Automated Topo! txt file Generation

[John Kirk]

http://listsofjohn.com/PeakStats/Content/export.php

This outputs a .txt file based on the criteria you select (state, elevation range, county, ranked only vs. all peaks).

Using the import text file wizard in TOPO!, you can import the text file as waypoints into TOPO! (see attached screenshot instructions).

Some things you will need to change if you haven't already (in GPS settings):
Max # Waypoints ( I use 1000)
Waypoint length (I use 50)
In rare cases, you'll need to add extra characters, or you can replace with other letters that are already accepted as the import dialog progresses.

Something to be cognizant of:
Queries such for Grand County CO or Ada County ID will also return all results for Rio Grande County and Adams County since the former make up part of the latter in their letter structure.

Things left to build - Option to choose a member and select climbed or unclimbed, fix the query to handle the two above exceptions.

As always, if you like this kind of new content, please consider making a donation.

[mikeofferman]

Very nice John!! thanks!

[DSunwall]

oh oh, I imported El Paso, what did I do wrong? obviously got the wrong lats and longs. I did use wgs 84

[John Kirk]

My guess is you used some other coordinate format than decimal degrees. I get a similar result when setting to Degrees.Minutes (shows up as LAT DEG MIN and LON DEG MIN). Setting should be DD.DDD (shows up as LAT DEGREES or LON DEGREES, per the attached documentation).

[DSunwall]

I was watching that, I am set to decmil degrees in topo. The text file has the correct lat and long, it shows up correctly in the import wizard but once it is in the waypoint window the lat and long have changed. The file generated here is good, something goes wrong during the conversion in my Topo software. I'll try it tonight on my home computer.

[John Kirk]

The default setting you have for coordinate format is irrelevant since you actually have to specify the coordinate format of the import file during import.

In decimal degrees, 38.8406 (Lat for Pikes Peak) will become 39.4010 if you import a format that is in decimal degrees and specifiy LAT DEG MIN as an import field instead of LAT DEGREES.

[DSunwall]

ah ha, that is a little difficult to see. When you are at the "final steps" import preview window, click the column header and select latitude degrees.

for those of you who don't see everything.

it working now, thanks.

[Ryan Kowalski]

Hey John,

When I downloaded some of the .txt files today, the peak names were shortened to 10 charachters within the .txt file. Am I doing something wrong here?

[John Kirk]

Hey John,

When I downloaded some of the .txt files today, the peak names were shortened to 10 charachters within the .txt file. Am I doing something wrong here?

Ten characters is the max # characters most GPS units allow. In the file you download, ten characters are already programmatically pre-assigned unique identifiers if a duplicate exists (suffixes). If you were to try to load your GPS using TOPO! and have names that are duplicates within the first ten characters, TOPO! will prompt you to resolve the duplicates one by one (this can be very tedious). Better than overwriting the last similar waypoint without your knowledge though. The txt files do all this work for you in the ten characters.

[Ryan Kowalski]

Is that a new thing? I downloaded some of my old .txt files and they had more than that. I liked having the whole name of each peak but maybe that's just me. I use TOPO but don't use a GPS. I'm half old-school.

[PaulStratmoen]

I just stumbled upon this feature this morning (because of Ryan's forum post). Very cool! This is going to make my future trip planning much easier. Just downloaded the Jeffco ranked summits. Thanks Mr. . I'm going to need to look through those other tools on the site too to see what else I've been missing!

[davebobk47]

Having some problems loading a .gpx file, maybe someone can help me...

I generated the file with the GPX tool just like I've generated the TOPO! files in the past. I try to open it in Garmin MapSource so I can load it on my GPS but MapSource says it's not a valid gpx file. What am I doing wrong?

[JoeGrim]

I've encountered that type of thing before. What I've done is to open up the file using Topofusion (topofusion.com) and then just resaved it in Topofusion. After this simple maneuver, my Mapsource program was able to open it up.

[John Kirk]

Having some problems loading a .gpx file, maybe someone can help me...

I generated the file with the GPX tool just like I've generated the TOPO! files in the past. I try to open it in Garmin MapSource so I can load it on my GPS but MapSource says it's not a valid gpx file. What am I doing wrong?

I hadn't considered MapSource before. I added stuff to the header/dtd of the gpx file that seems to be more MapSource friendly, so it should work fine now. Still works in TOPO! as well.

[davebobk47]

Thanks John, it works great.

Never had any issues in TOPO!