BaseCamp 3.3.0.1 beta posted

Help-full

I'm running Lion 10.7.2 on my MacBook Air. I have not seen the extra Help for the last 5 restarts. Maybe I'm finally figuring this out. . .:confused:

But, the Data Display View still has the extra Position and Temp column's.

Cheers,

Is this version stable enough to rely on?

I am finally getting an Intel Mac. So I will be setting up BaseCamp from Scratch.

Would you guys use this beta Version?

Should I just go with the last release version?

Is it practical and possible to have both useable?

@DennyH:

The big question is whether you need to use your pre-planned routes right away. If not, then it might make sense to install the beta and learn its menus and commands (which differ a fair amount from the released version) and wait for the bugs to get squashed before using the routes the beta creates.

But if you need reliable routes now, then install the stable, released version and worry about the slight learning curve later once the beta gets certified for prime time.

Running both can be done, but for a newbie it could be very dangerous because the beta version would "mess up" the data created by the released version, so you'd want to run two separate sets of data -- not a task for a newbie unless you are very comfortable with the techniques involved.

-dan

Dan's advice is sound but I think it depends on your GPS. So far with my Chartplotters routes have been fine. The only thing not working on my units is the Waypoint categories.

Dan,

Can you point me to some info concerning the techniques to run both the beta and the last release version.

I am an old unix head, and pretty cross platform literate at the operating system level, I can probably handle the idiosyncrasies.

It's a Late 2008 MacBook Pro 2.8 Ghz core 2 duo 4GB Ram, GPs is a Zumo 550. I have lifetime CN map subscription. I noticed I need to go back to 2012.2 maps for some features to work correctly.....

Man I really do wish Garmin could get some kind of interdepartmental communication established and working correctly. Cartography changes have broken several things over the years and that just makes me think their whole organization is horribly unprofessional. Those things certainly do not contribute to a warm fuzzy feeling about their technology.

Waypoint Photo being rotated

I did a Drag/Drop of Photo's into the Link's window of Waypoint Properties Advanced tab. Works great except the thumbnail photo on the General tab is rotated 90deg L if the photo is in Portrait orientation.



Cheers,

Here's some verbiage I posted over in the zumo forums that may help with diagnosis:

A possible clue to the "mystery" of why one route works and another does not is that shaping points have always been unreliable in zumos.

It's hard to pin this down because not all shaping points cause problems, and it is also possible for a route without them to suffer file corruption, but over a number of years and hundreds of pre-planned routes I'd say that shaping points are likely suspects in 90% of zumo misbehavior that I've observed.

All it takes to spoil a route is one shaping point from a previous map version that has not been re-indexed to the current version, for example. And this was true prior to the new BC beta.

So far my tests with the beta have shown that routes with shaping points are -- not surprisingly -- still a problem. Converting those very same routes to 100% "real" waypoints fixes most of those problems every time. (I've seen a remaining issue where the zumo "loses" the final destination waypoint and refuses to display its checkered flag, but oddly, the route stripe still extends to that location -- but I digress.)

I'm not saying this is how it oughta be, just saying that the fix is going to have to involve how both the software and hardware treat shaping points.

A zumoforum member posted a test route which contains two shaping points -- both of which appear to be unnecessary BTW, because the next "real" one should force the route he wants (though I haven't tested or verified this). It also contains one unannounced waypoint, which I'm beginning to suspect gets treated as a shaping point by our zumos, with all the problems that implies. But the route works, and I think that's because it does not have any "fatal" shaping points and therefore pretty much conforms to what a zumo would have calculated for this trip anyway. My theory is that it's when you really need to "force" a different route that things get ugly.

-dan

The final 3.3 release will reset the shaping point IDs to the current map when you recalculate a route.

This should hopefully get rid of a lot of the shaping point issues on the Zumo that are caused by mis-matched IDs. Just make sure to recalculate each route after a map update, and make sure you use the same map for recalculating that you use on the Zumo.

Dan,

Can you point me to some info concerning the techniques to run both the beta and the last release version.

I am an old unix head, and pretty cross platform literate at the operating system level, I can probably handle the idiosyncrasies.

There isn't anything written down, but basically you will just need to have both applications. You will want to rename Garmin BaseCamp that is in your Applications folder, before downloading and installing the other one.

Caveats:

• BaseCamp 3.2 and BaseCamp 3.3 will not work on the same data. When you run BaseCamp 3.3 (3.3.0.1 Beta in this case) the first time, it will copy all your 3.2 data into 3.3. Changes you make in BaseCamp 3.2 will not be reflected in 3.3 after you have run 3.3 once.
  
• This method may not work between minor versions of the same major version, e.g. 3.2.1 and 3.2.2
  

That method is plain enough, I'll be setting it up like that.

Denny,

I always like to use both belt and suspenders [g], so prior to installing the beta I'd also use the Backup function within BaseCamp to make a copy of the database. I'd also make a clone of your hard drive before doing any such experiments.

I use SuperDuper to clone the drive, which is the best Mac backup system I've been able to find. In the news business, where we could not spend hours restoring files if a hard drive went poof, SuperDuper allowed us to be back up and running within minutes.

-dan