Organizing data in HomePort

Regarding sorting and filtering in Homeport vs Mapsource. With the categories gone, it's much more difficult to manage. A few additions to the sorting and filtering would make it much easier I think.

The best way to explain is to give an example of how I did it in Mapsource 1st. In Mapsource, I categoriezed all my WP's, in your example WP1 could be categorized as Fishing and Florida. I might also have WP2 which was only categoriezed in Florida. Now I could easily filter my view of WP's, Routes and Tracks by selecting one of the tabs (routes/tracks or WP's), and then selecting a category at the top of the WP list. Now I would only see waypoints for Florida.

I have no way of filter that much in HP. I can create folders for all the separate categories and move each item into each folder, BUT, I have to list all items in that folder (routes, tracks and WP's) instead of just one of them.

Garmin could easily add the tabs back to the data list, so we could select folder (say Floriday), then select the Waypoint Tab. Now I could see only all WP's in Florida.

In addition, we need some more sorting abilities. Mapsource let us sort by any of the fields in the data. If I had a track selected, I could click on the date column, the Point column, The lat/long column..... and sort by any of them. Currenlty in HP I can only sort by Name, Symbol.

Thank you for that feedback. You are correct - sorting user data by any field is a feature that is not supported in HomePort. Is this something you use often? I'll be glad to add it to our list of requested features if enough users want this feature.

Regarding categories, as you might be aware, categories you create on your computer do not necessarily show up in your device. Also, although the folder concept is new, once you get the hang of it, my belief is that all the things you did with categories can be done with folders. Data that you categorize into folders will appear on the device in separate files too. Also categories work only with waypoints, while categorizing using folders work with all your user data, including routes and tracks.

To see only the waypoints for your Florida trip in MapSource, you would set their category to Florida and then select that category to show only those waypoints. To do the same with folders in HomePort, you would drag and drop those waypoints to a folder named Florida and then select that folder to show only those waypoints.

Thanks for the fast reply!!

Yes, alot more sorting would be very helpful. I often sorted in MS by just about every field available. Sometimes it just makes it easy to cut and past stuff out of the middle of a track for example based on something other than the default sort. Or to see what my Temperature range was on a trip, I would sort by the Temp column, and see the lowest temp was 50, and the highest was 70... I could then click on the pts where it was 65 degree's an see exactly where that was on the track. Finding that now, is scrolling thru 1000's of pts looking for a "65" in that column.

Your right about the categories vs folders, once I got the hang of the change (took some getting used to!) I figured out how to manage it all in a similar way I used to, and I now have the added ability to keep and load the data individually on the plotter, merg them.... which is nice. BUT, in your last example of how to filter Florida, I would then get a list of all WP's in Florida + mixed in all Tracks in Florida + mixed in all Routes in Florida. I need the ability to filter out just WP's in Florida, or just Tacks in Florida, without having to put them all in different folders (a folder for Tracks in FL, a folder for Routes in FL, a folder for WP's in FL). If I did it that way, I'd end up with 100's of folders, and maintaining them would be a nightmare. Worse, if I'm correct, when you put a Route into a folder, all it's WP's go with it into that folder. So actually I couldn't separate them with folders anyway.

An easy way for Garmin to solve this for us/me, is simply give us a "Filter" on the data lists. In Mapsource, we had the tabs [Routes, Tracks, Waypoints]. You selected a Tab, and then I selected a Category. So in HP, the old "category" is represented with a folder, but nothing represents the old tabs to filter out WP's, tracks and routes in a folder.

Sorry for the poor explanation, tough thing to describe. ;)

Categories & Sortin

It would be terrific if you could add the sorting features found in MS to HP. Great first release.

Machria,
That was a great explanation. I hear what you are saying. We can definitely evaluate adding more filtering features in future releases.

Where's the update? We desparetly need some sorting, filtering and a Full screen view!!!

HELP!!

I just found a very irritating bug in how folders and lists and tracks are handled in HomePort - apparently lists aren't really folders in the sense that you might think of them on your computer, and in how they seem to be represented in HomePort. If you put a track named, say "Track 1" into a list (which may or may not be in subfolders), then not only is the track renamed from what it was called when read off off the device ("Current Track ...") but the name is global, i.e. you can to have more than one track with the same name in HomePort. It would be like you only allowed to have one file called "resume.doc" on your computer no matter what folder you put it into. Is there any workaround for this?