How do I load mulitpple mapsets into a Garmin Oregon?

After coming over from the Lowrance camp I now have an Oregon 550 and City Nav, but I'm having trouble understanding mapsets.

I have a 4gb card in the Oregon and I've created a mapset in MapSource that has all of the US in it. I then went to GPSFileDepot and downloaded a couple topo maps which I then created mapsets in MapSource. I find that from within MapSource when I transfer my topo map to my device (card) my City Nav saved US map is now gone, or overwritten I guess.

gmapsupp.img is the map file I suppose of which there can only be one on the card.

How does one have multiple topo maps and such on a Garmin Oregon? Searching didn't really enlighten me.

Lost in Louisville....

Not sure about the Oregon and also not sure about the maps from GPSfiledepot - but:
With Garmin maps you have to select maps from different mapsets in Mapsource and then load them all at the same time. There's a drop down menu in the upper left of the screen in Mapsource that lets you pick different maps ("select a product").

To expand a little more on what tbirdsp said, select the City Nav mapset in the dropdown list, Select/highlight the map tiles/states to want, then leaving those highlighted, change to your other mapset in the dropdown list. Select/highlight the map tiles in the Topo mapware you want, THEN select the transfer to device icon at the top. They all get put on yout unit at the same time.

There is a mapset hierarchy in which one mapset takes precedent over the others on the device as to which is displayed. City Nav will take precedent over Topo by default. So to see your Topo maps when you want to, you'll need to go into the menu and deselect one and select the other, as only one mapset can be displayed at a time.

What trail ryder said plus remember when you download maps it erases all maps that were in unit, so save the file you downloaded so it is easy to know with is in you unit and to add more maps sections easier.

OK...this is beginning to make sense now. So, I have a file on my Garmin now with all the US. I took quite awhile to index/load, so can I "transfer" this file from My Garmin back into MapSource and add the topo maps to save time?

I think I saw somewhere that there is a file size limit. I want to add the topos for KY & IN and the Big Bend sections of TX, plus the whole US City Nav (1.07gb)

Thanks for all the help. The Oregon 550 is light years ahead of my old Lowrance H2O.


Mark

Unlike other Garmin gps units, you can go in to the Oregon/Colorado/Dakota series in mass storage mode and rename gmapsupp.img to whatever you want, keeping the extension, and then when you upload other maps they won't overwrite what you already have.

And maps named other than gmapsupp.img will still load anyway...

Here's a target taking you to the multiple mapset information.

This is the best site for Oregon info: Garmin Oregon Wiki

The file size limit for your Oregon microSD Card is < 4GB and the total number of map Tiles can not exceed 4000 Tiles.

Thanks so much everyone for the info. This really clears things up for me.

Mark

Oh Wise one of the mysteries;

Whats the advantage of multiple map (.img) files with different names on your SD card? Do they load faster?

I've a 4gb card in my Oregon 550 and can load the whole US and topos for the several states I'd use most often. If I split them into smaller *.img files what the advantage?

I don't think there's a loading speed advantage with creating multiple small img files. My observation is that when the gps sees a new img file it takes a while to load it the first time the gps is started, then it goes back to a normal loading time when the gps is next powered on.

The advantage of renaming your map sets once transfered to the Oregon is that you can keep several different Map Sets installed on the GPS while still downloading new ones via the gmapsupp.img file. It also makes for much quicker re-installation of renamed map sets if you copy them to your PC from the Oregon as I think Emmbeedee was suggesting. The next time you want a particular previously saved map set you just copy it to the Oregon SD Card instead of having to use MapSource.

The other advantage of renaming the map sets is that you can adjust the order in which the Oregon layers them. In many cases maps don't combine on screen -- the issue I was having was that the City Navigator map would layer on top of my topo maps and obscure them, but if I turned CN off I no longer had auto-routing. I forget what I renamed the CN mapset to, but it loads first now and is layered on the bottom, so I can keep topo maps turned on over top of it. I see the topo maps, but the Oregon still uses CN for autorouting. Best of both worlds.

--mark

I have a GPS 60CSx - I can see the gmapsupp.img on the SD card in Windows Explorer. Can I simply use File:Rename to give it an identifying name and then load other mapsets, renaming each as I go?

Where on my hard drive does Garmin save the mapsets I create in Mapsource? It would be so much easier to create them, name them, then drag and drop to the card.

And while I'm asking questions - why doesn't Garmin save it with the name I give the Mapset when I create it? And can I specify where to save it?

EDIT: I followed the link to Oregon info, and it says yes, you can simply rename the file on the card. Can I assume this applies to the 60CSx as well?

And why does Garmin make us do these things?

It would appear that the answer is "No". I just tried it and the maps don't show up in the Map setup screen. If I leave it named as Garmin does, they show up.

Any suggestions for the 60 series?

Not sure what you are trying to achieve. With memory so cheap most folks find using a 2-4 gig card will cover any ground they need. The limiting factor being the 2025 tile/segment limit imposed by the 60Cx firmware.

If thats a problem just put the balance on another card, they are dirt cheap. I overlap the area on the 2 cards a fair amount so I'm not needing to continual change them out if near the edge of the coverage area.

I also keep a 3rd card around in case I suddenly need coverage for somewhere else in the world. I can write to it without erasing/rewriting the map data on the others.

I can't offer any suggestions on the naming. There's probably a workaround but it's never been an issue for me as I just toggle Topo, R&R and CityNavigator (and others) to "Show" or "Hide".

Bruce

It's not a matter of memory. It's about being able to create multiple mapsets from different states and load them without having to create a custom set including all of the quads I might need for a given trip. For example, I have a set of Montana quads, and if I want to add some Idaho quads I don't want to have to recreate the entire mapset.

And I'd like to be able to save the mapsets on my hard drive to re-load them for future trips.

As far as City Nav, Topo and R&R, I don't use any Garmin maps. It's all topos downloaded from gpsfiledepot.

Though I've seen good reports of Road & Rec, but I can't find it on Garmin's website. Where can I get this map?

The 60/76/Legend etc do not have the ability to have multiple maps with different names accessible on the same card, to the gps. This ability was introduced with the Colorado and extends now to the Oregon, Dakota and Montana line.

As others have mentioned, you may bebetter off in your case to just keep multiple maps loaded to different cards, or load all of the maps you want at the same time to the one gmapsupp.img file. The 60/76/Legend can still enable/disable different maps individually even if they're all in one file.

The map name has nothing to do with the order of the layers. GMapTool appears to give you the ability to influence the hierarchy that Garmin gives to the maps, but I haven't experimented with this just yet.

I think the option is here in this screen, called 'Set Draw Priority'.

I think the complicating factor is that Aanarchy is not using Garmin map sets and the tiles or quads may only be listed individual and not as a set making "Show All" & "Hide All" the only practical option.

Seems there is software which allows smaller individual tiles to be grouped into fewer larger tiles and may even allow renaming.
Still think multiple cards may be the way to go. 2 gig cards are basically through-aways now days.

Bruce

Mystery solved. I'll work around it. You da man.

More good advice. I'll live with it. I'd rather make a donation to gpsfileexchange than pay Garmin $99 for their topo set. And I was amazed to find that they sell a 4gig SD card for about $35, when you can get them on Amazon for $6-$7.