Strange Waypoint Notations in Basecamp

Former Member
Former Member
I currently have 50 waypoints (saved places) and 28 routes stored in my nuvi 2789. I sent all this data to BaseCamp. If I look at this list of data in BaseCamp, all looks well. I see my 50 waypoints and my 28 routes.

When I highlight any one of my routes in BaseCamp, I see the route on the map. And when I double-click on one of the routes, the Route Properties Screen opens up for that route. The Properties Tab itself shows a list of what it calls Via Points. And that's where the data notation gets a little strange.

For example, I have only one Home waypoint. But BaseCamp assigns a number to this Home waypoint according to the route position in the route list. For the first route in my list, the Home Waypoint is called Home1; for the 2nd route it's called Home2; all the way out to the last route to or from my house, where it's called Home28.

Similarly, other waypoints that are repeated get assigned a number. For example, in the route from my house to my son Ron's house, his waypoint is called Ron's House1. Then for the route from his house to mine, his waypoint is called Ron's House 2. But I actually only have one waypoint for his house - Ron's House.

When I view any of my routes on the BaseCamp map, these sequential numbers do not appear, i.e., my Home waypoint is always shown as Home, and never Home1, Home2, Home3, etc.

Why is BaseCamp sequentially numbering the waypoints when they appear on the route Properties Screen? I wonder what purpose that serves? It's the same whether I view the data in "Data received from nuvi 2789" or in "My Collection".

Any ideas? Have other users experienced this notation scheme?
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    If you get this before you have cleaned out Basecamp, look at the coordinates in the properties for any two of your HOMEx waypoints and see if they are identical. The only potential problem with this comparison is that if they are really close together Basecamp may round the coordinates so they appear identical. ...ken...


    OK, Ken.....here's what I found in BaseCamp. Since all my current 28 routes (except for 2) either start or end at my house, I had 26 waypoints associated with my house, as follows:
    - Home1, Home2, ...,Home25 (the coordinates for all these were identically the same out to all 5 decimal places shown)
    - Home (the coordinates for this waypoint differed from the above in the 5th decimal place)

    The waypoint called Home is the only one that appears in My Collection, and it is the only one I actually created. The 25 others appear only when I click on Route Properties for a given route.

    Since I truly don't know what caused all this, I am going to delete all data in BC, download my nuvi data to BC, and then see what happens.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    OK, I deleted everything in BC and downloaded data from my nuvi. But the problem did not go away.....I still had sequentially numbered waypoints (e.g., Home, Home1, Home2) in BC. I even repeated the process a second time just to make sure I didn't miss something. Same results.

    Then I decided to investigate the waypoint & route data I had in my nuvi. And that's when I discovered what I think is the source of the problem. On the nuvi I actually had two Home waypoints, and I think it happened as follows:
    - When I was first in BC creating waypoints and routes, I entered the street address of my house and saved it as Home
    - Then the first time I drove with my nuvi, it said I had arrived at my home but indicated the wrong side of the street. So I drove into my driveway and saved my current position as Home. It was this latter one that appeared in all my routes, but the old one also remained on my nuvi. These only differed out in the 5th decimal place of the coordinates, but I guess that was enough for BC to see them as different Home waypoints.

    At least now I know how I caused the problem, and BTLAAKE and DATEZZ have both given me ways to correct my situation in BC. So that's probably what I will do, although I may try to fix things on my nuvi first and then download the corrected data to BC to see if that solves the problem.

    Thanks again to all who helped me. I feel a little embarrassed. But if users didn't make mistakes and have questions, we wouldn't need a great forum like this one, lol.
  • Thanks for reporting back, however I wouldn't feel embarrassed, I don't think any of us know for sure exactly how BaseCamp works, threads like these help us all understand things better :)
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Thanks for reporting back, however I wouldn't feel embarrassed, I don't think any of us know for sure exactly how BaseCamp works, threads like these help us all understand things better :)


    Yes, what he said.

    It's pretty clear from all this that if you have two named locations that do not have the identical coordinates all the way out to however many decimals Basecamp uses, it is going to do its very best to make sure the names are unique, no matter what you try to name them.

    There are things Basecamp does that I don't like or agree with. Now that I understand it, this is one I think is the right thing to do. In my opinion.

    ...ken...
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    To clean things up, you will have to go thru each Route. Open the Route Properties window. Select a Via Point that should be a Waypoint (Home#), press the “+” symbol on the side of the window between the up and down arrows. Select the appropriate Waypoint (Home) and click Insert Waypoint. Select the incorrect Via Point (Home#) in the Route Properties window and remove it with the keyboard delete key or right click on it and choose delete.

    OK, I used these excellent instructions to clean everything up in BaseCamp (thank you!). That took me awhile, but all 28 routes are now clean with no sequentially-numbered waypoints. My next step will be to purge everything from my nuvi (I have done this before so I know how) and then download the corrected BC data to the nuvi.

    But I do have one question about the data that now appears in Route Properties for each route. I understand that BC labels all waypoints as via points, but then the properties screen also mentions several 'points' on each route. This is illustrated by the attached screen shot, which shows 4 via points and 22 'points'. I 'm not sure what these 22 points are......they don't appear on the map or in My Collection. But it looks like they might be points where I am to make a turn. Does that sound correct?

    Thanks again for everyone's help............I'm getting there, lol.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Those are route points. They are points that are needed to ensure the route goes where it needs to. They may not be at the turns you need to take but they are positioned so they will ensure you take the turns you need to take (hope that made sense).

    If you want a better understanding of what is actually in a route, just save (or export?, not at my Basecamp machine) one of your routes that has some of those in it into a .GPX file. Then open the .GPX file with Notepad, or your favorite text editor. It's just human readable HTML code.

    After our discussion here some of the stuff should be almost immediately recognizable. The relevant codes work just like the "quote/end quote" codes in these forum messages. So you would see, for instance "[routept], [/routept]" with the information about that route point contained between them.

    Enjoy!!

    ...ken...
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    Thanks, Ken. I exported one of my routes into a GPX file and then read it with Microsoft Word. I guess I'm not really good at reading HTML code.......boring, lol. So I think I will just take your word for it that these are points needed for my route.
  • Former Member
    0 Former Member
    As reported above, I used BTLAAKE's instructions to clean everything up in BaseCamp; my 28 routes no longer have sequentially-numbered waypoints. I then successfully purged everything from my nuvi and downloaded the corrected BC data to the nuvi.

    So now my nuvi and My Collections in BC are the same and exactly as I want them. As far as I am concerned this thread can be closed since my issue has been resolved. Thanks to all who helped me.