TECHTIPS
By dAN TOWNSLEy #60829
BaseCamp routing
Are your gpS routes taking you where you want to go? gOOd ROuTiNg CAN BE ThE ONE
thing you don’t remember about a great trip. Bad routing can be unforgettable. No matter how you prefer to initially lay out your routes, you’ll want to get them into Garmin BaseCamp. Once there you can check them against the current Map you use in your GPS. You might want to finetune your Routes using the maps in your GPS. To get started, connect your GPS to your computer and open BaseCamp. Once BaseCamp shows your GPS in the Devices panel, it will take some time to index the map on your GPS so BaseCamp can show it and you can use it to fine-tune our route. The key to making your Route go where you want it to is to place intermediate destinations in the Route: these are called Via Points. Via Points are just Waypoints that are now included in a Route. Most GPS receivers will allow 30 or more Via Points in a Route. That many intermediate points in a Route are normally sufficient to shape the Route so it takes the path you want it to.
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BMW OWNERS NEWS November 2014
In the event that your Route is very complex and/or very long, the newest Garmin devices, the zumo 590LM and BMW Navigator V, both support a special Via Point that Garmin calls a Shaping Point. These points are placed in the Route just like a Via Point but are then set in the Route Properties to “Don’t alert on arrival.” This means that you won’t get any text or voice navigation prompts from the GPS when you approach these points like you will with Via Points. The two GPS receivers noted can support up to 125 points between the caption Start point and each Via Point in a Route. This adds up to a combined Via Points (30) and Shaping Point (3720) total of 3750 points in your Route. That’s a lot of points you have to work with to make your Route go where you want to travel. These Shaping and Via Point combinations might seem like a lot of work, but it can be rather simple. The way I do this is to just place all of my points in a Route, then I open the Properties window and set the points I need as shaping points separated by Via Points using the parameters noted above. Breathe easy, you don’t have to set Shaping (Won’t Alert) Points one at a time. You can select multiples and set them with two clicks. Once you are satisfied with the path your Route takes, create a Track of each Route you intend to send to your GPS if that Route
path is critical. Having a Track of your Route provides a level of assurance that nothing has changed, once you start to navigate your Route. How is that? Recall from one of my previous articles that all current Garmin, zumo™, most of the newer Garmin Handheld GPSs that support Routing, and the BMW Navigator V support showing Tracks on the Map while you are navigating your Route. In doing so, you can quickly see if the Route’s path has at any point been recalculated incorrectly from the original. The key to Route Planning, no matter where it is done, is to place sufficient Via Points so that an unintended recalculation is forced to calculate the same path as the original. The Track is your “safety line.” Good riding!
