During the calibration process we described in an earlier post OziExplorer lets you define the corner boundaries of the map – but it only gives you 4 different corners to play with. Fortunately, it has the functionality for up to 100 vertices to define the shape of a map. And even more fortunately, there’s a utility written using Ozi’s API that makes use of this functionality. It’s easy to do, and better yet, it’s free!

MapBorder, written by John Tserkezis of Technician Syndrome is a small freeware utility that runs on the back of OziExplorer and lets you easily define a complex map border. To use it, open OziExplorer and then run the utility. Click the ‘Load Map’ button and select the .map file you wish to edit. Scroll through the map in OziExplorer, and click the mouse where you want the vertices to appear, circumnavigating around the map in one direction (I go clockwise, but I’m not sure if it makes any difference). When you’re finished, click the save map button, and quit the utility. Simple!

Here’s an example of an ITMB map we have that required a complex border. The first image is a screenshot of our South American index map in OziExplorer, showing the shape of the map – it’s northern Peru. The second is a zoomed out screenshot of the map itself. The blue gridlines define the map boundary, and you can probably make out the the map cover leaf down the left hand side, a legend on the top-right, and a city cut-out (Lima) on the bottom-right.

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