Problems with Basecamp and NUVI 3590 Symbols

Whats the use of having great trip planning programs like Basecamp and MapSource if Garmin's GPS devices don't support their capability (unlike previous models).

This subject has been raised quite a few times on this forum. Use the search feature to find them.

I've been using Garmin units for over a decade and have never seen or heard of one that supports all the waypoint symbols that MapSource/BaseCamp do. I therefore don't know what "unlike previous models" means.

Different models support different sets of symbols. Some even allow you to create custom waypoint symbols (nuvi's don't as far as I know).

BTW you might want to look at my thread

MapSource 6.16.3 Waypoint Symbols

3590 Symbols

Stuart as you have suggested I've downloaded the symbol set and transferred them to my 3590. Unfortunately from what I can see of a random look at about 50 of the most common symbols none of them have been translated by the 3590. They all appear as a square with a heart in the centre. This is the problem!

The 3590 has a limited set of 46 symbols (no 0-9 or A-Z sets), one would expect the very common symbols such as the campsite, gas station, airport, flag, pin to translate in the 3590 into the same symbol. Not so, the 3590 represents any symbol transferred to it as the square with a heart.

My previous GPS units were the QUEST and the NUVI 760. I always found that symbols I transferred to either of these units from a MapSource file was represented by the same symbol in the GPS. I'm not very demanding as I only use about 13 common symbols but this situation is ridiculous.

The 3590 has a limited set of 46 symbols (no 0-9 or A-Z sets), one would expect the very common symbols such as the campsite, gas station, airport, flag, pin to translate in the 3590 into the same symbol.

Here's the stats for my devices.

MapSource/BaseCamp: 313 symbols

nuvi 1490T: 89 symbols (28.4% of those possible)
Oregon 450:187 symbols (59.7%)
GPSmap 76CSx: 139 symbols (44.4%)

If the 3590 only supports 49, as you say, that's only 15.7%. which I agree is poor.

Perhaps if you complain to Garmin loud enough they'll add more to the firmware. I wouldn't hold my breath though.

PS: It might be useful, as I did, to create a GDB file containing the waypoint/symbols that the 3590 supports, and attach it to a post.

Symbols

That's a good idea, however I'm not sure how I could do that.
It would be nice if somehow I could transfer the symbols from the 3590 to Basecamp then it would be easy.

It would be nice if somehow I could transfer the symbols from the 3590 to Basecamp then it would be easy.

Create a new, empty, list in BaseCamp and then transfer all the waypoints in your 3590 to that list.

BaseCamp has online help.

http://static.garmincdn.com/basecamp/en/Content/library_transferring.htm

PS: Perhaps what I think is obvious is not to others. If you've sent a list of waypoints (e.g from my file) to a device, and the waypoint symbols were changed by that device, you can transfer the waypoints back to MapSource/BaseCamp and delete the ones that were changed. The ones left are those supported by that model. That's how I created the files for my devices.

PPS: The above worked for my nuvi 1490T and GPSmap 76CSx. It did not work on the Oregon 450. On this I had to delete the waypoints that had changed symbols in the unit itself.

3590 Symbols

Good suggestion Stuart. I wasn't aware that one could xfer the files in both directions. Obvious isn't it but I never thought of trying it!

What I did on the 3590 was to change some of the symbols in my favourites (as mentioned they are all now shown as squares with a heart in the centre) to some of the 3590s own symbols... in this test case an aircraft, pin and green flag.

I then transferred the file back to Basecamp and looked at the symbols. All of the symbols were now shown as blue flags in Basecamp. Aircraft, pin and green flag now blue flags. And oh yes if I send the same file back to the 3590 all of the symbols are squares with the centre heart (as I've now come to expect).

It certainly looks to me as if there is no way to transfer symbols from Basecamp to the 3590 or visa-versa without all of them being replaced by the one symbol??

Thanks for your help thus far, I'd welcome any other ideas, but I may have to wait and see if Garmin will come to the party on this one..

3590 Symbols

I should add a note about the unusual format of all of the 3590s symbols They are all squares with the unique item (such as pin, flag, aircraft etc.) shown in the centre of the square.

I haven't seen this type of symbol format before in Garmin software/and/or GPS devices.

<sym> left out of gpx on 3590 is the problem

The problem is the 3590 neither reads, or writes the <sym> tag in the gpx file. So it will always loose that information regardless of your icon sets, or which direction your transferring. The green heart is simply the default icon in absence of any symbol information, and in MapSource/Basecamp the blue flag is the default.

I called tech support about this, the problem is the modern auto GPS user isn't capable of much more than selecting a point in the provided database and pressing go so advanced features like user defined icons wasn't given much thought.

You know, I have a 3790 and aside from the fact that it has the "trip planner" and doesn't use proper routes, it's a very nice device. But it seems like they somehow dropped the ball with the 3490 which was the update. Then the 3590 is basically just a 3490 with a big screen.

See the discussion here: http://forums.gpsreview.net/viewtopic.php?t=23837&start=50

-Boyd