What does "Motorcycle" do?

So does anyone know what that change is supposed to do or what it actually does? Is there a way to set routing prefs so they are different for cars vs. motorcycles? My global BC routing prefs are set to Along-Road, Fastest, No Pref, Car, and avoid unpaved.

Thanks,

-dan

The routing preferences can be set to different parameters for each activity. With the routing pref. window open, selecting a different activity from the menu bar drop down allows you to set preferences for each.

In BCbeta, there seems to be a bit of a conflict in the "Transportation Method" selection with the idea of Profile. What I mean by that is, if for example you select a Profile of Automobile, notice the Routing Preferences "Transportation Method" changes to Automobile. But, if you then change from a Transportation Method of Automobile to Pedestrian, the Profile stays Automobile(?). This is somewhat confusing and I think we will need the Dev Team to enlighten us on what is going on here because I can't see why I would want a Profile of Pedestrian and a Transportation Method of Truck.

In addition, what I think many of us (at least I do) need is a discussion relative to how each of the Transportation Methods types effect the route algorithm.

The routing preferences can be set to different parameters for each activity. With the routing pref. window open, selecting a different activity from the menu bar drop down allows you to set preferences for each.

Maybe I'm missing something, but this does not work for me. The Routing prefs always say "Automotive: Routing Preferences" no matter which Transportation pull-down choice I select.

And the choices stay the same no matter. In other words, if I set motorcycle to Scenic and then car to Highways, only the last change gets saved. If go back to motorcycle, it still says Highways.

EDIT: "Light dawns on Marblehead," as we say in MA. Changing "Activity" lets me set the prefs individually. That is confusing. And yes, it would be great to know what the different Profiles/Activities/Transpo methods do when you select them in various combos.

-dan

Maybe I'm missing something, but this does not work for me.
-dan

Yep. Too many drop downs. It's the activity drop down you need to use. Top tool bar. See pics.





Never mind. I see you've figured it out. Ideally these "Activities" should be selectable in the prefs menu.

Danham,

I am pretty sure what you are describing is bugs in the beta. All my routes did not get the automative icon and if I recalculate a route that did not get the automative icon, it crashes BC 100% of the time. If I recreate the route from waypoints the route has issues like you described with your Cape Code Motorcycle route. I think what is suppose to happen when you select Motorcycle route from the routing window, the selected route will change icon and be redraws with the routing algorithm designed to please motorcycle riders. I think you have found a bug for the Cape Code Route.

I think the routing preference panel is and unfinished area, probable because of compatibility with previous versions. When the developers finish I think the drop downs for Transportation Methods will match and the routing panel drop downs and the buttons for along roads vs straight line will be gone. I think the transportation method in routing preference will only determine the transportation mode of newly created routes. I think transportation method will get a great feature when they get the routing algorithm fixed for all routes.

Here is a wild guess about Calculation Mode (shortest or fastest), Road preference (Hwy or Secnic) and avoidance in the preference panel. If I go to routing preference panel, select shortest and recalculate the problem route adding 60 miles to a 108 mile trip, the route doses not change when recalculated. If I change road preference for Hwy to scenic and recalculate I get the trucking 108 route. I think when the preference panel is complete you will be able to select a transportation mode that matches the routing panel drop down. set avoidance, road preference, fastest or shortest and have the preference applied to all new routes created and any routes you recalculate. This is going to be very confusing but I can't think of a better way to have the features.

Probable not a problem for the Zumo group because they seems to have a 100 waypoints per trip but I think the automative group for the most part just want to pick a destination and have BC just know they prefer roads with lots of flowers growing along side. Well probable not that bad but most want to draw a route in BC, and prefer not to have to drag to change the route but more importantly they want to transfer the route to their GPS and get the same route. In previous version even units (GPS's) that did not accept uploaded routes did a good job matching the BC routes if preferences were set the same. Can this feature be maintained for the automative route and the nuvi? What happens if they want a truck route? Will truck route be the same if the garmin unit accepts uploaded routes? I think in the future Garmin needs to develop a better route uploading procedure (firmware gps) for all garmin devices. Garmin has bent over backwards to support older GPS but I fear the routing upload fix can only be implemented on the newer GPS's.

So, we see there are some "issues" with the Activity vs. Transportation Method routing parameters.

We haven't heard from the BC dev team though as to how the different Transportation Method's actually effect the auto routing algorithm.

More and more the newer GPS's that support Auto Routing are showing Automotive, Motorcycle, Pedestrian (Walking), Truck, etc. as methods of calculation for an auto route vs. profiles (Activities) that manage routing preferences. This has the real potential of confusing even the most knowledgable GPS user.

The plan is to remove Transportation Method in a future release, but we wanted to add the ability to copy and change profiles, e.g. Scenic Route Motorcycle and Highways Motorcycle profiles first. In the short term, this allows users to repurpose existing profiles they don't want into profiles they do want. In the meantime, sorry for the confusion.