Trip Planner Feature is here! (BETA)

Former Member over 12 years ago

Hello! My name is Jason. I am a fairly new desktop apps developer here at Garmin, and I would like to introduce everyone to our new Trip Planner feature! Trip Planner is still in Beta, but we were hoping here on our team that we could get some feedback in the hopes of improving what we have created. Please take a moment, download the build, play with the new feature, and give us some feedback right here in this thread. We would look forward to hearing from you!

“Trip Planner” is a new feature that allows you to easily create trip schedules for vacations or business and lets you add points of interest such as hotels, theme parks, places to eat, camp grounds, and anything else that comes with your map.

The BaseCamp 4.2.0.4 build gives you an early preview into Trip Planner. Please let us know how you like it and what you think we can improve.

The build can be found in this thread: https://forums.garmin.com/showthread.php?37158-BaseCamp-4-2-0-4-Beta-is-available

Creating a Trip

You can set fields such as how long your trip is in days or if you know the dates you can enter them. You can also specify how long you wish to travel in a given day, and whether or not this trip will have return legs.

Starting point and Ending point

You can search for just about anything you would like to travel to and from. In the example posted below, we go from one city to another and once trip planner has created your routes, you can enter in the specific locations where you will be traveling from and to.

Viewing your Trip

Once your trip is created you can view your routes!

Editing your Trip

You can move points of interest up and down, you can create new hubs, and you can drag and drop find results into your trip. You can search along the route for points of interest in a given day, and you can also create days and new destinations. Trip planner takes care of the rest! You can even print your trip!

0 Former Member over 11 years ago

Thank you for that tip. I now have a driving profile for SlowPoke!, again I think that it is a Basecamp only thing. In the early days you could assign unique options to each leg of a trip on the Nuvi itself (2595) but they took that away.

0 SUSSAMB over 11 years ago

In the early days you could assign unique options to each leg of a trip on the Nuvi itself (2595) but they took that away.

Wasn't aware of that. Would be a useful feature to have, wonder why it was removed?

0 Former Member over 10 years ago

I tried to create a trip within 50 miles of my home. I have to assign a destination to start. That is limiting, as Basecamp now routes the best route it wants for me and I have to edit the route. I would like to see a way to start from one point and then add waypoints without having a destination. I could then click away at waypoints until I want to start a return, and then either keep adding waypoints, or state 'return to start point'.
I gave up as each time I added a waypoint BC would route the shortest distance back to the most direct route, leaving me with dead ends and fragments that I had to cut. I was trying to route country roads that would be an enjoyable drive, and not the shortest or fastest route. I found no easy way to simply cut a dead leg or unnecessary piece of road from the trip.
If I want to simply go from point A to point B, I use the GPS device for that. Why would I need Basecamp?

I know I have a lot to learn about what Basecamp can do, but first time out for me was complex and confusing. I also did not find a way to save a track or route to the device and then find that route that I can use to call my route on the device. Saving to device seemed successful, but never found anything on the device.

Thanks,
Ron

0 Former Member over 10 years ago

I have a 6,700 mile RV trip planned for this fall. I have already planned it using Microsoft Streets & Trips 2013. I have been trying to plan it from scratch in Basecamp as a way to learn the new trip planning feature. BTW Microsoft has decided to terminate future releases of Streets & Trips. Garmin should purchase that product from Microsoft. It is leaps and bounds better than Basecamp. I would love Basecamp to fill the void, but it really a poorly designed product. I was a heavy Mapsource user and tried to adopt Basecamp several different times over the last few years. It has been a frustrating experience every time. Trying to learn Trip Planning is no different.

1. The are no help features or tutorials for Trip Planning
2. There are no training videos for Trip Planning
3. If I tell it my trip is a round trip, why does it ask for my destination? Isn't my destination where I started?
4. It would be nice to be able to schedule overnight stops not measured in hours but in the number of nights
5. There are no tools for refueling reminders, cost of the trip, etc
6. After hours of attempting to create multiple stops over multiple days I am still confused how those things should be created.
7. If I define the size of my vehicle (RV), can I assume all routes provided by Basecamp are appropriate for my RV (like the RV 760)??

I am a heavy gps user. I understand routes, tracks, waypoints, .gpx files, GSAK, etc etc etc. I feel like I should be able to navigate my way around this learning curve with ease....not so.

.I hope Garmin figures this out SOON.

0 Former Member over 10 years ago

The features I like most for Trip Planner are to limit driving to a maximum time each day, and then the ability to add in motel stops, etc. But if I wish to vary the return trip for personal reasons (for instance to take a longer route home by adding a waypoint to force that choice), Trip Planner tries to return to the original route ASAP and does not recalculate new stopping points based on the increased or decreased driving time from the route change. I cannot find anything to force recalculation of the entire trip based on my waypoint adjustments. For instance plotting from Chicago to Washington DC for "fastest" goes about due-East out of Chicago, but if I wish to leave via Indianapolis, at the end of the driving day, Trip Planner still wants to make my day stop head North to the stopping point originally found. == Basically, this is the same problem reported by Deerhead in September and December last year. -- another way to look at the problem is the basic information we enter at T.P. start (max time per day, etc) cannot be accessed to correct or invoke once the initial routing has been created - the *false* assumption being nothing major (like stopping points) may need to change because of the user's tweaking.