Measuring Road Distances

How can I measure the road distance between two points without first creating a route? In MapSource all I had to do was click the points with the measure tool and it would follow the roads. In BaseCamp it gives me straight line distances (at least by default). That is pretty much useless on highway maps. Am I missing a setting that will switch how it works?

If this function is not present, please add it to the wish list. It is very valuable. There are too many steps involved in creating a route in BaseCamp anyway. It is a poor way to just find out road distances between points.

I am not aware that this ever worked in MapSource, and I am pretty certain it didn't. You will have to create a route first to measure the distance.

Simplicity in MapSource

Road distance measurements in MapSource were as simple as clicking on two points. In fact MapSource also offered a route from that measurement, which you could keep or discard. The feel was that the distance measurement was what you were doing, and it was called that, and it even used the same icon and naming as the point-to-point measurement function of BaseCamp.

The distance function of BaseCamp makes it more oriented to off-roading or hiking, but I have chosen an Automotive profile.

I've been using MapSource for years and never have seen any measuring tool other than the ruler that is a point to point bearing measurement tool exactly like the one in BC. How do you activate what you're describing in MS?

You are correct. I was not remembering correctly. I use the Route tool in MapSource, which I guess is the same as BaseCamp. But it is so much simpler to use in MapSource.

I guess I am back to simply the useability of BaseCamp is not as easy and intuitive as Mapsource to me.

Yes, that is the case. In Mapsource it is so simple to just click the Route tool and click on two points on the map to get a basic route. And the associated time/distance data is displayed in the Routes tab instantly.

It works so easily that it's simple to mistake it for a "measurement" tool. I use it that way all the time without even thinking about it.

And that is just the sort of usability issue that some of us constantly complain about with Basecamp, e.g. Why can't some of these basic procedures be as simple to use as they are in Mapsource?

Or to ask it another way, What do we get of benefit from the extra complexity and opaqueness of some parts of the user interface?

...ken...