NOAA Raster Charts, Used with Capn Voyager

[Sunspot Baby]

Does anyone know if the downloaded raster charts from NOAA will work with Capn Voyager software?

To avoid hours of downloading, I am considering buying them all on DVD for $20 from Captn Jacks http://www.capjack.com/

I guess there is a free viewer, but I like route planning in the Capn.

George

[Doghouse]

I know that it is not as seamless as the captn, but have you tried Seaclear? You can do your charting on there with the downloaded charts. Also will plot if you have a gps hooked up.

[Sunspot Baby]

I may have to use other software, but I paid the bucks for Capn, and like it a lot. Will probably stay with it and use other charts if I have to. I guess I should have asked the folks at Maptech who now own Capn Voyager.

George

[Sunspot Baby]

OK, I went to Maptech and they say:

"The S-57 data format used by NOAA to produce ENC and DNC charts (and available for downloading from various web sites) is constructed in such a way that direct interpretation of this data is not supported by The CAPN. In fact, all applications that read S-57 charts must perform some sort of conversion to display the chart. Some, like Maptech's Chart Navigator Pro can do this conversion on-the-fly.

As we continue to revise and improve The CAPN, we are planning to add the ability to convert S-57 charts directly in the software. In the meanwhile, we recommend the CAPN US DVD Set, which contains all the latest raster, vector (S-57), photo, and 3D charts for all US waters."

This is on their support site at Maptech : Topo Maps Charts Navigation Software GPS and Online MapServer

George

S-57 is the data format only for the VECTOR charts not the RASTER charts you asked about inthe opening paragraph.

I can't help you with the issue of use of the downloaded raster charts with the Captain software, unfortunetly.

[AnchorageGuy]

Sunspot, I have the Capn First Mate and use them all of the time.

[Sunspot Baby]

Thanks.

George

[skipgundlach]

I've been searching the internet and haven't come up with current info re the capn and NOAA downloaded charts.

They downloaded and extracted just fine but it seems no matter what I do they won't show up in the search for charts the capn does.

In a "for dummies" format can anyone tell me where and how I have to put all those lovely rnc and dnc files I have to get the capn to recognize them?

Related, as this is part of a computer rebuild, while I seemed to have solved that problem in the past with the capn, I'm about to reload my maxsea. Has anyone got the same sort of "for dummies" instructions on how to make charts which the capn recognizes (explorer, e.g.) and NOAA downloads visible to MaxSea?

Thanks in advance!

L8R

Skip, refitting 18 hours a day prepping to leave the states for the rest of our lives

[GordMay]

Re: NOAA charts

With CAPN version 8 you can download the ENC from NOAA (a.k.a. S57 charts). These vector based charts however require a conversion process to work with The CAPN. The reason for this is for computer performance.

The chart conversion tools will be included for free with version 8.4 which we expect sometime this summer.

Additionally you can download the raster (a.k.a. BSB or RNC) charts and use those directly in The CAPN. The default folder where The CAPN will load these charts is "C:\BSBChart\".

From ➥ The CAPN Support Forum • View topic - NOAA charts

[kerrydeare]

Originally Posted by skipgundlach

... re the capn and NOAA downloaded charts ... it seems no matter what I do they won't show up in the search for charts the capn does ...

Howdy, Skip. The NOAA download site has improved recently with the introduction of something called "Chartdownloader." This section is arranged so that one can download regions that correspond to the old Maptech/BSB regions you are probably familiar with. There are 20 regions in all, with considerable overlap in some cases so that several regions contain duplicate charts. In any case, you can download regions for each chart type offered by NOAA, RNC or raster, and ENC or vector. There are about 1019 raster charts available and somewhere in the neighborhood of 700 or so vector charts.

The downloaded regions arrive in a zip format. The procedure after extracting each type is somewhat different for RNC and ENC charts. For ENC, simply extract the region into a convenient folder, where they will be collected in a folder called "ENC_ROOT." Then point your software to this folder and you should be good to go. However remember that Capn Voyager 8.3.20 will not read these ENC charts natively. Not sure about Maxsea, but you can check out OpenCPN, a really nice open source application that is still under development but works very well and reads the ENCs directly.

Extracting the RNCs is a bit more tedious. Extract the zipped RNC region into a convenient folder. In this case, they extract into individual sub-folders named with each chart number, and these sub-folders are collected in a folder called "BSB_ROOT." If you just leave these charts set up the way they extract, then you will have to point Capn to each individual chart folder to see the charts. Obviously this is impractical if you use more than just a few charts, so what you should do is move the .bsb and .kap files for each chart into a folder that contains all the charts for the desired region, and delete the numbered sub-folders and perhaps even the "BSB_ROOT" folder. This takes a while, but the result is that you can simply point the Capn to the folder for the desired region and you will see all the charts in the region.

As long-winded as this procedure seems, it is a far cry from my original days with electronic charts in the early 1990s when each chart was available on about 5 or 6 floppy disks and cost perhaps $10 a shot.

[hanschristian38]

Thanks for the info Kerry.

Have you tried to go the other way? That is - can you take charts from the Maptech Chartbook COmpanion Disk and use the charts with OpenCPN? I would like to have charts for the Bahamas in OpenCPN but I don't know where to get them.