North & South America Vector Maps

[Bryan Cowan]

A few months back I found a very nice vector map of the US only on these forums. It was a great tool until now when I need the map to include Canada and Central America.

Anyone have something I can work with?

Thanks,
Bryan

[Mike Null]

This might work.

[Bryan Cowan]

Close Mike, but I apologize, I forgot to mention I need the states/territories defined. Similar to what I have attached, but to include Canada and Central/South America.

Thanks though!

[Scott Shepherd]

Bryan, try here : http://digital-vector-maps.com/

They have some free files that might do what you want.

[Bryan Cowan]

I've looked at that site before, but I never had success finding anything "free".

[Lee DeRaud]

I've looked at that site before, but I never had success finding anything "free".Ah, the (big) difference between "free" and "royalty-free", methinks. :eek:

There used to be a lot of freeware map data available (circa 1985), but it was more-or-less raw data: coordinate strings from the CIA World Factbook IIRC. I had some utilities to convert them to HPGL (written in C to run under Unix at work). Corel would probably import that format ok. The real question is, can I find that stuff in the DVDs of "deep archive" I kept when I retired?

Watch this space. :cool:

[Scott Shepherd]

Ahhh....they changed it up. They used to have a free version of a lot of their stuff. Now it looks like all the "free" stuff is gone. I had it bookmarked and used it a few times, but hadn't opened it in a while. I've just looked at it and it does seem like all the free stuff is gone.

Sorry about that. Had I know that, I wouldn't have posted a link to them.

[Bryan Cowan]

No worries, thanks anyways ;)

[Lee DeRaud]

Ok, here's the data...the source code for the utilities is rather deeply buried and mixed in with a bunch of other code, so maybe later. The zip contains a bunch of text files with odd extensions:
CST = coastlines
POL = political boundaries
ISL = islands
LKS = lakes

Each file starts with a header line that looks like:

NP TP Type Bound
where:
NP = total number of paths
TP = total number of coordinate pairs
Type = 1/2/4/8 = CST/ISL/LKS/POL as above (redundant, I know)
Bound = bounding box (minlat, minlon, maxlat, maxlon)
Then follows NP blocks that look like:

PathID: Header
where Header = header info, same format as above
followed by the coordinate pairs (in "PointID: lat, lon format")
Just take a look at one or two files, you'll get the idea.

Some coastlines you expect to be continuous are not: there are breaks at 0 and 180 longitude...trust me, when you're writing software to use this data, that's a feature, not a bug.

Best I can do for now. Note that it isn't perfect, but I weeded out most of the more heinous errors when I used it at work twenty years ago...some of the Pacific island still have out-of-order points, which look very odd when plotted at large scales (think "firgure-8" coastline to get a mental image).
120793

[Lee DeRaud]

(continued) I know Corel can't do much with these files, but one strategy is to get the chunks of data you want into one file and import it into Excel. That lets you strip off the coordinate indices and replace them with HPGL 'draw' commands and insert pen changes, move commands and do whatever other formatting seems appropriate. (Or write a VBA macro to convert the whole file to HPGL...better you than me.) Then export back to a text file and let Corel have a go at it. Repeat as needed.

Could be worse: my first pass through all I found was the binary version of the data. :eek:

[Bryan Cowan]

Wow Lee, I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. :) It all went WAAAAY over my head ;)

[Bryan Cowan]

http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/

That website has a lot of PDFs that can be tweaked in Corel to get your desired results. :)

[Lee DeRaud]

Wow Lee, I haven't the slightest idea what you're talking about. :) It all went WAAAAY over my head ;)Makes a lot more sense if you're looking at the file while you read it. :D

This stuff is gross overkill for just cutting/engraving continent-sized chunks: the coordinates are at something like 1.5-mile spacing. I wrote a display demo for work that started with a full world map and could zoom down to something the size of Manhattan before you started seeing the individual nodes. But it's the only free version of that kind of data I know of.

[Lee DeRaud]

http://www.eduplace.com/ss/maps/

That website has a lot of PDFs that can be tweaked in Corel to get your desired results. :)Those files look like bitmaps...are they actually vector format inside the PDFs?

[Bryan Cowan]

Those files look like bitmaps...are they actually vector format inside the PDFs?

With some tweaking they can be turned into vectors. Works for me :)

[Lenin Alvarez]

something like this???

[Bryan Cowan]

something like this???

Yup that looks good, but with Central and North America attached as well :D
I think I found what I need on the website I posted above, but am always open to other suggestions.