I’m a newby here, and I’m sort of getting overloaded with information. I’ve been trying to replace my Garmin n-route with something newer. It worked perfect on Windows xp but my wife upgraded her laptop to windows 7 and we’ve had a lot of problems. I’ve downloaded 4 programs and can’t seem to make any work right. Been looking at mapfactor Navigator, and tangoland on this forum, and I’m sure there are a lot more. I’ve tried okmap , gmapcatcher, and a couple others and had trouble with all of them. I’m not real computer literate. My son’s getting married in June in Nebraska, and I’m in northern Idaho. I really like your maps. Had the routable ones on n-route. I’d also like to be able to convert them from gsuppmap.img to use them on another system if possible. Since they are your maps instead of garmins I thought it might be ok, if I got your ok. Last spring we made a 4,000 mile round trip and halfway thru n-route quit. Problems between windows 7 and mapsource. Garmin doesn’t support n-route any more, and I don’t want any more surprises. Other than the wedding. I also don’t want to have to spring for their new mobile software to put on a laptop unless I have to. Thank you for the help.
Hi, navigator free is running all right on my pc and windows mobile phone. If you have a problem with the application you could post in the topic about navigator free. Mapfactor is posting on this forum also…
I don’t have experience with navigation with Garmin although I tried nroute (on windows xp).
Microsoft has the application Autoroute (europe), I used it on our latest trip with our RV and it worked ok.
I’m really sorry, but you’ll be getting some more information to process. That’s what you get when asking questions. 
Have a look at the offline routers that work with OpenStreetMap data (there are probably more not listed there). There’s no real favorite for me, because I’ve not yet tried any of them in such a situation.
Also, I’m only a Garmin map provider, I don’t own any rights of those maps other then the usual contributor rights on the OpenStreetMap data that I created/edited. You may do whatever you want with the Garmin maps except removing any OpenStreetMap licence references.
If it’s ok to change the map files, is there any way to change them back from the img, to osm, or another type file. I see no reason to have to redownload the maps if I can make them work, and it’s ok to do so. I downloaded most of the US in I think 7 bunches for future trips. All routable, with the install and uninstall file with them. Mapsource would only recognize 1 bunch at a time.
The reason that you can see only one map at a time in Mapsource is because all the maps from my website have the same map product and family ID’s. Change one of the ID’s and MapSource thinks it’s a different map. A manual for changing the ID is already on linked on my site.
Another option is to copy all the tiles from the different maps you’ve downloaded into one directory (they probably already are) and create a new overview file (*.tdb) that uses all those tiles, but this requires a bit more tinkering and the option above is easier. But this option gives you a large single map, so that might appeal you. I use Mkgmap for that (it get’s a bit technical with commandline options and all that).
Thanks for the info on combining the OSM maps on map source. I will give it a try. My point tho was I disn’t see any point in redownloading the map files. It just made more work for me and the people on this site. I didn’t think there was any way to reconvert the img files back. I also understand what you are saying about Mkgmap as I tried this winter to learn some mapmaking skills, and really frustrated myself. That was one of the programs I attempted to learn. Wished Garmin would go back to supporting n-route as I still really like it, when I can get it to work right.
Lambertus are you sure you sent the link to change the family ID? I open up a page to translate Dutch to English. I am considering keeping n-route for my trip this year, and would like to combine all the routable tiles That I have. Not sure I have them all for the US, but most.
That link is a Dutch webpage describing how you can install multiple maps from my website in MapSource, that’s why I provided the Google translated version…
But, ok, I understand now, you don’t want multiple maps but one big map, based upon multiple downloads from my site. That’s different indeed. I haven’t tried that yet, so I’ll briefly try to explain:
Download the MapSource installers and install them all in the same directory (this is default behavior). The tiles will accumulate in the directory but the overview file is overwritten each time you install a map. In the end we have all the tiles in one place but an incorrect overview file. So we have to create a new overview file (.tdb). This can be done with MapSetToolkit (the Swiss army knife for Garmin maps) or using Mkgmap with the “–tdbfile” parameter. I don’t run Windows so I can’t test MapSetToolkit, but the command for Mkgmap should be:
java -Xmx2048M -jar mkgmap.jar --index --overview-mapname=63240000 --series-name='OSM World Routable' --latin1 --description='OSM World Routable' --product-id=3 --family-id=2000 --tdbfile *.img
In this commandline you see the following parameters:
java = you will need a Java Runtime Environment
-Xmx2048M = give the runtime environment ample space (memory) to work with (2GB in this case is more then enough)
-jar = tell java to run a Java Archive file (java application)
mkgmap.jar = the Mkgmap application including it’s path, eg. c:\openstreetmap\mkgmap\mkgmap.jar
–index = create an index file (address searching)
…
–tdbfile = create an overview file for MapSource
*.img = provide all the tiles (eg. 632401032.img) that you want to include in your map
For the other option I refer to the Mkgmap help (java -jar mkgmap.jar --help) or online documentation. Best to leave them as they are but you may change the --series-name and --description without problems.
Other options you might want to add:
- If you want to create a MapSource installer (so you can distribute your map to others) then add: “–nsis”. This will create an NSIS installer script that tells NSIS how to make an executable installer. Grap a copy of NSIS from the net and feed the script to it and you will get a nice executable installer.
- If you want to be able to move your map to the GPS without using MapSource or sendmap or RoadTrip you can add: “–gmapsupp”. This will create a combined map image (gmapsupp.img) that you can put on the SD-card of the GPS directly.
One big warning if you do this: Make sure that the downloaded installers are all using the same release version (i.e. the date stamp in the url http:/planetosm.oxilion.nl/~lambertus/garmin/routable/30-01-2011/5020aa3c659661a532abbf6bf5e861a8 should be the same)! Failing to do so will make a big mess and not produce predictable results.
I dont recommend to set the parameters overview-mapname to 63240000 and .img, because this way mkgmap might process the overview map itself (63240000.img and 63240000_mdr.img) resulting in mapsource will crash. I dont know how all the tiles are numbered, but lets say they all start with 63…, then the filter needs to be set to 63.img. You don’t have to give the overview mapname a number, it can also be a name like osm_map. This way the index files will be osm_map.img, osm_map.tdb osm_map.mdx and osmmap_mdr.img, so mkgmap will only process the correct img tiles.
The nsis option is a very convenient way to install those maps in Mapsource, but it creates by default file "uninstall.exe"which will exists too in the other installed osm maps. So you need to edit the nsi file first a bit and rename uninstall.exe into uninstall_osm_map.exe for example.
Thanks, the overview map naming info was new to me. And you are right, it would be necesessary to remove the existing 63240000* overview files first because even your 63*.img filter won’t help filtering them out. I forgot about that because when I run that command on the server those files don’t exist yet and, hence, cannot interfere with the process.
This is true, but the only function of the uninstall is to remove the registry keys from the Windows registry (which are always the same for my maps anyway) and delete the files from disk (easy to do yourself). So I don’t mind much about overwriting an uninstaller. Failing to rename the uninstaller will only result in the directory (where the maps are installed) to grow slightly over time as you install new maps and updates. But I don’t regard that as a real problem in these times of terabyte harddisks.