Less contour lines, option??

[FLY5465]

Hi I like the Arizona topo map and I'm trying to use it on my Garmin Nuvi-750.  I'm mostly looking for the "OffRoad" & Trails information.  It gets very busy with all the contour lines.  Is there any way to turn off or at least reduce the contour lines while keeping the max detail of the roads and trails?

Thanks,
Dale

[magellan]

I just zoom in a lot. I think the individual state topos have less lines than the western states topos.

[powellp]

When you save them in MapSource can you just save them with a lower detail setting?

[magellan]

I'm surprised a seasoned forum person has not answered yet. When they create the maps, they manually set in the contour lines in a folder and create the map (at least that what I have gathered from my research). When you load it on to your computer and run installer, it loads all of the map data, and does not give you an option to reduce contour lines. They only way I know of is to have the person with all the map data recreate the map, and to add less contour lines. What I say may be corrected by an old timer though, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

[maps4gps]

Map authoring is an artistic process.  And like most things there are trade-offs.  Some want more detail and use the maps zoomed-in, other want a more general view where the detail would clutter the screen.  The level of detail and view of contours, hydro, roads and other features are determined when the individual .img files in a mapset are created.  The 'more'/'less' detail settings on the GPSr generally affect all features equally - the GPSr unit's software handles some features somewhat different, but none of this is documented by Garmin.

[-Oz-]

Yea.  Everyone above is correct.  On my arizona map I created the lines with 40ft intervals.  If you zoom out past 800ft you get fewer contours (likely 120ft between) and if you zoom out past 0.5mi you get even fewer contours.  Granted, you will also lose a lot of roads past 0.2mi or 0.3mi.