

Several chart manufacturers reformat government electronic charts to work on their hardware, and numerous PC and tablet charting programs can display NOAA chart files directly. NOAA, for instance, offers more than 1,000 U.S. The hydrographic offices of several countries, like the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States, share their data freely and also give away electronic versions of their paper charts. It is important to understand that commercial chart suppliers usually license chart data from authorized government hydrographic offices that also produce paper charts.


In many cases, this means users have choices regarding chart formats, data sources for specific regions, and enhanced features such as 3D and satellite views, tides and currents, custom sonar soundings, community edits and points-of-interest databases. The major multifunction displays from Garmin, Raymarine, Lowrance, Simrad, B&G and Furuno now support digital charts from several sources, including Raymarine, Jeppesen C-MAP, Lowrance, Fugawi, NV Charts, MapMedia, Navionics, Garmin and others.
