Corps of Engineers S57 Charts for inland rivers

[wdkester]

Just downloaded these charts and had no luck with OpenCPN displaying them. (I'm sure I'm not doing anything wrong.) The documentation calls them IENC charts and are a type of S57 charts. The file types are .000, .001, .002 etc.

Download at-

Army Geospatial Center > Missions > Echarts > Product Downloads

I'm wondering if there is something easy we can do to get them working?

[cagney]

Originally Posted by wdkester

Just downloaded these charts and had no luck with OpenCPN displaying them. (I'm sure I'm not doing anything wrong.) The documentation calls them IENC charts and are a type of S57 charts. The file types are .000, .001, .002 etc.

Download at-

Army Geospatial Center > Missions > Echarts > Product Downloads

I'm wondering if there is something easy we can do to get them working?

I just downloaded two random charts, and unzipped them.
O had no problems at all. Just like normal ENCs.
?
Thomas

[nohal]

David...
They show just fine for me. As they always did...
Check that you unzipped all of them and your settings are really correct. In case of no joy after that, we would like to see your logfile.

Pavel

[fgd3]

It's easy to think the ACE IENCs aren't displaying properly because they cover such a small area. You have to be sure you are zoomed in enough in the right location for one of those charts to show.

Fabbian

[jstevens]

+1 on Fabbian's comment. You need to turn on the "Show Chart Outlines" option to display the outline of the IENC charts. Even then they may be hard to see. On my system the outlines show up as light green, which is barely visible against the color of the land mass. There is probably a way to change the colors, but I haven't looked for it. Once you can see the outline then zoom way in and click within the outline for force OpenCPN to make the chart visible.

John

[wdkester]

OK thanks, I can see them now. But I do get a lot of errors(lower Miss. and TennTom) in the logfile, that I will investigate.

Also, I didn't know that you had to click on the chart area for it to display.

[jstevens]

wdkester,
Just noticed you are an 8.7 owner. I owned an 8.7 for almost 25 years. Great coastal cruising boat. Vela Llena

You need to set your position in the area covered by a chart in order for it to be in the list of charts to which you can scale in or out. Clicking on that area will accomplish that as well as a GPS position received in the chart area. I'd be curious to know how OpenCPN handles the inland waterways of Europe, if they are displayed any differently.

John

[MAS3]

EU Inland looks like this:
This is in the Netherlands.

[jstevens]

This a screen capture of the confluence of the Mississippi and Misouri Rivers, just above St. Louis, MO: 2013-11-22_1237 - jstevens8352's library
The Object Query is at the confluence of the two rivers. I would have expected a lot more information on this chart. The depths reported by OpenCPN are always 0-8.9 ft. - not really very useful (or accurate). I don't know why these charts show so little info compared to the chart image provided by MAS3. I don't think I'd want to use these charts and OpenCPN for a voyage on the Mississippi.
Anyone get better results than this using the IENCs.

John

[jstevens]

I should note that on my screen capture in the post above my computer was offline with no connection to NMEA input (GPS, AIS, etc.)

John

[wdkester]

The errors that I see are all txt file errors that contain nav info. And with one exception, the only difference between good and bad was the bad files had LnM instead of LNM for Local Notices to Mariners.

I looked at the PDF versions and they don't have depths either. but they do have more info on land based features like roads.

One useful piece of info is the magenta line.

Also the charts show "groins" which I think, we used to call wing dams. These are structures that direct water toward the desired channel, and are submerged during high water.

[jstevens]

I am also seeing errors in the log file when OpenCPN is initializing the IENC files.

12:11:25 PM: Initializing Chart E:\Charts\IENC\ENC_ROOT\U35UM553\U35UM553.000
12:11:25 PM: Building SENC file for E:\Charts\IENC\ENC_ROOT\U35UM553\U35UM553.000 to C:\ProgramData\opencpn\SENC\U35UM553.S57
12:11:25 PM: Error Reading ENC .TXT file: E:\Charts\IENC\ENC_ROOT\U35UM553\U3UM553NP1.TXT
12:11:25 PM: ENC update number is 0
12:11:25 PM: Warning 1: Attributes warning ignored, not in expected schema.
No more warnings will be issued for this dataset.


This seems to happen with every IENC file.

John

[MAS3]

This shows the border between the Netherlands and Germany.
The German maps are more detailed, like depths are visible.
It shows 3 cells and the last Dutch cell overlaps the first 2 German cells.

Also, the German cells show a line every 100 meters and a mark every kilometer, where the Dutch cells only show a different marking each kilometer.