Import and Export Tracks via Conversion Utility

Originally Posted on GPS Tracklog July 8, 2006:

Convert National Geographic TOPO (.tpo) files

GPS Babel, Robert Lipe's conversion utility, has recently been updated to version 1.3.0. This newest version, I am extremely happy to say, converts National Geographic TOPO (.tpo) files. Yes TOPO users, you can now extract track data, converting it to .gpx or the format of your choice. It will work with TOPO versions 2 and 3, but not 4.x.

For those of us with a mass (mess?) of data in TOPO, this is welcome news indeed. I tried it out this morning and it works flawlessly! Congratulations to Robert and the entire team of Babel-heads, especially Alex Mottram, who appears to be their NG TOPO expert. (CORRECTION: Apparently Curt Mills deserves the credit here.)

National Geographic TOPO (Amazon) is a wonderful product, and remains my favorite in terms of CD/DVD-based mapping software. As I noted in my book, GPS Mapping - Make Your Own Maps, the difficulty in exporting tracks is one of the few disadvantages of this program (and the only major one). Finally, we have an elegant solution that allows you to extract your data."