Obtaining a map that covers a large area

Kevin70 · 2011-01-15T23:32:04.000Z

I am planning a driving tour of Europe where I will travel from the southern Unted Kingdom to the south of Italy, substantial parts of France, Western Germany and the Alpine region. I can’t download a map that covers the area I would like as it is too large. As a failed attempt wipes the tile selections from the map it is necessary to start again on a potential long trial and error exercise. My dilema is that the system will not tell me what the limit is or how close I am to reaching it as I select tiles.

Can someone please tell me if I have any other option? Can I join up two or more smaller down loads, for example. I will be using Garmin Mapsource to do my route planning.

Thank you.

Kevin

Lambertus · 2011-01-16T11:03:09.000Z

Since you’ll be using MapSource it’s going to be a little bit simple

Download all the countries you’re going to visit (get the mapsource installer version). Install all those on you system without uninstalling the previous maps. You will now have a directory that contains all the tiles needed. Now you only need to create the overview file (.tdb) to make all the tiles visible at once in MapSource. For this you can use MapSetToolkit, Mkgmap or cgpsmapper.

I’m not running Windows here, so I can’t provide you with a quick step-by-step guide for MapSetToolkit, but it seems to me that using MapSetToolkit will be easiest and quite doable.

PS. I’m deliberately not stating the maximum number of allowed tiles, nor a counter to keep track how many tiles are selected. I’ve had many people scraping the site without good reason which caused overloading. I’m very sorry I had to implement the max. tile limit which is causing you problems but without it this service would simply desintegrate.

Kevin70 · 2011-01-17T08:05:17.000Z

Thank you Lamburtus. I completely understand the restrictions that you have placed on downloads and understand why. I’ve done a bit with the Toolkit so I will give it a go and see how it works.

Regards,

Kevin

Kevin70 · 2011-01-18T08:05:17.000Z

Lamburtus. The suggested approach is not working. I was able to download Austria and France directly but when I selected France the direct download option did not appear so I am left only with the compile and email option. When I entered my email address and selected the compile button I received the “too many tiles” message. Something must be constraining the compiling process as I have been able to download much more than this in the past.

I would appreciate your comments. I am using Firefox to download.

Kevin

Lambertus · 2011-01-18T09:16:38.000Z

Huh, too many tiles error when you request France? That is not my intention, so I’ll fix that…

Edit: This is fixed now. Thanks for the report!

Kevin70 · 2011-01-19T11:02:25.000Z

Thanks for that. I can’t get the direct download option for Switzerland or Luxumberg. The rest seem OK although I have not downloaded them all yet. Getting near to the end of the month and my plan limit.

Thanks,

Kevin

Lambertus · 2011-01-19T21:23:20.000Z

You’ll only get the download option if the map is already available (cached) on the server. Every now and then the maps are deleted to make room for other maps (or the same). So for e.g. Switzerland you will have to issue a render request and once the map is ready then the direct download link will be shown.