Whats the difference between raster and vector maps?
A raster map is a picture. Just like you have a picture on the wall, you have a picture on the screen. Each one of the pixel elements, or pixels, on the screen is just a representation of a picture. With a raster image you do not have any access to the objects in the picture, so if you have a picture of a coastline with bathymetry and buoy markers and shipping lanes, there is no way for you to select the shipping lanes, buoy markers or get a different type of coast line for that picture. With raster images, what you see is what you get. The accuracy of the chart is strictly limited to the its scale. Zooming in to 1:10,000 on a chart scaled at 1:40,000 is not only blurry and blocky, but it is possibly dangerous. Vector maps are drawn on the computer screen from descriptions of the individual map elements. Each coastline is drawn from a list of points. Each point is drawn using its actual location. Each and every element on a vector map can be accessed. Because you are drawing each map,
