I have searched the forum and have been unable to find a solution to my particular problem. I have several tracks from exploring logging trails off of a main road. I reset my GPS "current trail" at the head end of the trail and explore different branches of the main trail. Some portions of each track are duplicated but I would like to join the tracks. I am able to join them but I end up with a straight line connecting the end of one track to the start. I have tried to select this portion of the track and erase it. Instead of erasing the straight line BC seems to erase the end point and the straight line moves to the next point in the track. Is there any way to join tracks and eliminate this straight line?
Long answer: You can make several tracks just as you did, but don't attempt to join them. Name them with the same letters/word at the beginning and they will all show up next to each other in the list view. Then you can shift/click them to highlight all or some at the same time. When you want to ride them again reload them and set all to show on map (if you erased them from the unit).
OR, you can just leave the log on for the whole day. You will end up with something like if you drew a start point on your palm and then up the outside and down the inside of each finger back to somewhere on the palm. NOW, if you find this too much of a rats nest, you can edit the entire track in BC by using the eraser tool to make the return portion of each leg consist of only a few points, but enough so that that section is obviously part of that leg and not some other road. Kind of a PITA, takes a lot of zooming in and out. What I would do is either filter that large track down to just enough points to enable you to stay on each road......OR, even easier, set the track log to record a longer distance, like every 100 or 200 feet.
Joining tracks was never intended to work with anything other than two or more tracks going in more or less the same direction, and with not much distance between their ends. If you try to join one track coming up a mountain from the west with one coming up the same mountain from the east, you will end up with just what you saw, UNLESS you invert the direction of one of those tracks before joining them.
It's too bad that we cannot set different parts of a single track to different colors....but that's WAY TOO MUCH to hope for from Garmin.:(
Thank you RockyTFS for your detailed response. I am new to BC and was attempting to cleanup some of my tracks. I thought it should be a simple task to join up several tracks that had common branches. I will rename the tracks starting with similar names as you suggested as this is the easiest solution for myself. Thanks again for your advice.
If you are only trying to display them together you could make a list in BaseCamp and put them all in that list and they will all show on the screen. Depending the GPS you have you could set them to Show On Map and they will all show on the map. They will be separate tracks so you can only navigate one at a time but you would see the others on the map.
It's too bad that we cannot set different parts of a single track to different colors....
This can be done, just split the track in parts, place then all together in one list en change the color of each track (and a logical name of course).
The best answer for "joining" the tracks is not to join them to one track, but to place them together in their own list in My Collection, then double click on the list with the mouse and all tracks (in this list) are shown on the map, nice and complete without other distraction from other content in my collection. And every track can have it's own color.
Also note you can select 'transparent' as a colour. This can on occasions be useful. You may also want to play with this very useful tool, which can create a 'map' from numerous tracks that you can install and view on your GPS, and in Basecamp.
