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Help with best practice for downloading tiles

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Topic: Help with best practice for downloading tiles (Read 374 times)

garybr2000

Newbie

Posts: 1

Help with best practice for downloading tiles

« on: July 23, 2008, 06:30:33 PM »

Hi All,

I just downloaded BNC and I am getting acquainted with the interface. My primary purpose for this software will be getting topo maps of my hikes and GPS track it.

Since I would like to avoid roaming charges ($30 per mb) from my cell provider, I thought I could download the maps in advance. My problem is how best to download the maps I need.

Example: I am going to hike the Grand Canyon (Bright Angel Trail). I found a site that gave me the LAT/LONG of the trail(http://www.lat-long.com) and I selected a 15 mile radius (1051 tiles, plus 15935 aerial tiles) @ 1m resolution. That is obviously more than I need.

Here are my questions:

Is there a better way to get stuff?
Also, can I delete tiles from the database once I downloaded them?
how do I zoom in on a part of the country and select an area?
How big is the average tile?

I have an 8Gb storage card, so space is not a huge concern

Thanks
Gary Brown


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Nathan

Administrator
Hero Member

Posts: 504

Re: Help with best practice for downloading tiles

« Reply #1 on: July 24, 2008, 08:18:43 AM »

Hi Gary,

Each tile takes up about 8K - so you could get about 120Meg. 1m gives you about 8-16 times the amount of data that 4m will, and topo only goes up to 4m. So you can save space by downloading 4m and then getting 1m on more select areas.

An even better idea:
If you want an area that better approximates the trail, start with waypoints/tracks first.

Google for "Grand Canyon (Bright Angel Trail) GPX". You just might save yourself some time by finding a trail and waypoints.

Download the GPX file and import it into BackCountry Navigator.

Define rectangles for the irregular area that surrounds the trail as in this part of the software tour: http://www.backcountrynavigator.com/content/view/79/46/

This is even easier and faster to do in BackCountry Navigator Desktop Edition.

There are a few steps to learn for this process, but once you've done it, you'll see how fun and easy it is.

Nathan