saving a new route

I've been unsuccessful learning how to use the mapsource program.
Here is what I'd like to do.
Let's say I'm about to go on a new really nice motorcycle route with a
couple of buddies..
Can I set my 2720 so it will track the route and save it?
If so, please guide me through the process. Also, since the 2720 doesn't
have it's own battery, would I have to keep the bike running if we stopped
during the route?
Thanks
Tim fm CT

tim fm ct wrote:


It is a good idea to clear it at the start, touch the Percentage then OK
to do that.

The 2720 uses a automatic setting for collecting track points that
disperses the track points in a manner that best shows the turnings and
direction changes. And it will start overwriting oldest points when the
2,000 point capacity is reached. I'm not sure if the 2720 is the same
but my 2610 will collect about 400 to 500 miles of travel with the 2,000
point capacity.

If you download the track that is in your 2720 now to MapSource, you can
look at how the points are dispersed and get a feel for the distance
that can be accumulated withing the 2,000 point capacity.

If you want to save tracks, you would have to connect to a PC and
download them whenever you got close to 100%.

I use a 2610 on my motorcycle. I leave it wired to an accessory circuit
that stays on when the ignition is on. I can use the accessory if I
want to leave the GPS on but not have the lights or ignition on. And
can also remove the key in the accessory position if I want to go eat or
something and leave the GPS on. An hour or so of on time will not
threaten the motorcycle battery, the 2720 has a max draw of less than 1
am so it would take a day or two for it to drain the battery.

Also, that should get a warm fix in 15 to 30 seconds or so even after it
has been off for an hour or two. So if you do shut it off, if it has a
good sky view it will have a fix before you can get all your gear on and
get the bike warmed up to go.

I also use my 76Cx on my motorcycle sometimes, that can record tracks
for days on end.

For motorcycling, the 26xx and 27xx models are great, proven durability,
good waterproofing, and you can plan out your rides with full control of
the routing and upload them.

Keep the rubber side down!

Jack

tim fm ct wrote:

Tim,

I recently helped another person here convert a collection of waypoints
(that were not a route) into a route. If you want to take the time to
follow through the instructions I sent to him (it is pasted below), it
will help you figure out how to use MapSource.

I was intimidated by MapSource at first too. Now I just dislike it for
being sort of crappy but I still use it a lot. What the heck, I managed
to learn how to live with DOS 1.0 through 6.22, Windows 1.0, 3.1, 95,
98, 2000, and XP, I'm not going to let one more crappy application scare
me off now!

A guy had some collections of waypoints and wanted to put them in a
route from MapSource. But he had way too many waypoints than were
needed or than can be used in a route. He asked how to do it with
MapSource and what follows are the blow by blow instructions for doing
it.

Jack

BUILDING A ROUTE FROM A COLLECTION OF WAYPOINTS:

I am doing this with City Navigator North America 2008 on a PC. If you
use a different version you may get different results but you should be
able to accomplish the same things by choosing other waypoints when
your results differ from mine.

Go to this link, right click on the "Florida_or_Bust.gpx" file and save
it to your desktop or a working folder.

http://www.njbikemap.com/njmap/motorcycle/

Use Auto-Routing is selected. Set the other settings there as follows
if they are not already that way:

Vehicle - Car/Motorcycle
Calculation Style - Shorter Distance (it was probably previously set to
Faster Time)
Try to Avoid - check U-Turns, Carpool Lanes, and Seasonal Road Closures.
Set the Driving Speed slider to the center position.

We are using the Shorter Distance style here because it will help with a
route where we want to use a lot of secondary roads for their scenic
value. Most of the time I have the Route Style set to Faster Time and
that will want to use freeways or main highways as much as possible.

Apply the changes and click on OK. If you've previously changed any
settings on the other tabs, and can remember the changes, you might want
to set those back to the defaults.

No, there is no Reset to Defaults button, that would be too easy and
MapSource is not about easy.

Open the Florida_or_Bust.gpx file with MapSource, it may take a few
seconds to process the file.

little. If you click on the different settings from Lowest to Highest,
you can see how that works. I use it often to kill some of the detail
when I am zoomed out and only want to see the names of towns and cities
and roads. But sometimes you'll also lose some smaller roads you want
to use so you have to fool with it as you work.

While you are in the View menu, click on the Show Crosshair to get a
marker for the center of your screen (it will mark the focal point for
all zooms). Also slide the right side of the User Data Tabs box to the
left a little to see more of the map. You really only need to see the
Waypoints tab for now.

Click on the Waypoints tab, then right click on the first waypoint,
WPT001, and click on Show Selected Waypoint on Map and your map will
center on WPT001.

Get in the habit of using the + and - keys for zooming in and out, and
the up, down, right, left arrow keys for panning. That is much faster
then changing from the Route or Selection Tool to the Hand Tool
(panning) or using the two Zoom buttons.

Zoom out to 15 miles and you'll see a collection of 386 waypoints that
define a route for a motorcycle ride. The waypoint labels will obscure
the actual waypoints and clot things up a little but just ignore that
for now.

You cannot have more than 50 waypoints in a autorouting or Follow Road
route. You'll get an error on the 2720 if you try to activate a Follow
Road route with more than 50 waypoints in it.

So the need here is to define the route using multiple destination
routing to control the routing. You will use only the waypoints that
are needed to cause the routing algorithm to use the roads that are
marked out by the waypoints.

You can start by selecting the two waypoints that are about the furthest
apart. Since this is a loop, starting and ending in the same spot, the
furthest point is about midway through the loop. And the order of the
waypoint numbers determine the direction the loop will be ridden.

Select the Route Tool and start a route by clicking on WPT001, then pan
and zoom until you can see WPT167 and click on that. Those two
waypoints are the more or less southern and northern extremes of the
route. MapSource will calculate a route but the results are not good
compared to the roads we want to use.

Change from the Route Tool to the Select Tool (the arrow, you don't need
the Route Tool for now and using it would make the following steps
harder to do).

Pan and zoom to go back and look at the route from WPT001, find the
first road it did not take and pick a waypoint on the road you preferred
to use. We'll try using WPT042 on US-206. Click on the Routes tab in
the User Data Tabs pane. You'll see one route there now. Double click
the route to see the Route Properties.

Another way to see the Route Properties is to double click the yellow
line that marks the route. If you put your cursor on the route, it will
think you are trying to click and drag the route to change it. If that
happens, hit the Esc key to stop it. If it places a waypoint on the
route (a small black square) you'll have to delete it. Do that by
highlighting the unwanted waypoint with your cursor, right clicking,
choosing the waypoint's name, and them deleting it. Or, you can double
click the route and delete it from the Via Points list there.

That click and drag to add a via point behavior is a major annoyance for
me in MapSource and there is no way to turn it off if you don't want to
use it.

Anyway, in the Route Properties menu, in the list of Via Points, you'll
see the two waypoints you used. You want to insert waypoint WPT042
between those two waypoints. Click once on WPT167 to select it (it
turns blue), then click on Insert Waypoint, scroll down to find WPT042,
select it, click OK, and it will insert the new waypoint before WPT167
in the list. Inserted waypoints are always added above the waypoint you
have selected in the Via Points list.

Notice the other buttons on the Route Properties menu for moving
waypoints up and down, editing the list of via points, and for finding
and adding new points to the list.

Click OK again and the route will be recalculated and displayed.
Another way to get to the Route Properties menu is to double click the
yellow line that marks your route on the map. Figuring out how to get
to the Route Properties menu and edit the via points (inserting and
deleting waypoints mainly) are the keys to editing routes and getting
happy with them.

Looking back at the route, it missed that loop over towards Lake
Lackawanna as it headed north.

Open the Route Properties again, insert WPT027 in front of WPT042 click
OK and OK, and that fixes it.

Then pan and zoom to look at the route again. North of WPT042 it is not
going over to the west enough. I can see the waypoints over there to
Highest and can finally see all the secondary roads that the waypoints
were placed on.

I look at the waypoints and choose and insert multiple waypoints WPT048,
WPT058, and WPT073. That helps some, but it still needs more help.

You can use the Ctrl key when you click on waypoints in the Insert
Waypoint menu to add multiple waypoints. And you can select one
waypoint and use the Shift key to select the last waypoint in a string
of consecutive waypoints that you want to add.

To get that loop to the southwest I insert WPT066 and that starts
looking better. Just out of curiosity, I delete WPT058 and still get
the same routing so I leave it out.

Now I need to pull the route North on CR-617, so I'll insert WPT090 and
WPT100 after WPT073.

Bingo! That's better!

From there I need to go quite a ways north and a little to the east.
I'll try using WPT112. That's better but still not 100% right. Next
I'll insert WPT160.

Adding WPT160 fixed one problem but created a new section of missed road
back down behind me. I'm zooming in and out and spot that. It looks
like adding WPT182 and WPT143 may fix that so I try it and it does.

Whoopee! We're all the way to the northern end and have only used 12
waypoints. Now we can start picking our way to the south.

Let's go for the whole enchilada and insert WPT386, the last waypoint in
down to WPT386 and double click it. Click OK, and wait for the result.

Not looking too good. It went to the west because we're still using the
shortest distance routing. But that is OK, we'll fix it. Also, I
screwed up at the start by choosing WPT167 for the northern end, I
should have chosen something more like WPT217.

First I insert WPT217 and then add WPT232 to get the routing right as we
head south.

That's good but it heads too far east again so we look for a likely
candidate to pull us west. We insert WPT341 in front of WPT386 and
click OK and OK again. That still leaves us with a big section of
missed road to the west so I start adding waypoints to pull us that way.

I add likely looking waypoints one at a time, checking after each
addition. I sometimes have to go back and insert an earlier waypoint to
fix something that changed. I eventually wind up with the following
waypoints added:

WPT256

WPT274

WPT286

WPT289

WPT308

Okay, the first part of the challenge is done. We have the routing
right in MapSource.

Notice that we only needed to use 22 of the 386 waypoints. To get rid
of the unused waypoints do the following:

the default file type). I usually use a date_name like
080428_florida.gdb so that if I edit this again later I can tell which
is the last edited version.

2 - On the Routes tab, right click the route (probably named "WPT001 to
WPT386") and then click on Copy. That will put the route and the
waypoints that are used in it in temporary memory.


4 - Click on the Routes tab, right click in the white area, and click on
Paste. The WPT001 to WPT386 route will be pasted in and the 22
waypoints used in it will be seen on the Waypoints tab.

You now have what I call a "clean route" with no unused waypoints and
ready for uploading. I'd save it again with a name like
080428_florida_final.gdb.

Now we have to upload it to the 2610 (or whatever) and see if it works
the same way there. Ideally, I would have planned the route in
MapSource using the same version of City Navigator that I have on the
2610. My 2610 has CN V8 and I'm on CN 2008 on my laptop so I may get
some different results when the route it activated on the GPS receiver.

On the 2610, I have to make sure to remember to make the
Fastest/Shortest setting the same turn as was used here in MapSource.
Other wise it will try to make it the quickest route (or however my
settings on the 2610 dictate) and that may change the routing.

When you upload a map to a GPS receiver you are only uploading a list of
the via points. Not a list of the roads used in MapSource or anything
else, just the via points.

In building this route, we used the previously existing waypoints to
build the route instead of clicking on the map at the places we wanted
to pass through. We can do it either way but I prefer the way we did
it over using the Route Tool and clicking on the map. I'll explain that
further.

There are two kinds of via points in routes. The via points are either
waypoints (those belong to you, the user) or map points/lines (those
belong to MapSource). Notice that map points/lines do not show up on
the Waypoints tab.

I've found that you will get more reliable results in getting the same
routing in MapSource and on your GPS receiver if you place and use
waypoints to build routes instead of just clicking on the map and using
map points. It is sort of like the GPS receivers consider map
points/lines to be something they can change if they want whereas a user
waypoint needs to be used where it is.

Using waypoints to build routes is a little more work. Try making both
ways and you may prefer the other way. If you build a route with the
route tool, and want to convert it to route with waypoints, you can
change to the Waypoint Tool and place waypoints on the map points/lines.
Then you'll have to click on the waypoints with the Route Tool and
build the route again.

It is more typical to create a route by placing waypoints at the start
and finish of a route and then place more waypoints and add them to the
route to fix the routing.

WOW !! You are not kidding. Isn't Garmin interested in making this
easier.??????
Tim fm CT

tim fm ct wrote:


It might sound a little harder than it actually when you read it the
first time. A lot of it becomes pretty subconscious. But I won't argue
that the application could use some attention.

I have a shareware called GPS Utility and have used a number of other
freewares to upload waypoints and routes to my various Garmins. But if
you want to look at the Garmin mapping you pretty much have to bite the
bullet and use MapSource.

For a regular route, do as I describe above, click on the start and
finish, then start using the click and drag thing to pull that routes to
other roads. That works okay and looks good in MapSource, but, like I
mentioned above, that produces route with map points/lines and those may
not work as well once uploaded.

But you may have good luck with it that way and like it better. If you
are going to share routes with other people and for various models of
GPS receivers using gpx files, waypoints might be more reliable.

Jack