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map making for mac

Started by nikkilad, October 16, 2009, 03:58:01 PM

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nikkilad

Hello all,
Just registered with the site. Lots of good info here. Thanks
My question is regarding Macs and map making. Do I have to use Bootcamp or Parallels to make maps or are there mac alternatives out there?

thx, Douglas

Boyd

I have used Macs exclusively ever since 1985. But when it's time to make maps, I run Windows. Unfortunately, the tools just aren't there yet for the Mac. Maybe someday, but certainly not yet.

nikkilad

Thanks for the info. I guess if I want to pursue map making I'll have to bite the bullet and use Windoz.

Seldom

I don't own a Mac, but I do know that OpenStreetMap can point you to a number of mapmaking tools that run on a Mac. Some use Java and others use the Mac OS.  Don't know how much support you'd get with this group, because as Boyd says, even Mac users use Windows apps here, the big ones being GPSMapEdit, cgpsmapper, and (not free but very helpful) Global Mapper.

Indrid Cold

I think that Boyd is trying to save you some grief. Unless you are an X11.app user, you aren't going to find many tools available for use on a Macintosh without installing a copy of MS Windows.

Seldom

Yeah, I just started surfing through your tutorials.  They are much more accessible than the OSM stuff.

Boyd

Globalmapper only runs under Windows.... I would be be lost without it.  :)

But same thing for cgpsmapper and Mapwel, which are the two Garmin map compilers available. Seems to me there's a website somewhere that you can submit .mp files and get them compiled online though.... isn't there? I wouldn't want to depend on that for anything more than a very small project however.

There doesn't seem to be much of a push to make Mac versions of any of the tools we use though. Many of them were written as "labors of love" by ordinary users, so porting to a different operating system is not likely to be something they would have the time or motivation to undertake.

I think you really need to run Windows if you are at all serious about mapmaking. For everything else, I use MacOSX.

Boyd

Quote from: seldom_sn on October 18, 2009, 08:46:23 AM
Yeah, I just started surfing through your tutorials.  They are much more accessible than the OSM stuff.

The new version of Mapwel has built-in support for OSM which looks pretty cool actually. Have been meaning to find the time to play with this. http://www.mapwel.eu/osm/osm.html

You will need Windows for this too, but Mapwel is much more user-friendly than cgpsmapper. Downside is that it doesn't support Mapsource. You can load your maps directly onto the GPS from Mapwel, or create a .img file on your computer and drop it into the GPS.

Seldom

Quote from: Boyd on October 18, 2009, 11:06:37 AM
Globalmapper only runs under Windows.... I would be be lost without it.  :)

I think you really need to run Windows if you are at all serious about mapmaking. For everything else, I use MacOSX.

True about Global Mapper.  Do you run it on a Mac in a Windows environment or on a Windows machine?

Boyd

#9
Yes  :)

I have Windows XP in a Bootcamp partition on my MacBook Pro, so I can either boot directly into XP or run it under Parallels. Globalmapper, cgpsmapper and Mapwel are all resource-hungry programs. I saw a significant increase in performance when booting directly in XP as opposed to running windows with Parallels. Also saw less crashes.

But after awhile I got tired of having to reboot my Mac to do mapmaking, so I picked up a Dell Core 2 duo 2.8ghz desktop system with 6GB of memory and Vista 64 bit on sale at Best Buy. In spite of all the Vista complaints, it works very well for me and I have fewer crashes than I had under XP. Eventually I will update to the 64 bit version Globalmapper 11.

That's what I use primarily now. It's nice to have a dedicated machine, because some of the things I do can tie it up for as long as a day at a time. For example, I merged a large number of OziExplorer ozfx3 files of aerial imagery together into one big 5GB map file; that took 14 hours. Couldn't be without my Mac for that long most of the time.

Seldom