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General Category => Map Making Support => Topic started by: vt.flatlander on March 12, 2016, 05:06:58 PM

Title: Newly created map has no road labels and other expected features.
Post by: vt.flatlander on March 12, 2016, 05:06:58 PM
I just created my first map (State of Vermont) using QGIS on my Mac OS X 10.8 then completing the last few steps on my Windows laptop from work.
I am happy that I actually completed the task thanks to the very helpful tutorial and assistance  from this site.

Now that I have the map loaded into BaseCamp I see some aspects of the detail that I dont understand.
First: There are no road labels regardless of settings. Zoomed in with map detail set to highest does not yield any labels.
Second : I used data that included State Forest,Parks and Wildlife Management Areas but none of that shows up either.(polygon data). National Wildlife Preserves are shown.(similar data from the same layer). 
I suspect this must be some kind of MP_TYPE attribute that I need to change?
Third: There are no contour interval labels .
Also why does the map render artificial paths over water bodies in BaseCamp?
Title: Re: Newly created map has no road labels and other expected features.
Post by: Boyd on March 12, 2016, 09:15:45 PM
I haven't used qGIS much so I can't help there, but here are a couple troubleshooting ideas. If you click on a road, is the name displayed? If not, then the roads have not been properly named.

The contour labels are pretty much the same issue.

I delete those artificial paths because they are pesky otherwise. ;) I process all my map data with a relational database which makes this kind of thing easy. But that is probably more than you want to get into, and more than I want to explain. :)

Otherwise, using a custom .typ file, you can make them go away... sometimes. Basically, you need to make the rivers, artificial paths and other hydro line features the same color as waterbody polygons. But it gets a bit more complicated because rendering is different on different GPS devices, and sometimes you see a "ghost" of the lines. I think (maybe) it helps fix this if you define the hydro lines as having a 1 pixel border, and you make the fill and outline the same color as the water polygons.

As far as MP_TYPE values, look at the list in the back of the cpgsmapper manual and compare them to what you used to see if some of them are invalid.

Title: Re: Newly created map has no road labels and other expected features.
Post by: vt.flatlander on March 13, 2016, 07:00:48 AM
Boyd
Part of the fun in making this map was getting to know QGIS in the process. So as I went along through the tutorial I was also building the map in a QGIS project . Every layer in my project has labels. I actually asked about this in another thread recently. The only two attributes available after combining the data in part 8 is MP_TYPE and Name. 
I can easily open any shape file in QGIS. For example: Lines_0000.0001.shp in my Split folder, and have it display the labels for the layer. I see labels for roads,rivers,contour intervals.......
So I suspect there must be something missing during the compiling of the data??   
I just looked at the Final_.mp files in Notepad++and see no "Label=" at the end of each Polyline or Polygon blocks. POI has both the Name= and the Type=(HEX). 
Title: Re: Newly created map has no road labels and other expected features.
Post by: -Oz- on March 13, 2016, 06:06:11 PM
How big is one of your .mp files if you zip it? I'd like to take a look at the file. My guess at this point is that in QGIS the column name was not NAME and thus it didn't convert any of the labels from the .shp file over to the .mp file.

Quick way to test is open the  Lines_0000.0001.shp file. Now open the attribute table and see if the column with the labels is called NAME or something else? If it is something else that is the issue. Thankfully you can fix this with a three modifications in ConvertSplit2mp.bat:

if "!filename:~0,4!" == "Line" (
%gpsfdshp2mpfolder%\gpsfdshp2mp.exe %%f "MP_TYPE" "NAME" n %dictionary_file% !initialmapid! !finalmapname!
)
if "!filename:~0,5!" == "Point" (
%gpsfdshp2mpfolder%\gpsfdshp2mp.exe %%f "MP_TYPE" "NAME" n %dictionary_blank% !initialmapid! !finalmapname!
)
if "!filename:~0,7!" == "Polygon" (
%gpsfdshp2mpfolder%\gpsfdshp2mp.exe %%f "MP_TYPE" "NAME" n %dictionary_blank% !initialmapid! !finalmapname!
)

Change the NAME to whatever your column is called in the shapefile.
Title: Re: Newly created map has no road labels and other expected features.
Post by: vt.flatlander on March 13, 2016, 06:50:27 PM
Dan
My response to Boyd explains that I have no issue with labels in QGIS. See attachment.
I dont know what the FID column is all about. That must have been generated during the splitting process?? 

Is the column "NAME" case sensitive ?
Also included is an example of a Final.mp file as viewed in Notepad ++ . None of the polyline or polygon data items have the NAME= at the end.

When I view in Notepad++ for example: Lines_0000_0000.dbf file in the Split folder before the ConvertSplit2MP.bat was run it shows all of the street and flowline names.
Title: Re: Newly created map has no road labels and other expected features.
Post by: -Oz- on March 15, 2016, 06:07:01 PM
I believe the Name is case sensitive (but I'm not sure). Use NAME next time. However, for now change the script from NAME to Name and it should work.

From the word doc Windsor Pond should actually have a label in basecamp if you zoom in enough. The 0x07 type does not though.
Title: Re: Newly created map has no road labels and other expected features.
Post by: vt.flatlander on March 18, 2016, 08:24:25 AM

I have my label issue worked out.
Changing the ConvertSplit2mp.bat file to accommodate the column name text just didn't work so I went back to my original data in QGIS and renamed my polygon and polyline column names to "NAME". Then ran the .bat as originally written .