Combining routing types in a single route

Former Member
Former Member
How do you create a route that mixes Direct and Autorouting sections? This has come up before (I posted on the topic here). Thought I'd post a followup.

The scenario is this: sometimes while building a route using waypoints, you can use autorouting for 95% of a route, only to find some small part must be direct routed, typically a few miles. Examples include taking a ferry, or an offroad segment that is not on the map, or a new roadway not shown on the older map data, or a road that is incorrectly marked as a trail, etc.

Today the only reliable solution for Mac Basecamp is to split the route into three routes, Part1(Auto), Part2(Direct), Part3(Auto) etc. and then load each route while underway. This gets tedious!

There are temporary workarounds e.g. switching to the global map, or, even more tantalizing, switching routing mode while using the route tool. However, when you then export and import the route, or edit the route's waypoints, or change settings in Basecamp, the route gets recalculated and the direct-routed sections magically become auto-routed, resulting in chaos.

These workarounds show how frustratingly close Mac Basecamp is to supporting mixed auto-routing and direct-routing in a single route. In fact, if you look in the GPX file, you can see each Waypoint has a "CalculationMode" extension, but this attribute is not sticky enough - the route preferences seem to override the per-waypoint settings. There is no way to say "Always direct route this waypoint".

(Of course, a separate question is what happens when you load such routes on a Garmin Zumo...!)

Does anyone else need this feature?
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member over 12 years ago
    I have used mixed-routes for many years now. And have found it simple enough to do in Mac-BaseCamp. Win-BaseCamp is another story all together. Yes, it would be nice if Garmin would actually use their own GPX "extensions" to officially support such a route. As for what any given GPS model does with a mixed-route - well, it depends. If the GPS model supports importing a route without recalculating it, then you're OK. I know that the zumo 66x support this. As do most of the newer handhelds - like the Montana.

    Cheers,
  • I use Win BaseCamp and I'm using it to plan a cycling trip (1000 km). During my planning process in BC over several days, I've created many seperate routes which I'd like to combine into one route. I found this issue out when I exported what I thought was one big route into my Edge 810 and then found I had 35 seperate routes, some only 0 km long (I assume where I was adjusting details?). How can I create one continous route vs the 35 I have now?
  • Well you can join routes in Basecamp by selecting them, then right clicking and selecting Advanced then Join selected routes but there are a few issues to consider here.

    If you have one long route on your Edge and that gets corrupted you've lost everything. For a 15 day walk I did I created separate routes for each day and a combined route covering the full route. That way I had a back up.

    The other point is that there are limits on routes, depending on your GPS and which routing method you're using, in terms of number of routing points allowed in a route, so you may not be able to combine all the routes into one long one.
  • Well you can join routes in Basecamp by selecting them, then right clicking and selecting Advanced then Join selected routes but there are a few issues to consider here.

    If you have one long route on your Edge and that gets corrupted you've lost everything. For a 15 day walk I did I created separate routes for each day and a combined route covering the full route. That way I had a back up.

    The other point is that there are limits on routes, depending on your GPS and which routing method you're using, in terms of number of routing points allowed in a route, so you may not be able to combine all the routes into one long one.


    Understand many routes better than 1 big route. Follow-up: we have not decided how far we will ride each day - approximately 100 km (depends on wind, rain, hills,....cold beer). Given that, how would you recomment I organize my routes (200 km segments? )
  • Think that's what I would do, but I'd allow a bit of an overlap so that hopefully you don't have to change routes during the day.
  • We are planning to add support for leg-specific routing modes in the next release. Unfortunately the vast majority of devices don't support it, but you will be able to plan them. Look for the upcoming beta.
  • We are planning to add support for leg-specific routing modes in the next release. Unfortunately the vast majority of devices don't support it, but you will be able to plan them. Look for the upcoming beta.


    Will this leg-specfic routing mode update, work on my Edge 810? And when? (my trip is in June 2013) :)