Total newbie questions/project

[SAMM Clan]

Hello, I came across this forum in my search for guidance. First, I consider myself a total newbie at this stuff so bear with any mistakes I have made. I have found that my local government has published GIS data of our region including files of trails. This data is available in several formats including SHP, FGDB, Autocad, and KMZ. I wanted to eventually turn this data into a layered map for my GPS, but I am a long way from that and am just going to concentrate on getting a good GPX file for now.

After searching on how to handle these formats, I have discovered that I am further disadvantaged in that I use a Mac which seems to be lacking in GIS tools. I have managed to unzip the KMZ into KML data and then ran that dataset through gpsbabel with a simplify filter to decrease a bit of the extraneous trackpoints. This resulted in a GPX file with almost 3200 tracks. Unfortunately, the dataset is messy in that often many tracks are used for one trail, making the xml code bloated and slow - the GPX file is almost 80mb and contains about two million lines of xml code. I managed to clean out all the <ele>0.0000000</ele> lines of code to trim the xml file down to 52mb and 1.3 million lines of code, but that is still very bloated.

At this point, I have basically started to manually examine the tracks for each trail or set of trails to try and combine tracks into trails and clean up the code. So far I have cleaned 70K lines of track code, but looking at this project, this looks like it will take a long time if I continue down this route.

I was wondering if anyone has a better workflow or suggestions that I would be able to use. If anyone is interested in the original source of data, it can be found here:

metadata info page: http://www.geoweb.dnv.org/data/metadata.php?dataset=TrnTrailPublic

The "TrnTrailPublic" datasets can be found on this page: http://www.geoweb.dnv.org/data/
almost at the bottom (alphabetically listed datasets) under Trails.

Thanks for any thoughts or help.

[Seldom]

Sounds like you've done a lot of work, but I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to accomplish.  Do you want to make Garmin compatible maps, or just get trail data for your area?

If you just want trail data, I suggest you check out http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/maps/view/27/ , although it's for PCs only.

If you are really into making maps, I'd suggest getting a PC.  You can then follow this tutorial:
http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/tutorials/how-to-create-garmin-topo-maps/ .  Most of the tools mentioned there are free.  There is also a PC program many of us use called Global Mapper that has great tech support and also supports an amazing number of import and export formats.  But it lists for about $400, but it will greatly simplify access to your superb Canadian data found here:
http://www.geobase.ca/geobase/en/index.html

If you want to make maps and stick with your Mac, I suggest JOSM the Java editor for OpenStreetMap.  They also have a compiler called mkgmap.   There are lots of wikis on OSM site regarding use of both tools.

Finally, I've never used GPX as anything other than a source of raw data to add to a map, but I think you may find TopFusion useful to merge multiple tracks.

Of the data I saw listed in the link below SHP is probably the most generally useful. GPSmapedit (PC shareware) will import SHP files and convert them to MP format for compilation into a Garmin IMG file.

[SAMM Clan]

First, thank-you for taking the time to reply. I appreciate it. My lofty goal was to make a garmin compatible transparent map of the trails, similar to the NorthWest Trails project that you linked to since they are missing much of the trail data for my area. Failing that, I was trying to get the data transformed into something that would be easy for the NWTrails project to integrate easily. Perhaps I will ask on their forums the best way of doing that.  I was using the GPX data simply because that is the only format that I can manipulate semi-confidently. Clearly, I will need to think this through more and I will also explore some of the other options you wrote about. Again, thank-you for your help.

[-Oz-]

If you have parallels for your mac you can run gpsmapedit which would make this process a lot easier for you.

[Seldom]

My lofty goal was to make a garmin compatible transparent map of the trails, similar to the NorthWest Trails project that you linked to since they are missing much of the trail data for my area. Failing that, I was trying to get the data transformed into something that would be easy for the NWTrails project to integrate easily. Perhaps I will ask on their forums the best way of doing that.  I was using the GPX data simply because that is the only format that I can manipulate semi-confidently. Clearly, I will need to think this through more and I will also explore some of the other options you wrote about. Again, thank-you for your help.

Trails data is really hard to come by.  That's why I'm a fan of projects like NW trails.  Also, keep in mind that OpenStreetMap is a very convenient way to share trail data, and it provides tools that work on a wide range of platforms.  If you are using data other than your own tracklogs, however, you should be sure you have the author's permission to upload it to the OSM database.

[SAMM Clan]

The NWTrails project has accepted the shp data regarding the local trails in my area. The dataset is freely distributed on the local government website along with a wide range of other GIS datasets including things like local bridges, trams, water lines, stairs, playgrounds, parks, creeks, rivers, streets, sewers, power lines, light posts, and even the conduits for signal lights. If anyone is interested in making a local map of North Vancouver, BC, over 170 datasets can be found here:
http://www.geoweb.dnv.org/data/

I forgot to add, that they even have datasets for the local contour lines at 1m, 5m, 10m, 20m, and 100m.