Hi all,
I've made it most of the way through the [awesome] tutorial on making custom Garmin Maps, but I'm caught up on the USGS NHD data. I submitted my orders for the NHD data 3 or 4 days ago but never received the download links.
I emailed the helpdesk at USGS and received a reply later in the day indicating that my requests are queued up behind 80 large requests and it may take 3-4 weeks for my requests to be generated.
As an alternative, the gentleman from the The National Map helpdesk suggested that staged subregion data in File GDB or Personal GDB formats would be much quicker to obtain.
I looked into the differences in the file formats and found that there's an overwhelming preference for GDB files over Shapefiles. However, since I'm not all that familiar with what's going on in the background to produce the final map nor familiar with these formats (my knowledge of cartography is very limited), I don't know if I can actually substitute the Shapefiles with File/Personal GDB files. To use the same "word for word" process, I understand I would have to convert the files first (GBD > Shapefile). However, since I don't know much of these formats, I'd hate to end up with the Pacific Ocean on top Mount Olympus.
Can anyone offer advice on how to proceed? Would it be better to wait for the Shapefiles to process, or can I work with the File GDB or Personal GDB data instead?
Thanks,
Brian
I've made it most of the way through the [awesome] tutorial on making custom Garmin Maps, but I'm caught up on the USGS NHD data. I submitted my orders for the NHD data 3 or 4 days ago but never received the download links.
I emailed the helpdesk at USGS and received a reply later in the day indicating that my requests are queued up behind 80 large requests and it may take 3-4 weeks for my requests to be generated.
As an alternative, the gentleman from the The National Map helpdesk suggested that staged subregion data in File GDB or Personal GDB formats would be much quicker to obtain.
I looked into the differences in the file formats and found that there's an overwhelming preference for GDB files over Shapefiles. However, since I'm not all that familiar with what's going on in the background to produce the final map nor familiar with these formats (my knowledge of cartography is very limited), I don't know if I can actually substitute the Shapefiles with File/Personal GDB files. To use the same "word for word" process, I understand I would have to convert the files first (GBD > Shapefile). However, since I don't know much of these formats, I'd hate to end up with the Pacific Ocean on top Mount Olympus.
Can anyone offer advice on how to proceed? Would it be better to wait for the Shapefiles to process, or can I work with the File GDB or Personal GDB data instead?
Thanks,
Brian