etc), tracks, add labels, and good import/export utilities for gps and synching with my home computer.

All Topo does not have a DEM with its software.

You can also purchase the Enhanced Digital Elevation Data for Maptech for an extra $50 to fix the elevations. Basically, I think you are correct about the elevation problem but it’s more of a problem with design than a bug.

Hope this helps…

— In canyons@y…, gajslk@w… wrote: > A good friend of mine has terrain navigator. I’ve spent several > hours messing with it. It’s a decent product in general, but there > seem to be some shortcomings for those of us who care about how much > vertical drop there may be in a given distance. If you use the track > tool and then display the route profile, the vertical distance can be > way off. Like 50%. I plugged in a couple of routes that I’m > familiar with and was amazed at the lousy accuracy. Counting contour > lines showed the correct elevation difference. There is an inherent > quantization problem that can affect elevation measurement, so I > extended my track about half a kilometer past the endpoints onto > essentially flat ground and got the same incorrect elevation > difference. I saw this both on a local quad(Colorado Springs) and on > a Utah Quad(Temple of Sinewava). These were the only two spots that > I checked! Since the product is quite expensive and I didn’t trust > their database, I elected not to buy it. My buddy likes to run his > GPS in track mode and download the waypoints. He’s quite happy with > it.

A real plus is the ability to troll lots of maps looking for > interesting terrain before buying or printing the paper copies. Of > course where they really charge you is for the maps. I think that my > friend got about half of Colorado and half of Utah for about a > grand. Ouch.

Gordon

— In canyons@y…, Kris Nosack wrote:

What’s the best mapping software for canyoneering? I’ve looked at > the

Delorme TopoQuads and noticed that many people use National > Geographic’s

Topo!. I’ve found a few reviews, but they weren’t very thorough. > I’d

like to know what you guys use and like.

If this subject has been discussed already (I’ve only been on this > mailing

list for a few weeks), a summary would be appreciated. And if > someone

will give me the approximate month(s) this subject was discussed in > the

past, I can go digging through the archives.

– Kris Nosack