Using Maptech Terrain Navigator

If you spend a lot of time off the beaten path in the mountains, hills, deserts, and plains, you should consider using topographic mapping software. These programs come bundled with United States Geological Survey (USGS) digital maps and are a perfect companion for any outdoor enthusiast. Before you head off into the wilds, you can print a topographic map of an area you’re interested in visiting and even plan your trip on your PC. If you have a GPS receiver, you can interface it with the map program to see exactly where you’ve been or upload waypoint and route information entered on the electronic map to your GPS receiver.
Commercial topographic software packages are easy to use, convenient (you don’t need to find and download maps to use them), and economical. Most of the map products on the market cost under $100 and give you 1:24,000 scale map coverage of a state or region; for the same price, other software provides less-detailed 1:100,000 scale maps of the entire U.S. This is a bargain considering that a paper version of a USGS topographic map costs around $7, and you might have to buy up to a thousand maps to fully cover a single state. In this section, I discuss commercial software packages that offer topographic maps of the U.S. I focus primarily on Maptech’s Terrain Navigator to illustrate these programs. Although they sport different user interfaces, most commercial topographic map programs share the same basic capabilities and features. At the end of this section, I briefly review some other popular topographic map programs.