Basecamp is a terrible piece of software

I started with the more user friendly Garmin Mapsourse back in 2005 and when Garmin replaced it with Basecamp I was NOT impressed! MS was so much more user friendly, especially when you wanted to edit a track. I'm also NOT impressed with one particular change Garmin made with their GPSR's  which pretty much makes the Map64s useless for my purposes compared to my older Map60.

So between those two issues, I rarely rely on my Garmin and essentially use my smartphone to backup what Garmin eliminated from their newer GPSR's, or for the majority of navigation where I have a signal or preloaded a map, or when I'm creating a track to transfer to either Basecamp or Google Earth (where I now do my track editing & later transfer to BC if needed). 

I agree completely.  This is the worst piece of software I've seen in years.  N4HHE (what a name eh?) offers the best explanation I've heard but crikey is this awful.  Too Generic?

1) terminology in the program doesn't match that on the device

2) On my, very fast, I7, 16gb Mac it often goes into the "video shakes" and must be re-started.  Haven't seen that for years.

3) can't figure out just how the functions are organized.  Looks like years of patching and now, no real theme.

4) SLOW, did I say SLOW?  REALLY slow.

5) No documentation.  I'm one who actually reads the documentation but I can't find more than little trivets of explanation here and there.

6) General feeling of a 1990s program.

7) Worst, I've got about 3 hours in it now and can't figure out how to make it plan, save, and export a route.  Now, before you start assuming I'm an idiot, let me tell you I'm a retired 30+ year IT professional who's seen much more complex and capable software along with some real duds over the years.  I haven't started slipping (yet) to the point I'm going to let you convince me the problem is me.

GARMIN: This thing makes you look awful and amounts to false advertising as I can't do with the unit I bought, what I read in all in the descriptions.  Please formally abandon this piece of software and just make it easy for us to plan routes in Google maps or something like that and (one step) export to our Garmin device.

I always tell people Garmin is the best but THIS, is the worst.

N4HHE is amateur radio call sign.

Creating routes in BC is only easy in comparison to trying to create a route in the device. I too started with Mapsource on NT 4. It worked pretty good but showed a lot of signs of having bypassed the OS for performance.

Garmin is wonky on Trips vs Routes. I still don’t know the difference, seems to be the same sort of thing. 

Have figured out enough of BC over the years to get things done but am never happy at the convolutions. To hide excessive data I create a new folder in the list on the left side. Select that and it hides the 100,000 miles or so of track logs I have. Then drag interesting waypoints into the folder. I have one called “595 Load” as the select few waypoints I keep on my GPS. Compose new routes in that folder. They also magically appear in the lump sum aggregate  outside that folder. Folders only contain soft links (references) to the real data. Delete in the folder does not destroy the data.

I recommend to create a route start in a folder to hide excessive data. Select the route tool then click your start and end points. Don’t try to create the final route just rough it at first. Can drag preexisting waypoints from your list of waypoints to start and end in the route dialog window, or to any place between. Then zoom in on the created route and start dragging it in to the roads you really want to take. Don’t drag to intersections, drop the snapping waypoint on roads before or after intersections.

In the route window’s list of waypoints you can select a point and it should highlight in the map. If you don’t like that point then delete it in the list. Is very difficult to delete with mouse in the map. Route does not recalculate when a point is deleted. Is something like command-shift-R or recalc. 

On GPS a shaped route is obnoxious to follow. Keeps interrupting with next waypoint which is named something unrecognizable. To fix, in the BC route window list of waypoints “select all” then command-K to mute shaping waypoints.

To put the route in your GPS just drag it’s name from the folder to the name of your GPS at the top of the list on the left.

This and downloading track logs is all I find useful in BC.

When I first start my GPS after uploading a new route it asked permission to “import”. On problem I always have is remembering where in the mess of menus on the GPS to delete the prior routes. 

Last time I tried to update maps with Express it said my GPS was full and the only advice was to add an SD memory card. That is also all Garmin’s support email could suggest. “That can not be right”, I said. Next day I thought to try deleting track logs. 880 miles worth. New map installed with gigabytes to spare. Why is this so hard? Why doesn’t BC or Express know the memory utilization? Why can neither delete old routes, waypoints, and track logs?

Jeffin, I hear you and agree. But one small clarification. Use of any map other than Garmin's would introduce lots of errors, so your suggestion about Google maps would have that fatal flaw. Some years ago I helped program some GPSes for a cross-country Vespa rally. It had been laid out in Google. I had to do a LOT of small but significant route corrections. For example, my zumo added a 50-mile round trip detour north, then south on an Interstate just because in Google maps the waypoint used to force the desired backroad routing was a few pixels too close to the Interstate on-ramp. Moving the waypoint a small amount in BC fixed it.

Hey danham, thanks for the reply.  I'm sure you're right.  I was making a plea to Garmin to either step up and invest in making basecamp work, or provide a way we can use some other, well supported, tool.  Their Products are just too good to be so badly let down by a poor planning tool.   Thanks again!

Afraid BaseCamp development stopped a few years ago now so it is what it is. There may be the occasional updates to fix major issues but otherwise Garmin is putting its effort into Explore, which at the moment only supports a few devices.

explore.garmin.com/.../GarminUser

Does Garmin really think Explore, which is not available on the desktop and only available on the web, is a substitute for Basecamp?  What about people that want to use it where there is no internet service. 

Why not? No competition. "Single Payer Provider", no motivation to do any more than they want to.

I have to admit, this is a bad piece of software. I am a retired systems engineer who wrote operating system in assembler, and application software in pascal, c++, plus others since 1975, and I just gave up on using this terrible waste of disk space. All I wanted to do is create a 91 day road trip with 21 stops(hubs) encompassing 4900+ miles. I did it with hubs that and the last hub winds up where I started. It looks great on the screen, but when I transfer it to my device I only get the first stop. I looked everywhere for a solution. None to be found. I wasted about 10 hours on this when I could have been doing something productive. I will just use smartlink to send the next location to my garmin 770RV unit. Any ideas out there before I scrub this software?

Don't try to make a single 91 day trip. Create individual routes named Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, ... Day 91.