Sat2Chart

[barcoMeCasa]

Originally Posted by opensw

Will be great but I do not know how to do this manually. sat2chart automate this process. Can you give me an insight about the manual procedure from SasPlanet?

Thank you

Pretty good tutorial below, also very good info here > Making mbTiles,
the smaller zooms don't actually take that much space so I tend to go for 14,15,16,17,18,1,19.20
To select an area often for a coast I'll use polyline then cancel, then in selection manager use edit last selection to tweak the area.
It downloads really slowly so in the download tab of the selection manager split selection into parts set high will create lots of downloads at once to speed things up.
Bing usually seem the best sat images but worth having a look at the other sources.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCDP...zhzEoMRDFjLHEh

[opensw]

Originally Posted by barcoMeCasa

Pretty good tutorial below, also very good info here > Making mbTiles,
the smaller zooms don't actually take that much space so I tend to go for 14,15,16,17,18,1,19.20
To select an area often for a coast I'll use polyline then cancel, then in selection manager use edit last selection to tweak the area.
It downloads really slowly so in the download tab of the selection manager split selection into parts set high will create lots of downloads at once to speed things up.
Bing usually seem the best sat images but worth having a look at the other sources.

Thank you a lot, very useful

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by opensw

Will be great but I do not know how to do this manually. sat2chart automate this process. Can you give me an insight about the manual procedure from SasPlanet?

Thank you

First, OpenSW, Welcome to CF! Hope we can help you out.

1. In SAS, go to Settings, Map Settings, & under Internet (top) run the Max Concurrent Requests up to some high number, like 50, & close the dialog [OK]. Repeat this for all other maps you're going to use.
   
2. Go to Operations, Selection Manager, Polygonal Selection
   
3. Click where necessary to define your area of interest. You can move (pan) around by RIGHT clicking the map & dragging. Clicking on a point will allow you to drag it. To insert a new point, click on the PREVIOUS point, then click on the line to create a new point. (If you accidentally create a bogus point, click the left-most icon in the little floating toolbar to delete it.)
   
4. When your area is defined the way you want it, click the green Check-mark in the floating toolbar. This will bring up the download dialog.
   
5. First thing is to save your polygon, using the save icon at the bottom of the dialog.
   
6. Click Close Download window once finished.
   
7. Click Split selection to Parts, & run that up to about 20.
   
8. Click the Zooms you want, usually 10-18.
   
9. Click Start, & wait for the downloads to complete (may take a while)
   
10. When finished, type CTRL-B to bring back your last polygon
    
11. Go to the Export Tab (4th from left)
    
12. Under Export Selection to Format, choose mbTiles, near the bottom.
    
13. Under Save To, click the 3 dots on the right to select a folder & filename for your mbTile. I suggest that you put country & area in your name, as well as the map-type.
    
14. Select the zooms you want (usually the same zooms you used earlier)
    
15. Fill in other stuff if you want (not necessary)
    
16. Click Start, & it will create the mbTile for you.

Switch to your next map, hit CTRL-B to bring up your previous polygon, switch back to the Download tab, & start the next download (& when it finishes, create the mbTile, using a new name).

Repeat this for as many maps as you want, then move to a new area, define another polygon, & repeat for as many areas as you're interested in.

Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck!

[opensw]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

First, OpenSW, Welcome to CF! Hope we can help you out.

1. In SAS, go to Settings, Map Settings, & under Internet (top) run the Max Concurrent Requests up to some high number, like 50, & close the dialog [OK]. Repeat this for all other maps you're going to use.
   
2. Go to Operations, Selection Manager, Polygonal Selection
   
3. Click where necessary to define your area of interest. You can move (pan) around by RIGHT clicking the map & dragging. Clicking on a point will allow you to drag it. To insert a new point, click on the PREVIOUS point, then click on the line to create a new point. (If you accidentally create a bogus point, click the left-most icon in the little floating toolbar to delete it.)
   
4. When your area is defined the way you want it, click the green Check-mark in the floating toolbar. This will bring up the download dialog.
   
5. First thing is to save your polygon, using the save icon at the bottom of the dialog.
   
6. Click Close Download window once finished.
   
7. Click Split selection to Parts, & run that up to about 20.
   
8. Click the Zooms you want, usually 10-18.
   
9. Click Start, & wait for the downloads to complete (may take a while)
   
10. When finished, type CTRL-B to bring back your last polygon
    
11. Go to the Export Tab (4th from left)
    
12. Under Export Selection to Format, choose mbTiles, near the bottom.
    
13. Under Save To, click the 3 dots on the right to select a folder & filename for your mbTile. I suggest that you put country & area in your name, as well as the map-type.
    
14. Select the zooms you want (usually the same zooms you used earlier)
    
15. Fill in other stuff if you want (not necessary)
    
16. Click Start, & it will create the mbTile for you.

Switch to your next map, hit CTRL-B to bring up your previous polygon, switch back to the Download tab, & start the next download (& when it finishes, create the mbTile, using a new name).

Repeat this for as many maps as you want, then move to a new area, define another polygon, & repeat for as many areas as you're interested in.

Let me know if you have any questions. Good luck!

Thank you, with the previous video tutorial and your instructions everything is working very well on my Mac M1 and the map details are amazing

[Raven40]

Hi Paul,

Firstly thanks for building sat2chart its a great tool. I'm having some trouble in creating a chart however from sasplant. When i go to compile a chart i get the error message of:

Error: there is no SasPlanet.ini at:C:\SASPlanet.ini
Error: Invalid SasPlanet Cache type.

I've tried coping the ini file into C:\ but it doesn't copy, i cant work out how to fix the error, I'd really appreciate your help.

Thanks, Samm

[Raven40]

Sorry Paul, I fixed the issue, i didn't specify sasplant location in C:\

[Shamaness]

Hi all,

I have just started using Sat2Chart - it is so cool, thank you! I have successfully made 4 charts (from one linear track) off of the coast of South Africa. I was hoping to combine several different tracks using merge, but the system didn't like that, so I'm doing one at a time. They are about 300 miles long each.

I was jubilant about my first successful efforts, but now I'm trying on the second track, and getting the error "syntax occurred at line 41444 content of linE: quilt_data~gf_image_names[n]=quilt_data~tiles[n]

and also

ErrorTEXT: System resources exhausted. In Download Thread.

There is plenty of room on the hard drive, and I have tried restarting the computer a couple of times to clear anything that may be in temporary memory, but so far no luck. Any suggestions?

[Jon Hacking]

Hi Shamaness, & welcome to CF! We hope it's a positive experience for you.

Paul, the mother of Sat2Chart, may come on but if so, I'm sure he'd want to see your logfile. You can try emailing it to him. His email is at the top of the Help file.

FWIW, SAS only works with closed polygons, so Sat2Chart has to convert any linear routes to polygons. I've had issues with Sat2Chart's routines to do this, so now I only use polygons. OpenCPN makes this easy, in that if you click on an existing waypoint, it will ask if you want to use that (exact) waypoint. So creating a (closed) route & finishing it by clicking on the waypoint where you started works nicely. Then you can answer Yes & right-click somewhere else to select End Route.

What I do is to outline the entire area I'm interested in, & download that content at only zooms 10-12. Load those into OpenCPN & you'll see enough of the coast to decide what you need & what you don't, so you can draw your (closed) route(s) appropriately. Then export those & see what Sat2Chart thinks of them.

Paul has posted a number of How-To videos, for those who are video-oriented. I've posted a How-To page on Making mbTiles myself, but it's a webpage. I've tried to write is so even newbies can create high-quality charts, so if you have any issues or questions with/about it, please let me know so I can incorporate the answers back into the original page.

Good luck!

[Shamaness]

Originally Posted by Jon Hacking

Hi Shamaness, & welcome to CF! We hope it's a positive experience for you.

Paul has posted a number of How-To videos, for those who are video-oriented. I've posted a How-To page on Making mbTiles myself, but it's a webpage. I've tried to write is so even newbies can create high-quality charts, so if you have any issues or questions with/about it, please let me know so I can incorporate the answers back into the original page.

Good luck!

Thank you!! I actually used your webpage to do my first successful mbTile, with the linear route. I used the method you recommended, but definitely it wasn't a completed polygon. I'll go back and try again with a polygon, and see if it works any better!

Qamar

[jeec]

Hello,

This my first try to build tiled MbTiles. In order to build for openCPN a map based on a zoomable satellite image, I used Sat2chart (v17.0.0.2).
In Sat2chart, the input is an image at z16 displayed by SasPlanet (from https://gdayii.ca), I selected Mbtiles for output, then 256 tiles, hoping to be able to zoom in to z20 after integration in openCPN.
The result was not what I expected, as the zoom in OpenCPN only offers the same resolution as an image at Z17 on SasPlanet.
Does anyone have any ideas?


Jean

[jeec]

This was a particularly vicious interface problem: in the form used to indicate the number of tiles, checking the box in front of the number is ineffective; what you need to do is to highlight the number.
So when I thought I'd selected 256 by checking, it was the value of 4, which remained highlighted, that was taken into account. Knowing that, everything works perfectly.
I don't know if this behaviour is specific to my system...

[Jon Hacking]

Originally Posted by jeec

Hello,

This my first try to build tiled MbTiles. In order to build for openCPN a map based on a zoomable satellite image, I used Sat2chart (v17.0.0.2).
In Sat2chart, the input is an image at z16 displayed by SasPlanet (from https://gdayii.ca), I selected Mbtiles for output, then 256 tiles, hoping to be able to zoom in to z20 after integration in openCPN.
The result was not what I expected, as the zoom in OpenCPN only offers the same resolution as an image at Z17 on SasPlanet.
Does anyone have any ideas?

Jean

Hi Jean. First, welcome to CF! We hope that the many communities here can help you.

Glad to hear you were able to sort yourself out. You're using this feature in a rather unusual way. While your way is simpler, in that you don't have to make a "closed polygon" for SAS Planet to download, you end up gathering a lot of (presumably) extraneous information. And, as you point out, your resulting mbTile only has a single zoom in it, which makes displaying the information a bit harder on OpenCPN. Putting multiple (lesser) zooms into your mbTiles doesn't make them significantly larger, & makes it easier for OpenCPN to display them, as it doesn't have to do much bit-fiddling to decide which pixels to display & which to throw out. It simply extracts the relevant zoom from the mbTile & slams it out to the display engine, which makes panning around somewhat faster.

If you feel up to it, you might get better results by:

1. Using OpenCPN to define closed route(s) of the area(s) you want for your mbTiles. By "closed", I mean that your final point in your route is your starting point. You have to click on that starting/ending point rather carefully, & OpenCPN will then ask, "Do you want to use the nearby point?" You answer Yes, then right-click somewhere else & select "End Route".
2. Double-click on your route (or Right click on your route & select Properties), so you can give it a relevant name. Note that this name will eventually become part of the name of your mbTile(s). You can also adjust the waypoints in your route to conform to the area(s) you're interested in. I usually go a bit inland, & then go out to about the 30m line.
3. When you've finished making all of your routes, open the "Route & Mark Manager" (looks like a sheaf of papers, on the left of your screen).
4. Export each of your routes individually, as GPX files. Note where you export them to. It's usually a good idea to create a special folder for your routes.
5. Once you've created your routes, open Sat2Chart, & make sure you've selected a valid "Chart location/Name" (left pane). This is where your mbTiles will end up.
6. Also make sure that you've checked "SasPlanet" & "mbTiles" just under that Chart Location box.
7. Open the right pane if it isn't already open, & under "Polygon/Paths" select the arrow on the right & select the folder where your routes (GPX-files) were exported to.

Sat2Chart will make sure it can open SAS Planet, & will then ask you what zoom levels you want, which Maps you want to use, & how many SAS instances you want. I generally make my mbTiles using zooms 10-18, from ArcGIS, Bing, Google, CMap, & Navionics (although you have to make your CMap charts separately). I think you will find that Z18 gives you plenty of detail, & that going to more than that will bloat the size of your mbTiles unless you're only covering a small area. Remember that each additional (higher) zoom level makes your final mbTile 4x bigger.

Then Sat2Chart will open several SAS instances & start driving them to download the chart information into the SAS cache, then making mbTiles of that information. You can't use your computer for anything else during this time, so I usually make my routes during the day, & then let Sat2Chart & SAS work at night (but I'm usually making quite large mbTiles of an entire country's coastlines).

Good luck, & feel free to ask more questions so I can really confuse you!

[jeec]

Thank you Jon for all yours advices.
I had already planned to experiment with closed routes as a continuation of the present experiment.
But in any case my approach will remain unconventional, because what I'm interested in is locating areas which might be suitable for grounding, as I sail in areas with high tidal ranges.
That said, I've just successfully tested this polynomial approach, which offer, I admit, much better performances than my previous experiment (lesser space on disk, and over all, very good response time in OpenCPN)