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Incredibly Stupid Auto Routing Question


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I really want to break down and shell out the money to buy City Select NA. My only hesitation is this.... How well does it autoroute? Does it stick to major roads only like my GPSMAP 60 currently does with the basemap, OR does it actually look at the local streets. IE: If I want to get from one house in my neighborhood to another house in a nearby neighborhood would it send me out to a main road or actually take me the closest way through neighborhood streets?

 

I know this may be a totally stupid question for some of you, but I am not financially able to buy something only to find out it is not doing what I want.

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I've been playing with mine since I got it 2 weeks ago. It will route based on fastest time or shortest distance, depending on how you set the preference. BUT...as it pertains to your neighborhood streets question, if you simply just dive into a neighborhood, and you have recalculate set to auto, it'll rethink it for the smaller side streets. In general, it'll use the major streets first.

 

HTH

Thad

AKA Old Bill

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If your neighborhood is more than 3 or 4 years old, you'll be pleasantly amazed. If developers poured the streets last October, it will still think that you are in the middle of nowhere, and try to find a street to route you on.

 

City Select is true autorouting on local roads, door to door, so long as your "door" has made it into their map set. Garmin has a history of releasing a new version in June or July, so you may want to wait for version 7 if your local area is under development.

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The exact route you get also depends upon which unit you use. To investigate a route along minor roads takes a lot more memory than along the highways. There are many more possibilities to combine small roads together.

So even if the shortest distance may be through a residential area, with many windling streets, it may still suggest that you take the main road around that area, in spite of it being longer.

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City Select does a great job routing on local and side streets. OK .... If you live in Vegas where a new house goes up every 20 seconds .... well chances are you are going to find streets not on your map! If you live in an established neighborhood they are going to be in there.

 

Koikeeper and I use City Select and autorouting all the time to get us to the cache locations here in S.E. PA. We occasionally drive down a detoured raod but it recalculates as we find a way around. We like "Shortest distance" as our default, but you can choose either or set it to prompt you on a 60C. We wouldn't drive to the caches without it!

 

Still not convinced .... E-mail me a start and stop address and I will route it and send you a copy of the turn by turn back within a day or so for you to try.

 

:D ImpalaBob

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I have spoken at lengths to garmin about their autorouting software, and it pretty much breaks down like this.

 

Routing by Faster time will keep you on Major highways and roads. anything with a speedlimit of 35+ will be preferanced first. Now, you may have to drive an extra couple miles, but then again its time is what matters here.

 

Routing by Shortest distance is exactly that, it will find the shortest route between 2 places, most of the time staying to minor and medium roads. Your time will be longer here, but distance will be shorter.

 

Alot of people get confused by this because if the distance is shorter, then the time should be less, however that is not the case because garmin is going by approximate road speeds which they have classified as thus.

 

Minor roads 15-25 MPH

Medium roads 25-45 MPH

Major/Toll Roads 45-75 MPH

 

Sure, you can route shortest way, and get there in less time if you speed on the backroads. But remember, the unit is calculating under the conditions that you will obey the speed limit at all times.

 

So in answer to your question , if you route by Faster time, all the time, you should keep backroads at a minimum. That and there is also an avoidence feature that comes in handy as well.

 

S

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It is amazing what it will do. Middle of Utah and it took us to the cache throught a maze of dirt 4 wheeling roads. You can set the preferances. I just did a route and it kept taking some minor hwys but I changed the setting and now it goes interstate and the way I wanted to go. It is a great program.

cheers

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But remember, the unit is calculating under the conditions that you will obey the speed limit at all times.

 

That is not quite accurate. The Preferences allow you to determine your average speed for the type of road:

 

preferences.gif

Edited by Docapi
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But remember, the unit is calculating under the conditions that you will obey the speed limit at all times.

 

That is not quite accurate. The Preferences allow you to determine your average speed for the type of road:

 

preferences.gif

I don't believe that the autorouting preferences in Mapsource are downloaded to your handheld which has factory-set values. It is only for routing on your PC.

 

Cheers, Olar

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The Magellan routing doesn't allow one to select between shortest distance and shortest time.

 

I wouldn't say it pales to the garmin routing in terms of usability and getting a route that will get you from a to b, the map data comes from Maptech either way.

 

The difference is that what types of roads to prefer is more configurable with garmin than magellan.

 

Also with garmin you can have the unit autoreroute if you miss a turn or decide not to follow the route. With magellan you have to press the goto button twice to get it to reroute. The garmin, as I understand it, can also reroute manually which again gives the user another option not available with Magellans.

 

So, they are basically the same thing in terms of the end result (you get where you want to go), but Garmin gives the user more options on how to use the product.

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I wouldn't say it pales to the garmin routing in terms of usability and getting a route that will get you from a to b, the map data comes from Maptech either way.

Map data for the auto-routing maps of Garmin and Magellan comes from NavTeq - MapTech is a different company.

 

The Garmin models also let you specify the type of vehicle so it'll route you accordingly. Handy when I'm riding my bicycle that it won't route me to a limited access highway ramp and that when walking downtown it knows that I can ignore one-way and left turn restrictions.

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Like others have said mapsource will route either by "shortest time" or by "shortest distance". So if you have the unit set to "shortest time" (which is default) it will take arterials instead of side streets. This can be changed of course to “shortest distance” which will use any street that makes the trip shorter.

 

I would like to add that I have seen the unit take shortcuts that I would not have taken normally. Case in point: I was in Utah on some non-major highway and when coming into a town it routed me off the highway onto some side streets. I actually ignored it and continued on the highway only to find out that the highway turned two blocks down and ended up at the same place the gpsr was taking me. After that I always pay attention to the gpsr. Also, if you ever go past your turn the unit will re-route itself so you can easily get back on track. This is a great feature especially if you are in an area that you know nothing about.

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But remember, the unit is calculating under the conditions that you will obey the speed limit at all times.

 

That is not quite accurate. The Preferences allow you to determine your average speed for the type of road:

 

preferences.gif

I don't believe that the autorouting preferences in Mapsource are downloaded to your handheld which has factory-set values. It is only for routing on your PC.

 

Cheers, Olar

Yeah, those value boxes in mapsource are only for making the route and viewing it on your computer. When you upload it to your GPS, the internal values set by Garmin, stay the same. If you want to test it, make all the Residential street speeds really high, all the major road speeds real low, save it, route it on the gps, and see what happens.

 

S

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Okay.... I heard the answers I wanted to hear so I searched the Internet for the best price on City Select Na. I found it for $105 at GPS Discount INC. I ordered it yesterday (June 30) at 4:35 PM Central Time. To my utter amazement, it arrived today at 11:45 AM! It wasn't due for delivery until the 5th of July according to FEDEX!!!!!!!!!!

 

Anyway, I played with it and it does everything I dreamed and MORE. I have never heard anyone say a word about finding addresses. I guess I should have assumed it was there, but I didn't. I put in several addresses I know from memory and the GSMAP 60 routed me exactly the way I would go!! I love it.

 

I am going to SC in a few weeks and plan to put maps from Greenville to Charleston on. Awesome!

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