Software Program For Printing NOAA Raster Charts

Here's a way to print chart booklets of any NOAA raster charts. Chartbook Maker from Apocgraphy is not free, but at $30, it is affordable. The free trial version shows each chart as a checkerboard with half the squares blacked out.

Chartook Maker prints NOAA raster charts as a series of "tiles". Each chart section is printed on the its own page with the adjoining sections references. The first page is an index of the full chart indicating page numbers of the individual tiles.

Chartbook Maker is a Windows program for creating chartbooks from electronic charts.

Simply download and install Chartbook Maker to print nautical charts using a regular printer.

It's free to try and easy to use.

What it does

Chartbook Maker lets you print nautical charts in full resolution using a regular printer.

It does this by creating tiles in the same way as map books do for street maps.
A section of each chart is printed to a separate page with references to adjoining sections.
At the start of the booklet an index of the full chart is printed along with the page numbers of the tiles.
It reads all NOAA BSB format charts.

What it is good for

There are a number of times when a chart book is handy:
Your boat is too small to conveniently unfold a full sized chart.
You have electronic charts but don't want your laptop to get wet.
You want to keep all your charts in one easy to reference book.
You have electronic charts but don't have a full size plotter to print them out to scale.
You like to write on your charts and don't want to ruin your full sized charts.
The software that came with your electronic charts sucks.
General route planning and daydreaming.

Important note: Chartbooks created with Chartbook Maker are not to be used for navigation! Only use certified charts from NOAA or other certified authority for navigation.

Apocgraphy - Chartbook Maker - Create chartbooks from electronic charts

I have purchased this and tried it out. I particularly like the choice to print on letter size, legal size, or any other size my printer can handle. I simply set the page size within Chartbook Maker, and the program displays the page layout and overlaps on the index image for the chosen paper size.

technorati tags: NOAA, nautical+chart, raster+chart, Chartbook+Maker, Apocgraphy