Free Geography Tools

Creating custom icons for Garmin POI files is similar to, but actually easier than, creating them for custom waypoints. I’ve covered the basic details of creating custom waypoint icons in two previous posts (part one and part two), and refer you to those for the general process. But the graphic format requirements are somewhat relaxed for custom POI icons compared to custom waypoint icons:

So, if I have a CSV POI file called “Uranium mines.csv”, I can put a BMP file with the characteristics listed above in the same directory as the POI file, called “Uranium mines.bmp”:

8-bit graphic file “Uranium mines.bmp”, 24 x 24 pixel, magenta as transparent(displayed 3x original size) (never said I was an artist …)

If I now select the folder containing both files for uploading with the Garmin POI Loader program, I’ll see this at the location of a uranium mine in the data file:

Magenta is transparent, so it doesn’t display. If I uploaded it as a 24-bit graphic file, though:

Colors are changed, and there’s no transparency.

If I organize multiple POI datafiles by putting them into subfolders (see this post for more info), I can assign the same icon to all the points in that subfolder by putting an icon into the root folder with the name of the subfolder. For example, if the root folder is called “Root”, and a subfolder containing multiple POI datafiles is called “Landmarks”, putting an icon file called “Landmarks.bmp” into the Root folder assigns that bitmap as the default icon for all the datapoints in the Landmarks subfolder. But I can override that default for a datafile in the subfolder by putting an icon file with the same name as the datafile into the subfolder.

Here’s an example:

• Root (root folder): contains the datafile “Uranium mines.csv”, and icon files “Uranium mines.bmp” and “Landmarks.bmp”
• Landmarks (subfolder inside of “Root” folder): contains datafiles “Springs.csv”, “Kelsey.csv” and “Km.csv”, along with icon files “Springs.bmp” and “Km.bmp”

If I now run the Garmin POILoader program, and upload the data from the “Root” directory:

• The points in the “Uranium mines.csv” file are plotted with the “Uranium mines.bmp” icon
• The points in the “Springs.csv” file are plotted with the “Springs.bmp” icon
• The points in the “Km.csv” file are plotted with the “Km.bmp” icon
• But there’s no icon file called “Kelsey.bmp”, so the points in the “Kelsey.csv” file are plotted with the default icon assigned in the Root to this subfolder, “Landmarks.bmp”
• If there were no “Landmarks.bmp” icon in the Root folder, the custom POI icon would default to a circled dot

Actual screenshot

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Actual screenshot