Organising your routes and waypoints in Mapsource

[Sergeant Pluck]

How are you all organising your routes?

For a start, do any of you store large numbers of routes on your device, e.g. before a tour? How do you organise your waypoints, if at all?

On the computer at home, how are you organising your routes and how do you keep them in a form ready to send to the device? Do you keep them as Mapsource's own files, or do have them as GPX files and send them to the device via Mapsource when needed, or do you use another method?

[Oscar's dad]

I don't store anything on my Garmin. It gets wiped after every ride.

On my PC I use City Navigator NT. I have a special folder that City Nav sits in. I click "Save As" and then re-name the new window. Therefore I have a variety of different versions with maps, waypoints, routes and tracks pertinent to that particular  ride or project. E.g. I have a "Short rides" version and a "French tour 2009" version.

If we want to do a ride its easy to find the route we need and I simply upload it to the Garmin. When we get back I download the track, store it with the route and wipe the Garmin.

All this is simpler than I described it.

[rower40]

All this is simpler than I described it.

My brother uses the phrase "Easier Done Than Said."

[Maladict]

I keep 'em in Mapsource or GPX format (actually I usually have both around) on my PC.  I always wipe the unit before downloading the new routes - waypoint names will clash otherwise, which causes them to be renamed (changing 001 STRT to 001 STRT 1 for instance) which makes them less readable.

[Greenbank]

I always wipe the unit before downloading the new routes - waypoint names will clash otherwise, which causes them to be renamed (changing 001 STRT to 001 STRT 1 for instance) which makes them less readable.

Same here, although with the older units (i.e. Garmin eTrex) you're limited to 6 characters, and if you had two waypoints with the same first 6 characters you only ever see the last one.

My first ride up to Cambridge had all of the points defaulting to Bikely's "Point 1", "Point 2", ... Since the first 6 characters are always "Point" and the space, it meant my lovely turn by turn route became a single point up in Cambridge, 100km away. I didn't turn the navigation on until I was out of London and about 40km from home, luckily I could remember the rest of the route.

Anyway. I store all of mine as GPX files, one directory per ride. I have a GPX of the ride and associated bits (to/from stations/hotels/start/end/etc). Also in this goes the downloaded tracklog after the ride, and the associated derived files for Mr Statto's analysis. For common useful trips (i.e. from WORK_PADDINGTON.gpx, I've got a useful_routes directory).

The program I use to talk to the GPS (GPS Trackmaker) isn't good at uploading stuff on-top of existing stuff in the GPS. So, like Maladict, I wipe everything from the GPS (Routes, Tracks, Waypoints) and then upload everything I want in one go.

[Sergeant Pluck]

Thanks all, very helpful.

[frankly frankie]

I store them as Mapsource .gbd files but if sharing them I make sure to save them as v2 because many Mapsource users are unable to read v3 files.   (But then I also always save Excel files as v4 ...)
I export the Mapsource file as gpx if I think the people I'm sharing with prefer MM or whatever.

Storing as gpx and then opening them in Mapsource just to transfer them to the GPS has slightly unpredictable side-effects, I find.

[frankly frankie]

For a start, do any of you store large numbers of routes on your device, e.g. before a tour? How do you organise your waypoints, if at all?

19 routes is the most I've stored so far, preparatory to a tour.
I use the Mapsource 'Preferences' dialog to alter the waypoint prefix to a different number/letter, before starting to construct each route.  That way, although I name some of the waypoints anyway (around 50% of them) they all have the same 1st char (per route) regardless of whther I name them manually or not.  Each route tends to have in the region of 100 points, so a total of around 2000, but a bit of further jiggery-pokery with a text editor allows all this to fit comfortably even on the old Legend C.

I construct them all in a single .gbd file per project - although you can put each in a separate file that is a recipe for waypoint name conflicts at upload time.  If I want to re-use a route in a different tour then I'd just cut/paste it from one composite file to the other.

I must admit when I first started with this 3 years ago, I thought I was going to build up a library of re-usable local waypoints, to be used in various local routes - but it hasn't worked out like that, it's much easier to lay them down afresh each time.

[Greenbank]

Each route tends to have in the region of 100 points, so a total of around 2000, but a bit of further jiggery-pokery with a text editor allows all this to fit comfortably even on the old Legend C.

Interesting. My experiments showed that the basic yellow eTrex seems to have a limit of 1014 routepoints. This should be enough for LEL (given how sparse some of the middle/north sections are).

[frankly frankie]

Very possibly - I found some sort of limit around the 1000 mark with the Geko 201 (despite its spec. of 10 routes and 125 points per route), but never got around to analysing it before giving the thing away.    I've never got close to the theoretical limit of 20x250=5000 on the C (12,500 on the Cx/HCx) but wouldn't be surprised if there was some unstated limit below that too.  I have been close to 2000 points with no problems though, on all 3 models.

I agree 1000 should be enough for LEL - especially since its 95% retrace - PBP plus the extra 220km to get from from ferry to Paris, used about 950 points, and several of those were doubled-up for the return legs (so the naming still worked - no need to read L for R etc while dog-tired) which if pushed could have been dispensed-with.