Using other [non Tiger] street maps

[jocoyn]

Is this possible and can this be done with a combo map?  How do user calibrated maps work? Can we get maps from our county GIS [these are online and very updated] and pull in for use?

I am playing with the demo now as our search and rescue team is looking at alernatives to upgrading to a newer version of Maptech, and morphing street maps with aerials and topos would be ideal [I am pretty sure the limitation here is two layers at a time but even that is not so bad].  The other issue with Maptech being one of GPS interface issues.

A problem with Tiger is the street data is too old for our section of the country which has shown tremendous growth in the past 5 years. Right now we wind up with our topo [ we need to print with UTM lines] and other maps such as street maps and aerials to supplement

[jocoyn]

I think I may have figured this out. My state, south carolina, has tons of GIS data on the web for free.
http://www.dnr.sc.gov/GIS/gisdata.html
I just have to figure out HOW to get it!  I am pretty sure I am going to be signing up on this product soon [we are trying to do a demo next week with team GPS and figure out how many people need to have the SW]

STET

It looks like the DNR data is OLD. There is newer data on the county websites that is for sale but it does not appear to be in the right format. So, we may need to make some calls to figure this out.

Nancy
www.scsarda.org

[ScottMorris]

Hi,

Sorry for the late reply on this one.  I thought I had already replied to this for some reason.

All user calibrated maps have a "transparency" setting, so you can actually combine more than 2 maps at a time.  It isn't quite as slick as the built in combo maps, but it's very possible.

Let me know what map data you find.  If there's a specific format it's in I can look into adding support for loading the calibration data directly.  Right now you'll have to load each map and calibrate by hand.

Thanks, and let me know if you have any other questions.

[jocoyn]

Well, all the aerials from one county are in MrSID -AND- are expensive and I have already read about that. The other county has them available in ECW [they need a 300 gig USB drive to deliver]

I have gotten pretty handy with just taking jpegs off of the viewer and calibrating them - finding that calibrating to the color aerials here is pretty good and gives me the transparency for the topo lines; I am only doing that because I can't see that you can put grids over or adjust transparency of the color topos you can access through topofusion.

They are also all done in NAD83 across the state; I gather that is common and don't know what that means for the ECW shapefiles?

Will be coming back and asking about working off of an external drive.  Our computer does meet the requirements of the program but drive space is only a 20 gig drive and I can see this adding up.  The more I play with the program the more I like it; we downloaded some GPS data yesterday and compared to maptech it was very easy.

[jocoyn]

Another thing I am liking very much is that with Maptech TNP  the data lags - even now it is big bucks to get access to 2006 data when 2008/2009 data are available on county sites. And not that long ago the data was from 2000.  Then I find out you have to pay MORE to get the current roads.  And this is data that is constantly changing. I think the maps are a subscription to already out of date data and the roads is a one time buy to constantly changing data.

Your UTM grids are spot on.  We can print a map to a good scale for a searcher and not have to worry about scaling it to use a grid reader. The hashmarks and UTM numbers on the grids make it very user friendly even if you don't have the reader with you.

I do wish we could put grids over the color aerials though.

Given the size of maps, I think we may be looking at an air card - it makes more sense to me to download data as we need it instead of having huge monster files which have to be renewed. The calibration has gone down from about 15 minutes to two to three now that I am playing with it.

[jocoyn]

Scott, hope you don't mind my putting this here but maybe it helps some other SAR teams because I think I will point them to this program as was I. We are doing a comparison pros/cons between this and upgrading to Maptech and I like what we can do on your program better than Maptech. 

I figure out how to get maps on USB so our 20 gig hard drive is not a problem

Now, Let say we buy a 5 user license.  That would give 4 of us with the full version on our computers and 1 on the team laptop which lives in a trailer.  Could any one of the 4 of us do a quick download from home when we get the search call, download and calibrate a user map and save to USB by directing our maps to be saved on USB.

That way the first person on scene [with a USB] can pop the USB in the team laptop and be ready to go in minutes?

That is, are user added files stored in the maps data files?

Would musical USBs present a problem? 

That approach could keep us from having to buy an aircard and worrying about a signal in some of our search areas and could let us get the most up to date data available.

[ScottMorris]

Hi,

Ah, I forgot that UTM grids are disabled on the color aerials.  It's because they are in a different projection, but I can make a note to look at adding them.

To answer your question about musical USB sticks -- what you are describing is possible right now, but perhaps a little cumbersome.  The calibration info for each map is saved in the TopoFusion.ini file, so you'd need to copy that over too.

However, if it's of use to you and your team, I have been meaning to add a calibration export function that would make this process easier.  You'd just need to store the original image and the calibration file on the USB to be read by the copy of TopoFusion on the laptop.

By the way, the user maps are not stored in the mapsX.dat files.  They are loaded from wherever in the program you initially load them from.  We'd make it so when you add a new image it looks for an appropriately named calibration file and loads that, if it exists.

Does that make sense?  Let me know how we can help you.

[jocoyn]

That makes a lot of sense

That calibration export function would be a real plus - being able to take along those maps and load into any computer with topofusion installed would be a real boon!

Think about it. After a search we have to write a report but the team laptop needs to stay in the trailer ready for action.  But the person writing the report could take the USB stick and have the data right in front of them for the closure report.. 

You have resolved my last issue for the comparison [we have a meeting to make a final decision this Thursday, but even knowing that you may do that is an added boost - for now, I can write directions and assume they can just copy the ini file from the appropriate folder [which I can point to in application data] folder to the flash drive then from the flash drive to the team laptop application data folder 

This is a really fine program - on the surface it looks rough but underneath it has so much functionlity - even the little things like area calculation - much nicer than in the program we have been using.

[ScottMorris]

Glad you are finding the software useful.  It does have some rough edges, but we're getting some of them smoothed out over time. 

It really shouldn't be a problem to export calibration files.  It's been on the 'todo' list for a while and we may as well make it happen sooner than later.  Seems like it'll be quite useful for you folks.

Let me know how it goes and if you think of anything else.

[jocoyn]

I really think that stand alone USB version would be the way to go since it has already been requested.  This program is already great but that is something you *can* do with Maptech.  Given the file sizes and potential for growth being able to have everything on a USB drive would be awesome and meet several people's requests.

[ScottMorris]

So you are talking about a version of the software you could run from the USB without installing on the computer you are using it on?

Or just a way of saving a snapshot of all maps (including user maps) and settings to the USB, then loading them later on?

[jocoyn]

I think having the entire shooting match [program and all] in one place [the USB drive] would make life simpler, particularly if we could also make folders and store our pictures and jpeg maps there.  I noticed this had been asked for before.

If not, I got to thinking that the *.ini points to drives by "letter" and was concerned that my USB drive is drive "K" on one computer and "E" on another if that would be an issue - so thinkng we might have to edit the ini file with switching between computers.