Naationa Geographic TOPO

I have NG TOPO software. I have downloaded Garmin GPS points and routes from a Yahoo group. Basically it gives me what I want except that the drawn route does not always follow the actual route. Frequently when there are two points and the actual route follows a horseshoe path, TOPO shows the horseshoe route and the straight line between these two points. I have tried splitting the route and zoomed in at high magnification etc but the program only allows me to erase from the end of a route and not in between. If you do an edit and then delete what you assume is the wrong route the software frequently erases a whole series of points and there is no undo so you must do a save after every edit. Anyone have a solution on how to edit a route?

What version of Topo do you have? Check to see if you can download an update. I'm running 4.2.7, haven't bothered yet to update to 4.5.0.

I right click on a drawn route and get a "split in 2" option. Do that twice (for some reason you can't do it everywhere but try different points along the line), delete the orphaned line fragment, then draw in what you want.

If that doesn't work for you, please be more specific. I.e., what exactly do you mean when you say it only allow you to erase from the end of the route and not in between? I suspect that if you try a few different points you'll find places you can do two splits to create a fragment that you can delete.

I have version 2.7.7 so it is a long way from being the latest and greatest. I bought it for $.99 on Ebay because I wanted a better map for the area. I hiked half of the Superior Hiking Trail in MN last year and want to hike the other half this year. Maps are available from SHT association but they are not really very detailed. The trail is well marked and you could hike the whole thing without any map but it is nice to dream during long winter days. GPS points are available so it is easy to make your own maps in whatever scale you want. I can use the map just as it comes out because it is easy to tell that difference between the correct route and the straight line route. As near as I can tell the only place you can split a route is at a beginning or end of a track so you cannot just pick any two points, split and delete the wrong portion because the wrong section is in the middle of a track and you end up deleting the whole track or at least the wrong piece.

AS I said it is not really a big deal but it is more a matter of this should be possible and why didn't NG do it so that I can do it. Just having an undo would help so that if it did not work the way you wanted you would not have to exit the program and reload back to the last save. More of an irritation and gripe against NG than a necessity.

Go to http://www.natgeomaps.com/downloads.html and note the link that offers TOPO! Version 3.4.3 as a free upgrade for TOPO State Series users running versions 2.6 or higher. (assuming what you have is a state series). They also offer an "upgrade kit" to version 4.5 for $20, but I suggest that you try the free upgrade and see if that provides the functionality that you're looking for.

Warning, however: in my limited experience, it seems like some upgrades along the way added new bugs when they fixed old ones (and added features). I generally found ways around problems, however, so given that there's specific functionality that you want, and that you can be sure that in some later version it's provided ... I'd be inclined to upgrade and give it a try. At worst I would expect you could always un-install and then reinstall your older version.