BaseCamp search behavior

Former Member over 11 years ago

My setup:
BaseCamp Version 4.1.2 (4.1.2)
Mac OS X 10.8.3
MacBook Pro 8GB
Map: City Navigator Europe NTU 2013.4 Ireland & U.K.
BaseCamp's map display is centered on London, U.K.
Find-option setting of Location is "Center of Screen"

The problem: Asked to search for "Staplestreet, Kent ME13 9TX, ENGLAND," BaseCamp jumps to somewhere near Cincinnati, OH, and gives up with the note that "Search was limited to 500 mi." Why does it jump to a different continent, one whose maps aren't even loaded?

Google Maps finds this location with no trouble at all. If I have to conduct searches in Google Maps and copy the coordinates to BaseCamp, that's a sorry state of affairs.

I'm coming reluctantly to the conclusion that Google Maps is generally much more robust than BaseCamp. Garmin should be afraid, very afraid.

0 SUSSAMB over 11 years ago

The current Basecamp beta has UK postcode search which works perfectly, so when 4.2 is released (due shortly) all should be well.

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

BaseCamp search is flaky in US maps, too

The current Basecamp beta has UK postcode search which works perfectly, so when 4.2 is released (due shortly) all should be well.

Well, I'll be interested to see how BaseCamp 4.2 does. BaseCamp 4.1.2 leaves plenty of room for improvement.

My latest example uses City Navigator North America NT 2013.4. I search for "106 pleasant st, cambridge, ma 02139". Map display is centered on Central Square, Cambridge. The first two results are in Cambridge, Illinois, 986 miles away. The third is close--Pleasant St. Ext., Cambridge, MA, 0.7 miles. The remaining results are at least 125 miles away.

So I find 106 Pleasant St, Cambridge, MA by searching the map manually, and set a waypoint at 106 Pleasant St. I try the search again, and BaseCamp still can't find 106 Pleasant St.

As in the UK example that inspired this thread, Google Maps finds 106 Pleasant St., Cambridge, MA 02139 without even breaking a sweat.

0 danham_ over 11 years ago

BC 4.1.2 (Mac) found 160 Pleasant Street first time, no hassle, no errors. And that was with the map originally centered on a town in NC. True, I grew up a few blocks from Pleasant St. in Cambridge, but I didn't use any of that "insider" info to search for "106 Pleasant" near "Cambridge, MA, USA."

One tip: for the "Near" box, type just the town/city name and let BC choose the way it wants to ID it -- in this case no zip code until the program found it, not me. In the Search field, leave off St Rd, Rte, etc.

-dan

0 DRTBYK over 11 years ago

My setup:BaseCamp Version 4.1.2 (4.1.2)
Mac OS X 10.8.3
MacBook Pro 8GB
Map: City Navigator Europe NTU 2013.4 Ireland & U.K.
BaseCamp's map display is centered on London, U.K.
Find-option setting of Location is "Center of Screen"

The problem: Asked to search for "Staplestreet, Kent ME13 9TX, ENGLAND," BaseCamp jumps to somewhere near Cincinnati, OH, and gives up with the note that "Search was limited to 500 mi." Why does it jump to a different continent, one whose maps aren't even loaded?

Google Maps finds this location with no trouble at all. If I have to conduct searches in Google Maps and copy the coordinates to BaseCamp, that's a sorry state of affairs.

I'm coming reluctantly to the conclusion that Google Maps is generally much more robust than BaseCamp. Garmin should be afraid, very afraid.

I agree with SUSSAMB & DANHAM, BC Search needs work (and it's appears to be getting quite a bit based upon the beta's), the key to any search in BaseCamp is "less info is better". I opened CNEU and placed myself in the middle of the UK. I searched on Staplestreet and after about a 15sec delay up came:

By the way, if you are going to compare BaseCamp with Google Map, please consider that Google has several hundred acres of [super] computing power to apply to your search. You, on the other hand, have a very small amount of compute power. The BaseCamp team I'm sure has to make compromises in speed and complexity of the search algorithm used.

Cheers,

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

BC 4.1.2 (Mac) found 160 Pleasant Street first time, no hassle, no errors. And that was with the map originally centered on a town in NC. True, I grew up a few blocks from Pleasant St. in Cambridge, but I didn't use any of that "insider" info to search for "106 Pleasant" near "Cambridge, MA, USA."

One tip: for the "Near" box, type just the town/city name and let BC choose the way it wants to ID it -- in this case no zip code until the program found it, not me. In the Search field, leave off St Rd, Rte, etc.

-dan

Thanks, Dan. There seems to be a particular knack to managing BC searches. That's OK once you've acquired the knack, but until then it's a shortcoming.

BC seems to get confused by extra information. I'll remember to keep it simple.

--Ham

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

"Less is better" is a good slogan, which I'll try to remember.

Concerning the comparison with Google maps, it's certainly true that Google has a lot of computing power, but it's spread over many concurrent searches on behalf of users all over the world. How the power per user compares with the power of my MacBook Pro is a question that needs further research :-).

--Ham

0 stuartmw over 11 years ago

"Less is better" is a good slogan...

Actually as a long time Garmin unit and MapSource user it's the law :)

What many don't consider is that it's not always the fault of the PC/Mac software. Road, POI etc names are in the maps. Over the last 12+ years I've seen plenty of misspellings, incorrect suffixes (e.g. Ln instead of Rd) and so on. Also in some locales a street maybe named "E Main St" whereas in others it's "Main St E".

Now I don't use BaseCamp but MapSource and it allows you to specify additional data (maybe BC does too) like a city name, state, country etc to narrow down the results. That said there have been occasions when I couldn't find what I was looking for and used Google Earth or Maps.