ROUTE PLANNING

[Lunepilot]

Sorry if this sounds a stupid question but im going on a bit of a European tour and i want to know what is the best way to do my route. It starts in Calais and finishes in Calais then Rhine valley, Black forest, Alps,then back up through France.
If i plot my route like a complete circle of these locations with waypoints as our Campsites each night,will my sat nav pick the route up again each morning and set me off on route again or will it be confused and want to start me off from Calais again.Or am i better plotting each days journey as seperate routes.
Sorry I,m new to this GPS Lark as you can see.

 

[ghiribizzo]

Do it day by day. Do a local trial run from home to someplace before you go. Get used to what the route types will do to the route.
- Like first time... you realise you're going north east again to Belgium because you'd ticked avoidances that were taking a huge detour to avoid French toll roads and motorways.

 

[The Grey One]

Like he said! Don't try to put your whole tour on one route. If you go off route that's a lot of recalculating it has to do. Splitting it into days makes more sense. I assume you are using Mapsource or Basecamp to plan the routes, make sure that you place your waypoints or routing nodes correctly. A common mistake is to pick the wrong carriageway on a motorway. The device will have you turning around, going back the way you came before resuming the journey. The same applies to towns, don't just use the town as marked on the map-that will mean going into every town centre along your route. I find the best way is to put in your start and end points and maybe a few points along the way. Let it calculate the route and then go along adjusting it to your needs. Zoom in and check for misplaced waypoints and routing nodes and you should be fine.

Before you put the routes on the Zumo make sure you have set your preferences correctly otherwise the Zumo will. for instance, take you on a motorway rather than the scenic road you expected.

I find that almost all the problems are caused by the operators not the device so take a little time and you will have no problems. Take a map too just in case.

John

 

[GSTourer]

Do it day by day. Do a local trial run from home to someplace before you go. Get used to what the route types will do to the route.
- Like first time... you realise you're going north east again to Belgium because you'd ticked avoidances that were taking a huge detour to avoid French toll roads and motorways.

+1

 

[Lunepilot]

Like he said! Don't try to put your whole tour on one route. If you go off route that's a lot of recalculating it has to do. Splitting it into days makes more sense. I assume you are using Mapsource or Basecamp to plan the routes, make sure that you place your waypoints or routing nodes correctly. A common mistake is to pick the wrong carriageway on a motorway. The device will have you turning around, going back the way you came before resuming the journey. The same applies to towns, don't just use the town as marked on the map-that will mean going into every town centre along your route. I find the best way is to put in your start and end points and maybe a few points along the way. Let it calculate the route and then go along adjusting it to your needs. Zoom in and check for misplaced waypoints and routing nodes and you should be fine.

Before you put the routes on the Zumo make sure you have set your preferences correctly otherwise the Zumo will. for instance, take you on a motorway rather than the scenic road you expected.

I find that almost all the problems are caused by the operators not the device so take a little time and you will have no problems. Take a map too just in case.

John

Thanks for the replys.
Ive seen the waypoint markers what are the "Routing Nodes"

 

[The Grey One]

Have a look at this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUz1LvV2dsI

One of the best explanations I have seen- watch and learn!

John

 

[Lunepilot]

Thanks for that. Your right excellent video for the newbie.

 

[Lunepilot]

Ok ive now managed to load all 14 of my routes onto the gps after a lot of agro finally realising you have to upload them one at a time.
However i now find when i try to put a post code or address for another route the device says it cannot plot it due to not enough memory.
Please any help would be gratefull i believe you can load routes to SD Card but i have no idea how to do this.

 

[The Grey One]

Ok ive now managed to load all 14 of my routes onto the gps after a lot of agro finally realising you have to upload them one at a time.
However i now find when i try to put a post code or address for another route the device says it cannot plot it due to not enough memory.
Please any help would be gratefull i believe you can load routes to SD Card but i have no idea how to do this.

Don't try using postcodes in most of Europe-they are only area codes not specific addresses.

And you can load more that one route at a time, just make them up on the same file in Mapsource, or if you have already made several routes copy and paste them in. That way you can upload them all at once.

John

 

[Lunepilot]

What ive done is create my routes then saved them to a folder in my Documents called euro trip but i dont know how to put them as a folder onto the Garmin.I have tried dragging and dropping the folder to the sd card but when put into Garmin I cant find the routes.
I can upload them one at atime useing the upload icon and then importing them but i think the garmin is full and not enough memory to operate.
Sorry but im a bit numb with technology

 

[The Grey One]

What ive done is create my routes then saved them to a folder in my Documents called euro trip but i dont know how to put them as a folder onto the Garmin.I have tried dragging and dropping the folder to the sd card but when put into Garmin I cant find the routes.
I can upload them one at atime useing the upload icon and then importing them but i think the garmin is full and not enough memory to operate.
Sorry but im a bit numb with technology

If you are using Mapsource there is a "send to device" button near the top of the screen. or "transfer" right at the top. Open your route in Mapsource, plug in your device and wait for it to be recognised before sending to device. You might have to delete old stuff if you already have routes in there.

John

 

[Blackal]

Another thing which may help

When creating each route-Instead of "autoname" for the route - untick that box (each time), and name each leg as:

01-LeHavre_Dijon-290m

02-Dijon_Gap-240m

It makes it easy to pick the route on the unit.

Al

 

[Wapping]

Very good tip about manually naming and definitely numbering the routes sequentially, from Blackal.

I sometimes create two or more possible routes for a one day ride from A to B, sometimes some days or even weeks in advance. Remembering which is which sometimes becomes tricky, so the numbering helps. Here's an example from the second day of a made up journey...

2 Calais (scenic) Dijon

That will be my preferred route.

My first alternative, let's say it throws in a chunk of motorway, I will call

2.1 Calais (short mway) Dijon

My third, let's say motorway all the way, I will call

2.2 Calais (mway) Dijon


It takes a little discipline to get the numbering right. I prefer to have my favoured route first, then work down in descending order of preference 2 > 2.1 > 2.2.

I might then have sub-variants, where for instance I could split a route to go one of two ways. These I would number....

2.1.1 and 2.1.2 A simple jog of the memory that I had now four choices, three main and one extra.

If you have several bods on the jaunt with you, as I often do, it also helps to have the numbers. Rather than saying to everyone, today it's Calais to Dijon and then each of us firing up each of the different variants, I just say: Today, Calais to Dijon 2.1.1 and away we go....

The other little discipline I have is to delete routes as I use them or discard the option. It keeps the screen tidier and once a ride is over I probably won't be using it again that holiday. It's of no practicable use to me thereafter, so why keep it? I can always drag it back in from my PC at home should I ever need it again.

 

[England-Kev]

Zumo 400

When creating multiple routes in Mapsource, how do you then send them all at one time to the unit, I seem to have to load them one at a time, for the Zumo to store them

 

[Sleepy]

When I do multiple routes I open up Mapsource... do my first days route, press 'Escape'. Do my second days route, press 'Escape' again, and so on..

When you've finished you should have a list of your routes in the left hand pane.. then send them all, in one go to your unit.

 

[England-Kev]

I do similar, but the unit does not handle more than one at a time? and I can't work out why

 

[paul08]

Very good tip about manually naming and definitely numbering the routes sequentially, from Blackal.

I sometimes create two or more possible routes for a one day ride from A to B, sometimes some days or even weeks in advance. Remembering which is which sometimes becomes tricky, so the numbering helps. Here's an example from the second day of a made up journey...

2 Calais (scenic) Dijon

That will be my preferred route.

My first alternative, let's say it throws in a chunk of motorway, I will call

2.1 Calais (short mway) Dijon

My third, let's say motorway all the way, I will call

2.2 Calais (mway) Dijon


It takes a little discipline to get the numbering right. I prefer to have my favoured route first, then work down in descending order of preference 2 > 2.1 > 2.2.

I might then have sub-variants, where for instance I could split a route to go one of two ways. These I would number....

2.1.1 and 2.1.2 A simple jog of the memory that I had now four choices, three main and one extra.

If you have several bods on the jaunt with you, as I often do, it also helps to have the numbers. Rather than saying to everyone, today it's Calais to Dijon and then each of us firing up each of the different variants, I just say: Today, Calais to Dijon 2.1.1 and away we go....

The other little discipline I have is to delete routes as I use them or discard the option. It keeps the screen tidier and once a ride is over I probably won't be using it again that holiday. It's of no practicable use to me thereafter, so why keep it? I can always drag it back in from my PC at home should I ever need it again.

I agree with this suggestion. The only thing I would add is that to make sure the routes come up in numerical order, it is best to number them:

01.00
02.01
02.02
03.01.01
etc etc

 

[Wapping]

to make sure the routes come up in numerical order, it is best to number them:

01.00
02.01
02.02
03.01.01
etc etc

It's true