Discovering Terrain Navigator

Maptech’s Terrain Navigator (www.maptech.com) was one of the first commercial, Windows topographic map programs. (In the old days it was known as TopoScout.) Over the years, Terrain Navigator has evolved into a sophisticated, powerful, electronic mapping tool.
You can purchase different versions of Terrain Navigator. The program that accesses map data is the same, but the maps that come bundled on CD-ROMs are different. Different versions of Terrain Navigator provide topographic maps for individual states and different regions of the U.S. The majority of commercial map programs are also sold this way. Plan on spending around a hundred dollars for a complete set of Terrain Navigator digital maps for a single state. You use Terrain Navigator’s main features — which most other topographic map products share — to help you

• Quickly find locations by name or coordinates.
• Accurately measure distance and area.
• Display terrain three-dimensionally.
• Show elevation profiles of routes of travel.
• Customize maps with labels, markers, and routes.
• Interface maps with GPS receivers to upload and download waypoints, routes, and tracks or use for real-time tracking.

Read on to take a look at some of Terrain Navigator’s basic features and see how to use them. Whether you put on your boots and backpack is completely up to you.
Maptech has a free demo version of Terrain Navigator that comes with a single map of a wilderness area in Colorado. You can download the demo at www.mpatech.com/support/downloads.cfm. Be sure to read through the online help and tutorial because it describes a number

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.