About to give up

Unless and until you have the time and need to learn Basecamp really well you should stick with Mapsource. As long as it does what you need, there is no reason to care that it's no longer supported. If it works, it works.

As you have noted, Basecamp not only has a long and steep learning curve, it forces you to radically change the way you do things.

I continue to use Mapsource for all the things I have used it for: managing tracks, routing experimentation, managing waypoints, etc. Basecamp adds no value to those functions for me.

However, I've taken some time to make myself aware of Basecamp-only features that are of value to me and to learn how to do them. For instance, I love Basecamp's functions to convert track to route and convert route to track. I use this feature for setting up adventure rides for my eTrex.

Garmin has made this sort of switch hitting painless. You can cut/paste waypoints, routes, and tracks back and forth between them effortlessly. So I can create a route in Mapsource, copy/paste it to Basecamp, convert it to a track, then copy/paste the track back to Mapsource.

Any time the Collection in Basecamp gets sufficiently cluttered to be a distraction I just delete everything from the collection because I have everything I care about stored the way I want in Mapsource.

I decided rather than fight Basecamp I would just use the two programs in the way that works best for me. That lets me get the best of both from them while minimizing the effort and frustration.

...ken...

The other way Garmin makes it easy to use both programs together is that you only need to install a map once and both programs can use it.

...ken...

Ok, one thing at a time. I use my tablet exactly the way you seem to want to use yours. I've used BC now for five years, although I still use MS once in a while, and still have some files that I have never transferred. Getting them into My Collection is simple. First you have to create some Lists under My Collection.

BC operates as a Database, not as a bunch of files like MS. So you need to decide how you would like to organize your Lists and List folders. In my case, I have List Folders named Rides and Trips. In Rides I have Lists for local rides on pavement and local rides on dirt. In Trips I have a List for each state that I would be likely to take a multi-day camping trip in. You might just decide that Lists under My Collection for each state is sufficient. The important thing to understand is that ALL data is contained in My Collection, the Lists just contain pointers to that data in order to organize everything in a logical way. You may have several pointers to the same data in several lists. For instance, I have a waypoint called Home and it is in almost every list.

OK, so putting the cursor in a List Folder use File->New->List to create a new list, say Arizona. Put the cursor on Arizona. Now, use File->Import, it will show "Import into Arizona?" Click that and you will get a window allowing you to navigate to wherever your MS *.gdb files are that you want to import into Arizona, Shift click them and hit Open. Now you will see whatever waypoints, tracks, and routes that were in those files in your new Arizona list.

IF your files in MS are rather large and not named something that you can identify easily you may end up having to do some editing and re-organizing in BC. Also, IF you have a waypoint or track or route named the same in several MS files, which wasn't a problem because you could only have one file open at a time, BC will not allow that. You will get track Blah and track Blah1, Blah2 etc. and have to delete identical ones.

Migrating all your data from MS to BC is a big job if you have a lot of data like I did. What I suggest is doing just one state at a time. I used both programs for several years until I got more modern devices like the Montana which BC works much better with than MS. MS is not going away but does not have all the capabilities of BC and will eventually be only legacy software.

As far as the way you work with tracks on your device, I don't see why you need to change much. Even though my Montana can hold many times more data than a 60CSX, my brain cannot. I typically have some local waypoints, routes, and tracks in it, but when I go on a trip I delete them and load only that data from a state that I need. This is actually easier in BC if you have organized your lists logically. I really don't want more that 50 tracks in there at a time, it's too hard to page around and find one. If I get weathered out and split for another area I use the tablet exactly the way you want to delete and load the new stuff I need. I DO NOT have MS on the tablet, but there is no reason you can't.

You should definitely have a look at this right away: http://garminbasecamp.wikispaces.com/

It will help you a lot with what has been for everybody coming from MS a very steep and frustrating learning curve. Now that I have learned the logic of how BC needs to be organized and entirely re-thought what I want to do with my data, it's actually much easier to use BC. It DOES have it's quirks and frustrations, being a MUCH more complex program than MS, and it has had more than its share of bugs over the years. I'm running Ver. 4.4.4 now and I would not suggest you update to 4.4.6! Stick with what you have for a while.

Patience, Grasshopper, we have ALL been through this if we've had a GPS for more than two years. :cool:

Ooops, Kganshirt is correct, you can simply cut and paste data from MS to BC rather than use File Import. This might be an easier way to organize things for you.

Did you mean Copy and Paste rather than Cut and Paste?

Did you mean Copy and Paste rather than Cut and Paste?

Yes. But both work.

...ken...