TOPO! Software
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Does anyone use the National Geographic TOPO! software and have an opinion on it's ease of use, especially as to how easy it is to develop your own maps set based off of a file with GPS waypoints and then have the maps printed? |
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usgs topos
the usgs site has loads of free digital topos. you can use the free terraGo software with these pdf maps to annotate, measure, and do gps tracking. |
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I have TOPO! for Colorado and it works pretty well. It is pretty basic and can be annoying at times but it is good for printing map sections. I have not used it with GPS data though. If you are looking for something more advanced with better functionality I would go with terrain navigator pro. I would also recommend also getting the national geographic waterproof map paper to print onto. |
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I've found it pretty straight forward; the prints are fine, I've jpeg'd soft copies for e-mail. Make your own labels with text to note items of interest, input waypoints, grid it for nav coordinates in the field, interchange coord systems. There's also some routing/route planning you can do. |
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Been about 7 years since I've used the NG Topo software, switched to the Delorme version, so perhaps some of my impressions are not longer relevant to the NG software. Most of the main software features between the two packages are pretty equivalent: map detail, grids, datums, waypoints, etc. Initially I had doubts about the Delorme since map coverage of the Western U.S. for the same price as a single state in NG. |