Mapping and Drawing software

Bob,

In my experience, Google Earth and all of the online mapping tools work equally well on the PC and the Mac.

For drawing maps, Laurent Lacroix steered me towards EasyDraw for the Mac. It is pretty intuitive and you can buy a fully functional trial license for $20 that lasts a year I think. It gives you a good opportunity to try it out for very little money. The permanent license is $60 or $70.
http://www.eazydraw.com/

In another thread, Jim G. mentioned capturing a screen shot of Google Earth for processing in an image or drawing program. Google Earth has a built-in function that will allow you to save an image of the screen in a JPG file. The feature is located in the File Menu (File > Save > Save Image.)

Here's a link to a sample of an image saved in Google Earth.

Google-Earth image

Thank you. -- Justin

Google Earth also has a (Tools > Ruler) measuring tool which makes it easy to determine the straight-line distance between points, e.g., between start and finish on a course.

I also use it to determine the elevations for points along a course. The elevation shows up in meters at the bottom of the screen as you move the mouse pointer along the course.

For drawing maps, I use a Mac with Freehand. It more functional and easier to use, but the down side is the $399 license fee.

There are a number of free apps for the PC to capture a portion of your screen to an image file. Here's the one I use
http://wisdom-soft.com/products/screenhunter_free.htm

Does anyone have a recommendation for an inexpensive, easy to use PC application for drawing maps?

Mark,
I've been using "Diagram Studio" for several years. I am currently using it on PC with Win 7. It is $50 for a single license. I would consider it a fairly easy product to learn to use. You can download and try for free. Check out my certificates online for examples of results of using this product.


Gadwin-Diagram Studio

I'm back with another gps question: what maps have folks found useful to add on to the map the gps device comes with? I've now got a GPSMAP 60CSx, and there isn't much detail on the map. I see they have 1:24,000 topo maps, is that the right thing to get?

I have an older version of the same GPS. I purchased the Topo Canada maps and am very pleased with them. As well as the Topo data they have excellent road data and routing capability. One thing I like when measuring is to be able to see upcoming curves and corners even if they are hidden from my line of sight. I assume that the US Topo maps are similar.

Bob,
I also bought my 60cxs a few years ago and purchased the City Navigator maps. Very detailed road information. The maps also include information about businesses. I have not updated the maps since I first bought them 4 or 5 years ago (since it is not free). While driving we will occasionally run into a disagreement between the maps and the roads, but this has never happened when measuring a course. I think most road/name changes are on highways and main roads, not on local roads where most races are held.

On an unrelated note, one of our pet peeves with the navigation part of the Garmin software is that when you are traveling and ask it to show restaurants for example, it shows the ones behind, as well as in front of you. Does it really think we care about the restaurants behind us? We can't find any way to change this. Does this happen with other GPS devices people have?

Thanks for the quick replies! In the meantime I went ahead and ordered the City Navigator ("lower 49 states") and also the topo map for southeast US. I guess it's extravagant but it sounded like that would be the best way to have good information about streets and also about off-road areas. I'll have to be sure to dig up some woodsy courses to measure to justify this, but anyway I should be in a position to compare the 2 kinds of map.
Mark, what if it's a really good restaurant, would you go back for that? They could use that in promotions, if so ("gps users turn around to get here . . .")

If you're cheap as I am, you might want to get the free software from www.openoffice.org that includes OpenOffice Draw that can be used to draw maps.

Here are some of its features:

You can establish numerous "layers" such as a base map of an area used for numerous courses and other layers for the information specific to the different courses.

You can use a JPEG image, or a screenshot, as a base layer that you can draw on top of. You can incorporate the image in your map, or make it invisible in your final product.

You can draw near-unlimited detail by using View/Zoom to effectively work at great magnifications.

You can export your final product as an easily shareable PDF or JPEG file.

I'm convinced a more graphically talented person could do a much better job, but you can look a one of the maps I made with OpenOffice Draw at http://www.usatf.org/events/co...?courseID=CT07002JHP.

The package of software that includes the drawing program also includes a spreadsheet program that seems to do everything that Excel does, including math with time.

If you have questions, you can contact me at davidreik@comcast.net.

Dave,
Does openoffice draw have a tool to draw the parallel lines of road edges, or did you do that by copying, pasting, and shifting?

Speaking of mapping, is it possible to get or see Duane's mapping presentation from the convention?

In reference to Mark Neal's question above, I draw each side of the road separately. Maybe there's a way to draw both sides of the road at the same time, but I've not found it. You might be able to draw one thick dark line for the whole road, and then use a light line within the dark line for the measured route. I think Jim Gerweck experimented with that approach, using different software.

I use Adobe Illustrator. The "layers" feature allows creating a layer of "black roads" traced from the Google map on the layer below. These "black roads" can be copied to a layer above and made white and thinner. This produces roads with two edges and all intersections.

Correl Draw has a feature that produces a two-edged road on a single layer.

Both these are fairly expensive software packages used by graphic artists. However, older versions can be found on eBay much cheaper.

The disadvantage I've found with these software is that with all the available features, maps can become pretty complicated and therefore take longer to produce. This, of course is not a software problem.

I also use Illustrator and the key feature for me is it's ability to apply a style to a layer. I created a "road" style with a wide black line under a slightly narrower white line. After creating my road network I apply the style to the layer and like manic all the intersections are joined together without overlapping lines.

Paul, Here's a link to a pretty good discussion of drawing roads in Illustrator.

http://veerle-v2.duoh.com/blog...p_in_illustrator_cs/

Those are great tips. This is a very valuable discussion. Only through this forum and emailing you folks for tips at looking at your maps and sharing files did I figure this stuff out. Some of it better than others. I am just starting to feel like I can make a map pretty quickly now after years. The measurement video is great but I think a map video would save all you regional certifiers a ton of headaches. How about a Youtube? You guys don't get any bad maps to certify do you .

Guido,

My presentation was mostly showing the different layers I add to Illustrator, in the order I do it. There wasn't a lot of time, so it was a very brief presentation. And, without Illustrator, you couldn't open the main feature of the presentation.

I like Illustrator for many reasons. I wish I had a true "presentation", but without someone having Illustrator, a presentation may not be worth much. It is a hands-on learning experience.

I have recently learned that Adobe is no longer supporting FreeHand, which it got when purchasing Macromedia several years ago to gain possession of Flash. Therefore it will not run on later versions of the Mac OS.
I suppose I will have to figure out how to make my maps using Illustrator now. One thing I like about Freehand was its "Clone" command - I could draw a black line, clone it, change to a thinner white line, and get a road. Clone once more and change to a dotted line, and voila, the running route.
My problem is with my older existing maps. I'm afraid I'm going to have to keep my older iMac just to access them.
Ah, the price of progress.