I just purchased Topo USA and for the most part, like it. I wanted to use it as a general trip planner and then use it to upload routes to my Garmin Emap. I felt that the Mapsource Topo was not as good a product, and frankly I don't care that I don't have topo data in the Emap. On long trips my fiance wants to bring her laptop which can show us the 3-D info anyway.
But this weekend I found what I consider to be a major flaw.
From our home in Daly City CA, to go north to San Francisco or south towards San Jose on I-280, the program's auto-route function refused to utilize the nearest onramps (different ones for north and south). The program directed me to other onramps some distance away. Upon further investigation I discovered that the program only recognizes those access points that are marked with little numbered boxes (when you click on them for info they tell you is is an Exit).
It will allow you to enter freeways at those points even if it is an exit only, or to enter in one direction even if the access is only for the opposite direction. (one route I planned had me going down an onramp and doing about a 345 degree turn on the freeway! Some merge lane!) But if a ramp exists, and it is not defined by the program data, you cannot use it.
I thought- "Well, I can live with that, must be a way to add known ramps to the database, after all you can add whole roads!" I tried the road editing tools, but there is no way to make a limited access road accessible. Not that this would solve the problem anyway, in areas I am not familiar with I wouldn't know where these were.
So I looked for how many of these "problem ramps" there are. I found 5 between John Daly Blvd (including JD Blvd) and the Bay Bridge (about 12 miles) that exist, but Topo USA doesn't have them marked.
Not having all the freeway accesses included is a major bug, making route planning a joke. I hope DeLorme fixes it quickly, and makes patches available to users. I emailed them yesterday, but have not had a response yet. Plotting routes in an area that I am not familiar with is going to cause big problems, perhaps to the point of getting me lost. Kind of defeats the purpose of using the software, doesn't it?
If you have Topo USA 4.0, could you have a look at it and if you agree with my assessment contact DeLorme. Maybe they know about it, but the more people that complain, the faster it might be resolved. Certainly there is no mention on their website.
Madkiwi
