I describe the products roughly in order of their functionality, from the most basic to the most powerful/full-featured. I recently spent almost a day researching Canadian topographical map products, and below I am reporting my findings in the hope that I can save others some time, frustration, and expense. Obviously I will need to map out this portion of my trip, and I was hoping to find a TOPO!-like software package for the task. I am currently planning a 2010 trip that will feature about 1,250 miles through the Canada, mostly in the Yukon but I may also pass through corners of British Columbia and/or the Northwest Territories. TOPO! is certainly not perfect (I’d rate it 3.5 out of 5 stars) but it’s functional, and it is better than its competitors in terms of usability, features, and cost. In TOPO! I can pan seamlessly across USGS topographical map images, like how I can pan across a Google Map I can markup the maps with symbols, text boxes, and route lines I can measure the distance of my route and I can export the maps as JPG images, which I drop into a Microsoft Word document so that the entire mapset can be printed as a PDF and sent off to a local printer. When I am planning a trip in the United States for which a pre-produced mapset is unavailable, I usually make my own with National Geographic TOPO! software.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |