route distance to different points

You will certainly be able to create routes from the waypoint to all the firestation waypoints, and Basecamp will give you the distance to each.

If you are using City Navigator, all the fire stations are probably in the map data already, under "Community". Just center the map on your grid waypoint by selecting it in the list, right clicking and "show on map". Then use the Find toolbar or the binoculars to search POI's for "Fire Departments". They will be listed by distance from center of map, which you have just centered on your waypoint. Use the route tool to autoroute from your waypoint to whichever station you want and either save it as is or fix the route to your liking.

If you don't have CNNA, you will have to create all the waypoints manually, and use the ruler tool to find the distances from the grid waypoint, then create your routes manually. BC will NOT search for waypoints since they are already listed in the list.

If your eventual use will be to load these routes into a GPSr, you can instead create a custom POI list of your stations and use POILoader to upload it to the GPS.

http://freegeographytools.com/2008/creating-a-garmin-poi-datafile

Then when you look under Custom POI's or Extras, or whatever your Garmin GPS calls it, you will see all Stations listed in order of distance, click on one, and if your map is routable, bingo, you're back on the map page with the route to that station displayed.

distance

Really not sure if I am doing this right, but thanks for the reply. All I am looking for is to get the distance in order to the closet and farthest fire station by route. I did this on my GPS unit by just putting addreses in and then set a point on the gird and told it to list favorite and it listed the firestation in order, but then I find out the gps list it by the crow flying and not by routes. I need the route distance instead of as the crow flys. I have some 14 or 15 firestation to list for around 323 grid on the map. I know I can create a route for each, but was hoping I could get all on them to show in a list and in order or disatnce, am I hoping/wishing too much. do I need to look at other maping somewhere.

If you are using City Navigator, all the fire stations are probably in the map data already, under "Community". Just center the map on your grid waypoint by selecting it in the list, right clicking and "show on map". Then use the Find toolbar or the binoculars to search POI's for "Fire Departments". They will be listed by distance from center of map, which you have just centered on your waypoint. Use the route tool to autoroute from your waypoint to whichever station you want and either save it as is or fix the route to your liking.

If you don't have CNNA, you will have to create all the waypoints manually, and use the ruler tool to find the distances from the grid waypoint, then create your routes manually. BC will NOT search for waypoints since they are already listed in the list.

If your eventual use will be to load these routes into a GPSr, you can instead create a custom POI list of your stations and use POILoader to upload it to the GPS.

http://freegeographytools.com/2008/creating-a-garmin-poi-datafile

Then when you look under Custom POI's or Extras, or whatever your Garmin GPS calls it, you will see all Stations listed in order of distance, click on one, and if your map is routable, bingo, you're back on the map page with the route to that station displayed.

I need the route distance instead of as the crow flys.

As I understand it you want, from some arbitrary position, to have the unit (re)calculate routes to all fire stations and then display those in order of distance? I don't think this is possible. As the crow flies is as close as you get.

I'm pretty sure MapSource and BaseCamp can't either.

"All I am looking for is to get the distance in order to the closet and farthest fire station by route."

Ah, do you mean to determine if route A or route B to station X is less distance? Nothing I know of will provide that info, except calling up each route and looking at the total distance.

If you mean to determine what the route distances are to each station and list them in order of distance, you are also out of luck. Any GPS or the software with any map will only tell you closest to furthest by direct line of sight.


Here is a workaround you might try: (in BaseCamp)
Create half a dozen routes to six separate stations from one of your gridpoints.
Name them 1 something, 2 something, etc.

See if they display in the list from 1 to 6 (something)...(I think "something" can be the name of each station, they should be parsed by the first character, the number. Might need to experiment with 001, 002, or an underscore as second character, etc. to get the desired result.) If they don't seem to sort correctly, look for that little gear in the upper right corner of the list box, click it and tell it to sort by name, not symbol.

Now look at each one, write down the distance, and rename the routes so that 1 something is the shortest and 6 something is the furthest.

If this works, and you think it is worth the work, you can proceed to do it for all stations. Now you have a list in a folder, and if you have only the firestation routes in that list it should be easy to read them in order of route distance. (You could add the distance as the last part of the name, as well, since BC doesn't show it in the list view. I think the limit is 25-30 characters.)

Now, if you have other grid points you want to use as a center waypoint, you will have to create routes to the various stations for each one of these, and presumably stick them in separate lists. However, when you load these lists to the GPS they will all go in one list of routes, so you may have to load and unload which you one want on a given day....PITA.:mad:

Our community is nothing if not creative!!:D

As I understand it you want, from some arbitrary position, to have the unit (re)calculate routes to all fire stations and then display those in order of distance? I don't think this is possible. As the crow flies is as close as you get.

I'm pretty sure MapSource and BaseCamp can't either.

Sort of true. But Mapsource makes solving the problem dead simple. Just create a route from the central waypoint to each of the fire stations. As you create each route it will be added to the list of routes on the ROUTES tab.

You can create the routes in any arbitrary order. Once you have all the routes listed in the ROUTES tab, click the title on the DISTANCE column to sort them in ascending order of distance from the central waypoint. Or you can click on the title of the TIME column to get a list in ascending order of travel time.

I don't know if there is any easy way to get a similar list of routes in Basecamp. Not saying it can't but it's so simple in Mapsource that I wouldn't even bother trying to figure it out in Basecamp.

...ken...

That's actually a damn good idea! :) Wish I'd thought of it. That said I'll add my 2c.

With this idea you'll have as many routes as there are fire stations. That said they'll all share one start (or end) point. That point is not fixed--it's variable. If you use the "move waypoint" feature in MapSource, to where you want it, all of those routes will be automatically recalculated. Then you use Ken's idea to see the shortest route.

The "move waypoint" technique would work in BC too.

Dead simple in BaseCamp also--create the routes as described, then switch the data and map views so the data view is in the main panel, then filter the data view to show only the routes. Columns will appear showing various route properties including route distance. Click on the route distance column heading and the routes will then sort in order of routed distance. Each time you click that column it will switch between ascending and descending order of route distance. This could be done for any combination of arbitrary points and fire stations. If desired, the points A, B, etc. and their associated routes could each be put in their own folder to see the distances in order just for that point, or they could be combined for a bigger picture, or even both. (IMO easier in BC than MS to see the same data different ways using folders vs. having to open different files.) Isn't that what the OP wanted?

Dead simple in BaseCamp aslo--create the routes as described, then switch the data and map views so the data view is in the main panel....Columns will appear showing various route properties including route distance. Click on the route distance column heading and the routes will then sort in order of routed distance....

Well, I'll be D______d! I have never found a reason to swap data and map view before. Now why isn't this critically important information in any of the help files? Or did I just miss it?