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Route planning and Profiles

Former Member over 14 years ago

GPS units seem to have a wide range of allowable via points (waypoints) within a Route. One feature that would help novice users from exceeding the allowed waypoint limit/route when creating a route would be the following:

Add a waypoint "limit-value" to the Routing attributes in Profiles. This "limit-value" would generate a popup notification if exceeded while creating a Route. Also, when a Route is selected from the list, put the "waypoint count" with the other info on the Status bar (at the bottom of the screen) just like you do with Tracks: Number of track points.

This request from a fellow Advrider.com BC user.

Cheers,

0 Killtimer_ over 14 years ago

Remember that via points (now called shaping points in some circles) and waypoints are two entirely different entities.

0 Former Member over 14 years ago

Well, not exactly. I am sooooo familiar with the technical differences between what use to be via points and shaping points and waypoints. But, in my description above I was very explicit and used the terminology that the current beta-BaseCamp uses.

Give this a try in beta-BC, create an Auto Route by just placing via points (clicking on the map). Once you've completed a test route, select the route in the List and Get Info. Select all of the via points (now called "Stops" in this window) and Get Info. The resulting window is labeled (n) Waypoints. Totally inconsistent.

If Garmin is "retiring" the Via Point and is going to call all user-created points waypoints that would be fine but at least give us some consistency.

While I'm on a roll here, the guy that decided to call Waypoints, Favorites, should be ostracized from the GPS Industry.:confused::rolleyes:

0 Killtimer_ over 14 years ago

And the key difference being???? Via points don't count toward the waypoint count limit. They're still there, just renamed yet again. The attached .gpx file is a very simple route between 2 waypoints with 4 vias thrown in to force the route. Open the file in a text editor and scroll down to line 285. This is a via point and due to the naming convention "rtept", is a temporary point, as is "rpt", to be discarded with the route upon deletion. Notice the xml code convention used for waypoints, totally different. These stick around and count against the GPS imposed limitations in both routes and total user created waypoint counts.

The problem is the majority of Garmin units today ignore all but the first 250 lines or so of the file and do their own calculations based on just the waypoint list. The example I've attached is a simple ~700 mile custom route that contains over 5000 route points, shaping points or whatever you want to call them generated by BaseCamp, not me, to force a proper GPS to follow the exact route as it appears on the BaseCamp screen. The via points are still there acting as they always have and the Garmin generated routing points are still there as they always have been...... names be damned. :)

One better on your example below. In a fresh list create the route you outline below and then create a smartlist as a subset of the list the route is in, "List Name" as the first criteria, and "Kind" = waypoints as the second criteria. How many show up?

Well, not exactly. I am sooooo familiar with the technical differences between what use to be via points and shaping points and waypoints. But, in my description above I was very explicit and used the terminology that the current beta-BaseCamp uses.

Give this a try in beta-BC, create an Auto Route by just placing via points (clicking on the map). Once you've completed a test route, select the route in the List and Get Info. Select all of the via points (now called "Stops" in this window) and Get Info. The resulting window is labeled (n) Waypoints. Totally inconsistent.

If Garmin is "retiring" the Via Point and is going to call all user-created points waypoints that would be fine but at least give us some consistency.

While I'm on a roll here, the guy that decided to call Waypoints, Favorites, should be ostracized from the GPS Industry.:confused::rolleyes:

0 Former Member over 14 years ago

Thanks KILLTIMER, but unnecessary to go to such lengths to convince me that Garmin needs to clean up their naming convention within their own products.

The point of the request was to make it obvious to occasional users of BaseCamp when they have exceeded the waypoint and viapoint limit within a route as it pertains to the users specific device: so this "limiter" needs to be user-configurable.

At least based on my technical evaluation of 14 Garmin models over the past 12yrs., only the Garmin nuvi nav-engine based devices have the 250 viapoint limit. Others have fewer, some have more. My familiarity with the various Garmin API's comes from reverse engineering & developing routable Garmin compatible maps (don't need to do that now that OSM is doing well). In a past life I also sat on two Industry Standard XML Technical Specification committees and I've written XML parsers.

It's good to see others like you that will spend the time to "see" the issues. Let's see if we can give this dev team the impetus to make Mac BC the "naming convention standard" for all of the others.

Cheers,