Dear Listers:

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, GIS Section would like to formally announce the release of a new extension for ArcView 3.x that links Garmin Brand GPSs to ArcView. This extension, called DNR Garmin - ArcView, uses a Visual Basic program to facilitate communications between ArcView and the GPS unit via a serial port.

The extension has the following capabilities:

1) Transfer Waypoints from the GPS to ArcView as Graphics or a Shapefile
2) Transfer Point shapes and graphics from Arcview to a GPS unit as Waypoints
3) Transfer Tracks from the GPS to ArcView as Graphics or a Shapefile as a series of Points, a polyline or a polygon
4) Transfer Polyline or polygon shapes and graphics from ArcView to a GPS unit as Tracks.
5) Perform real-time tracking within ArcView, saving the track as a graphic or as a shapefile as a point or a polyline graphic.

The Visual Basic program can also function independently of ArcView. It will collect Waypoints and real-time data that can be saved to a text file for transfer to ArcView at a later time.

This extension has been tested with a variety of Garmin units including:

GPS 12
GPS 12XL
GPS 12 MAP
GPS 76
GPSMap 76
Etrex Summit
Etrex Legend
GPS III+
GPS 150
GPS 168 Sounder

You can access the extension via the DNR Web site at:

http://www.dnr.state.mn.us/mis/gis/tools/arcview

Then navigate to the ArcView extensions page and through the disclaimers to the Garmin GPS Utility page. You'll find a setup program that you can run and instructions in HTML format.

I have also posted this to the ESRI scripts page which provides a link to the Minnesota DNR Web site listed above.

Please feel free to foward any comments you may have to myself or Chris Pouliot (christopher.pouliot@dnr.state.mn.us).

Enjoy!

Tim





Timothy N. Loesch                                                                 Minnesota Department of Natural Resources
GIS Applications and User Support Supervisor           MIS Bureau
(651) 296-0654                                                                          500 Lafayette Road
tim.loesch@dnr.state.mn.us                                                Saint Paul, MN  55155