New NHD, USGS interface

[-Oz-]

That requires a lot of clicking and manual effort.  I really like load into a database and then it spits out exactly what I want.  Might just be that I'm a database person.

How do you "type" all the parts if you're only selecting those NHD parts?

[jbensman]

Not sure what you mean.  I'll open like Waterbodies, sort by FTYPE. First I select all the lakes and then I save them as Lake.shp, then the Int water and save it as Lake Int.shp, Then I will save the wetlands and save as Wet.shp.  I can do this in two or three minutes.  Then I will do the same for flowline and then the same for Area (but lots of time, I have to do lots of extra work to deal with Islands and major rivers covering stuff up).  Then I select all the shapefiles I just created and drag and drop them into GPSmapedit.  Then GPSmapedit presents each shapefile and I assign the proper type (lake, stream, wetland) to the shapefile.  I've never tried the way the tutorial says to do it.  It seem complicated and a need to get additional software.  I can have all the hydrology in the map with 10 to 15 minutes of work (this does not include the time dealing with the river area files covering roads).  About how long does it take with your method.

[-Oz-]

Ah, see I use global mapper so its much faster the tutorial way.  Even the tutorial way with GPSMapEdit you don't have to do as much manual assigning and it will really pick the right MP Type (although more than half the time I think the GPS calls a river a river even though there are different types for a river wider than XX ft or lakes bigger than XX sq mi).

Either way if you ever wanted to write a tutorial with screenshots for your way definitely the more the merrier.  I am all about helping people succeed; especially when they share the results.

I am about to try MapWel again; hopefully it will go into MapSource.  I am going to do a map for where I hike around Anchorage that is super customized.

To answer your time question the entirety of the water takes the computer about 30 min but it takes human time of about 5 min after its all downloaded.  I don't really have to deal with any of the rivers covering roads or islands.

I am actually rewriting my topo map maker software to make it so I just plug all my files in and then it plugs along through 90% of my consistent ones then I only have to do the trails, and city POIs or other custom data I get per state by hand.