Hi all,

I am playing around with the free available Canadian vector data and am thinking to start a Canada topo series. I would be targeting areas approx. 300x300 miles per map. The quality of the road data is not as good as in the US (80% of the roadnames missing) but the rest (hydrography, vegetation, buldings etc) is very good, all available in 25k-50k quality.

I know the magicmap guys are on this topic, but they only offer tiny tiles.

What do you think is there a need for these large Canadian topo maps (vector)?

BR
Sockeye

I'd certainly make use of them - what with being a Canuck and all, eh!

Sounds like a great idea. The 1:50k areas are fine for the raster images but the vector maps should cover a larger area.

The 300x300 mile size looks like it would closely approximate one of the primary NTS mapsheet numbers consisting of 16 1:250k maps and 256 1:50k maps.

I think the MAGic maps guys were planning on being able to merge multiple vector maps together but not sure where they are on that.

Maybe, in the process, you could come up with a better Canadian basemap that shows a little more detail when zooming out. Just a thought.

Sockeye et al,

In general terms, I agree that being able to produce maps covering areas larger than the single 1:50,000 scale map sheets we're making right now would be great. In practice, however, I've found doing so will be an uphill battle.

A bit of perspective - I did a fair bit of work on this issue before releasing our current vector map making script (MakeCANVEC) with an eye on doing just what you are proposing. Unfortunately, I could not get the merged data through MMO reliably enough to produce maps that covered uniform pieces of ground from one map to the next (sometimes I could merge the data for 16 or more map sheets and run the resulting data through MMO like a summer breeze while at other times, MMO bogged down on the data for a single map sheet). Since I was more concerned with creating a set of standardized maps for the entire country, I decided to limit the scope of the script to single 1:50,000 map sheets.

Having said this, I haven't fully abandoned the idea of making merged maps and am planning to work this capability into the second edition of the script. I learned a lot developing the current version and I think it is possible to make maps reliably using the merged data of up to 20 1:50,000 map sheets if the data is properly manipulated. Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of time to work on it right now so it could be awhile before I can do much with it.

All the best,

Scott Nixon
Administrator
MAGic Maps
http://www.magicmaps.ca

I've RMP'd some 22-24 1:50k maps for the area between Hearst, Longlac, Manitouwadge, Marathon, along hwy 17 east to Wawa, and up Hwy 631 to Hwy 11. Took about a week of monkeying around, using Ozi maps I have, and Triton RMP. And I haven't even scratched the surface, this is only a couple of dozen maps for my tourist and geocaching purposes.

In reality they are great maps for close-up zoom, but for practicality purposes the 1:250k would be more realistic. One could do 50k maps on request, but do a base layout of 250k maps to begin with.

Hi Scott,

that is exactly what I'm doing. Especially with forest and wetland, I am reducing the number of points significantly and converting inner polygons.

With that I am able to cover an area of 4 NTS zones with one map ~200-300mb *imi file

BR
Sockeye

Absolutely, if you cut the detail and reduce the polygon size you'll be able to do really big chunks of ground in one go, especially if you work with the 1:250,000 scale data. The down side is what is left out. It’s too bad that MMO is so limiting and we even have to talk about this in the first place.

I've never tried merging more than about 16 maps in one go. I've done it with both 1:50,000 (1/16th of an NTS zone) and 1:250,0000 (1 NTS zone) NTDB data and a few examples are still available on my site (but they don't work well with the Tritons because of the way the script we were using at the time manipulated of the data). Although I had intended to use the 1:250,000 data to create base maps that covered a full NTS zone, I found them to be not really accurate enough to be used as GPS maps. The results using the 1:50,000 data was much better though, like I said before, it proved difficult to do push it through MMO with any degree of reliability and this is the reason we went with single map sheets for the time being.

Over the past year, I've learned quite a few tricks when it comes to manipulating data which leads me to think it will be possible to push the envelope further. In the end though, I think the upper limit will be around 16 X 1:50,000 map sheets without either generalizing or eliminating a lot of data. I hope I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure it will be difficult to go much beyond this point without having to give up a lot of detail. Since I don’t have the time to do add this capability to our automated process right now, I will watch with interest to see what you come up with.

All the best,

Scott

just as a litte update:

50% of Canada is done. With every map I get a step further. The last map I successfully compiled has an area of about 1000 x 600 miles, without information loss. It is covering the areas (14,15,24,25,34,35,44,45)

BR
Sockeye

Where will these be available? Eagerly awaiting areas 82 and 83.

Are you working with the 1:50,000 or 1:250,000 scale data for this?

It's all 50k data.

BR
Sockeye

This area was one of the first. As I did not know then how to handle the amount of data, I reduced the data to 1:100k and split up the 82-114 regions in two maps. But I think I found the trick, and I will recompile the BC map (regions 82,83,84,92,93,94,102,103,104 and 114) this weekend.

But to answer you question, I planned to release Canada complete sometime end of May on http://www.Maps4me.net

BR
Sockeye

That's great news, thank you for your efforts!!

Yes, that is good news. May is soon enough. Thanks for you hard work.

Sockeye, do you have a sample to see what your maps look like ? I've seen enough of Northern Ontario maps, I'd be curious to see a screenshot or 2 if it's not too much trouble. I'll gladly chip in the annual fee if your maps aren't the same ones that I make for around home. Thanks in advance.