Visual Cartographer: convert gif maps to PDA format and visually calibrate them

Which Maps?

Choose the maps corresponding to your travel needs: from street levels to topographical, aeronautical, marine maps of any worldwide area.

1. On the Internet, world-wide digital maps can be found at

   	WorldWide	U.S and/or Canada	Europe
   Street level maps	MapQuest MapPoint.net	MapOnUs.com RandMcNally Maps.com	Mappy.com Webraska Michelin
   Aeronautical maps	AeroPlanner	AeroPlanner
   Topographical maps	National Geographic	Topozone charttiff.com TerraServe TopoGrafix Toporama (CA)
   Nautical maps	MarinePlanner	MarinePlanner NDI Nautical Data International

   
   The information and companies referenced here are for our customers guidance only. Some maps may have copyright restrictions. Please honor their terms of use.
   On most of the online sites, you can choose the map you're looking for. Right Click on it. Select Save Picture As... Save as a BMP, JPG or GIF file. Note the longitude and latitude (if there).
    
2. Use CDRom atlases for U.S and international digital maps through DeLorme Street Atlas, AAA Map'n'Go, Microsoft Expedia Streets 98, Microsoft Autoroute 2001, etc...
    
3. Scan your own paper maps
    
   Reminder: a map must be oriented in a North-Top direction to be converted through cartographer
    

External maps

Visual Cartographer allows you to take a large GIF map, calibrate it, and split it into optimal sized maps if neccesary.

Load the GIF map, calibrate it and save. This will split the map into 1000x1000 maximum size images and create the associated .geo files in a subdirectory.

Copy the map family subdirectory to your external memory card and you're ready to go.

Internal maps

Visual cartographer also allows you to get the Top-Left corner and Bottom-Right corner coordinates from a calibrated map for use with Cartographer.

Load the GIF map and calibrate it. On the menu, bring up the calibration info.

Use Cartographer to load the map and enter the calibration info. Save your new PDA file, hotsync and hit the road.

Map Calibration

Adding points for Visual Cartographer map calibration is done visually in 3 steps.

• Select the area of the map where you want to add a calibration point. This brings up a zoomed in map.
• Position the calibration point on the zoomed in map.
• Enter in the Latitude, Longitude and an optional description of the calibration point and save the point.

Repeat for as many points as necessary. Once the map is calibrated scrolling the cursor across the map will show the calculated latitude and longitude. A minimum of 2 points is necessary to calibrate the map.

> ADDS-ON: VisualCartographer user manual page