Discontinuation of 1:250 00 Maps

[weetbix456]

Hey hey,

Just trying to suss some info - I heard on the grape vine that the 1:250 00 TasMaps will be discontinued fairly soon, and that some of the more popular ones are already out of print. Does anyone have an update on why or what is going on, and whether there is any future planned alternative to compensate the service?? These highly details maps are pretty invaluable to anyone venturing into the bush...

[icefest]

It's true.

All the data is available open access though so you are free to make your own.

[north-north-west]

Sucks. 1:25,000 is the minimum needed for Tassie, given its complicated topography.

[doogs]

1:50 000 will be kept on as a viable alternative. They're still all going to be available online, you'll just need an A1 sized printer to print out the whole map...

[bumpingbill]

Are they online now?

[doogs]

https://www.tasmap.tas.gov.au/do/category/25000DIG

[weetbix456]

Blahhh..what a big bugger all round really. Not like the 1:50 000's are much use at all anywhere mildly off track...and quality is pretty poor on those freebies. Stock up now I guess - wonder if a bumper season of remote area rescues would change the matter much

[philm]

Does anyone have instructions on how I can buy the digital maps and load onto an Sd card for use in a Garmin mapping GPS?

[north-north-west]

1:50 000 will be kept on as a viable alternative. They're still all going to be available online, you'll just need an A1 sized printer to print out the whole map...

Simpler (and cheaper) to print them off TheList. They do have a 'scanned map' option. It's a bugger working out the setting, but.

[stry]

So who has a home printer that can print a mapsheet ?

I involve myself with all this electronic crap only as much as is necessary for my purposes, and I can see problems with my printer size.

Do we print segments ? I often carry only segments anyway, but a full sheet cant be beaten for given perspective.

[north-north-west]

Tape the segments together. Pain in the butt, but it's going to be the only way to get enough detail.

[bumpingbill]

Try as I might, I can't get TheList exports to work. They send me an email, but the files are less than 1kb. As such, my software complains that the shapefiles aren't valid.

[tastrax]

With shapefiles your will need a GIS system to create a map and style up all the layers. Not the same as Raster files for easy printing

[Azza]

The process of converting shp files to garmin maps format is a bit tricky. The 1:25k maps are scanned images. GPS's traditionally use vector based data e.g. lines, points etc. Putting a scanned image of the 25k maps on a gps tends to not work so well on the garmin devices. Lack of processing power and memory. The device is only able to handle about one 1:25k at a time with reasonable quality.
The reason your shp file is 1k is probably because it is empty. Were you trying to export the scanned topographical maps? They dont have vector data.

The fundamental issue with digital maps is battery life. Flat batteries or a device failure could result in an emergency situation. Going to be embarrassing when people start getting rescued because of flat mobiles / gps'es because they couldn't obtain decent paper maps.

Last edited by Azza on Mon 08 Jun, 2015 9:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[bumpingbill]

I exported it from The List site directly, and tried to import it into a program which can process shape files.

I've used it for shape files I found on Geoscience Australia in the past.

Oh well. Something to come back to down the track.

[tastrax]

Which files (URL?) and which GIS program?

QGIS will open just about anything both vector and raster

[Azza]

I exported it from The List site directly, and tried to import it into a program which can process shape files.

So if it was the 25k topographical maps you were trying to export then I would not expect this to export successfully to a SHP file.

[philm]

Thanks everyone I have just extracted to PDF's and printed sections. Then I utilise them together with Garmin topo maps.
The PDF's give great detail so I'll use this for detail when walking.

[Azza]

Here is a KMZ conversion I did many years ago for Garmin. its of the Zeehan area, its one of the only ones I could find less than 3MB to upload.

The main problem is the garmin devices at the time could only cope with one raster file and then you had to massively reduce the resolution.
So there was no way back when I started tinkering with this stuff to get the entire state loaded, let alone more than one 25k map.

g3237a.kmz

(889.33 KiB) Downloaded 302 times

You drop this file onto the devices SD card - \Garmin\CustomMaps .. It's basically using the satellite imaging feature.
The garmin's support KMZ files, but they are extremely picky about the internal format, so actually getting the KMZ setup right is a bit of a challenge.
I gave up on the whole idea of loading the 1:25k's onto GPS and opted for Shonky Maps, proper contour, elevation information etc was more useful.
You could probably do well exporting contour information out of the List into SHP files.

[bumpingbill]

I exported it from The List site directly, and tried to import it into a program which can process shape files.

So if it was the 25k topographical maps you were trying to export then I would not expect this to export successfully to a SHP file.

I'm LISTMap's export function. Do you know what this means?

Attachments

Screen Shot 2015-06-09 at 11.27.59 am.png (171.56 KiB) Viewed 13633 times

[tastrax]

OK that is a shape file that just shows the boundaries of the 1:25,000 maps with name, number etc. Its not the actual maps. There is a KMZ or KML file on this site somewhere that shows the same thing in Google Earth.

[tastrax]

Finally found the link to the KMZ file with the bounds of all the 1:25,000 maps (plus 100K, 250K and National Park Maps)

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=2726&p=27858#p27993

[Rapscallion]

Hi all, info on how to get the LIST data showing up in GoogleEarth (or download it to your portable device) is here - viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17091

Cheers!

[AlexB]

I found the same problem recently with VicMaps... They're not printing the 1:25k ones any more and many are unavailable. However there's a website where you can get them: $2 for an a4 segment (6km x 7.5km on the ground), $4 for a3, or $8 for a full size A1.

I grabbed a couple of a4 segments but when I printed them at home they were blurry and I didn't think they'd be very usable. Plus I'd hate to get inkjet ink wet, as it would run and smudge into complete unreadability.

So I thought about getting them printed at officeworks which would be laser printing. Then I found that officeworks will print on tyvek up to A1 size! So if anyone wants a tearproof, rainproof topo map, you know where to find it A1 on tyvek is around $23 plus the $8 for the PDF, so it's a bit pricy.
http://www.officeworks.com.au/shop/offi ... ty-Posters

[north-north-west]

Then I found that officeworks will print on tyvek up to A1 size! So if anyone wants a tearproof, rainproof topo map, you know where to find it

They actually go up to A0 - 841 x 1189mm. Not cheap, but for a map you use a lot it would be better than laminated paper.

[slparker]

just to clarify, are we talking about the 1:25,000 or the 1:250,000 maps? The OP said that the 1:250,000 maps are being discontinued, which would be the set of 4 that covers the whole of Tassy, not the 1:25,000 walking maps, wouldn't it?

[Azza]

It is the 1:25000's being discontinued.

Hence all the fuss..
It's all moving to 1:50000 like NZ, Victoria and probably everywhere else in Aus.

I know someone who is involved, he pointed out the maintenance effort to support approximately 400 x 25K + 40 x 100K maps vs a single set 80 x 50K maps.
The revision of maps will be more frequent as a result, and hence more accurate maps.
I'd still prefer 25k maps.. but he has a point.

[north-north-west]

But will they remain with the 10m contour interval - which would make for rather messy maps for the really steep & cliffy areas which cover so much of Tassie - or go for the 20m they use with 1:50ks on the mainland?
20m contours in continuously undulating ground sucks. You do not get anything like an accurate idea of the terrain.

[icefest]

just to clarify, are we talking about the 1:25,000 or the 1:250,000 maps? The OP said that the 1:250,000 maps are being discontinued, which would be the set of 4 that covers the whole of Tassy, not the 1:25,000 walking maps, wouldn't it?

The op said 1:250 00. The strangely located space confused me for a bit too, but shift it one spot to the left and it's 1:25 000.

[tastrax]

But will they remain with the 10m contour interval - which would make for rather messy maps for the really steep & cliffy areas which cover so much of Tassie - or go for the 20m they use with 1:50ks on the mainland?
20m contours in continuously undulating ground sucks. You do not get anything like an accurate idea of the terrain.

Judging by the sample image its now 20 metre contours on the new 1:50,000 maps

https://www.tasmap.tas.gov.au/upload/im ... sample.gif