Custom Icons

If you use custom icons when creating a route on Mapsource, will they
be transferred to a 276c on upload, or will they default back to
something else?

I've lent my unit to a friend, so can't test it out right now.

David wrote:

You mean the symbols assigned to the waypoints, right? For those you
download the free Garmin ximage from here:

http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=545

and that will upload your custom symbols to your GPS receiver (they will
replace some of the symbols in the Custom group). The symbols will
always be there from that point on (a software reload may or master
reset may require the symbols to be uploaded again, it has not happened
to me yet).

You can use Paint to edit the custom symbols (the round blue balls) from
Windows.

As always, Garmin has cranked an unexplained ideosynchracy into the use
of ximage. When you assign symbols to waypoints in MapSource, they will
have the assigned symbol after the upload if you have uploaded to
symbols to your GPS receiver. If you have not, they will be seen as the
default blue ball custom symbols.

But when you download waypoints from your receiver, the custom
symbols/waypoints association is lost and all waypoints will have the
default (small black square in my case) symbols assigned. So it you
want to keep using the custom symbols, you have to assign them to the
waypoints again each time they are uploaded to the GPS receiver.

If it is that I've not figured ximage out or something and someone else
has figured out how to keep the waypoint/symbol associations from being
lost during downloads, please enlighten me.

Jack

You seem to have a better handle on custom icons than anyone else, so maybe
you can answer a question. xImage will transfer icons created with MS Paint,
but will not transfer icons created in Adobe Photoshop even though I use the
256 color palette. Any ideas?

Thanks Jack-very useful information.

I've got the upload to work fine. It could be that you need to have
all the customised icons in the default directory on your computer
before download form the gps so that Mapsource can show them?

I'll try to work it out over the next few days.

Cooter wrote:

Try using PhotoShot to open one of the images that are provided with
ximage. Then you can see what the properties of the image are (size,
colors, etc.). That is the format that has to be used for all Garmin
symbols.

When you install ximage, it will create a folder /My Documents/My
Garmin/Custom Waypoint Symbols and in that folder will be 23 or so image
files named Waypoint Symbol 001.bmp through Waypoint Symbol 023.bmp.

Those are the files you want to edit to make your custom symbols but you
are limited to using the same properties as far as I know. It would be
a good idea to make a backup copy of the files before you start editing
them.

The images are 16 pixels by 16 pixels and as far as I can tell your only
choice as far as editing them is to change the color of the pixels to
find something that is meaningful to you.

Jack