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Making a route - backwards, kind of


IdaLabs

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There should be a way to do this with google maps, though I'm not exactly sure if there is an easy way to do this, lemme look into this real quick and see what's up.

 

So I messed with it a little and while this is by no means quick and does not auto route, it "works" and I'm sure there is an easy way to do this, so feel free anyone to add to this.

 

So several weeks ago I made a list of caches I wanted to do, a run I could do in several hours that was about 35 caches. I auto routed them myself at the time for the most part and just wrote down the GC numbers. So what I just did was go to google maps, click on get directions. Then I went to geocaching.com and typed in the GC numbers, got the coords and then put those into google maps. You can add as many destinations as you'd like and it will route it to the closest point, road wise, to the coordinates. Now I think you may be able to do this much quick in google earth, but I haven't spent much time with that. Here is a link to the route I made with google maps and my first five caches. http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source...178185&z=13

 

I'm gonna mess with a program I have that may auto route as well and see how that does...

 

EDIT: check this link for some advice using google earth: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...p=3446095

Edited by NWCREW
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I have attempted to use Microsoft Streets and Trips for this. It does have the ability, but it is far from perfect. It also doesn't have the ability to let you print off a list of the caches, which I find to be a major pain. But basically, you load in your caches (I use a GSAK export, but its just a CSV file), select them, and select a start and an end. Then you tell it to generate the route, and lastly, to optimize that route.

 

 

Works fairly well when all caches are near streets, but it gets trickier when there are several caches in a park, or when a cache is near a freeway but not accessable from there, and so-on. Many of these are issues that also exist with any sort of auto-routing, though.

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I have attempted to use Microsoft Streets and Trips for this. It does have the ability, but it is far from perfect. It also doesn't have the ability to let you print off a list of the caches, which I find to be a major pain. But basically, you load in your caches (I use a GSAK export, but its just a CSV file), select them, and select a start and an end. Then you tell it to generate the route, and lastly, to optimize that route.

 

 

Works fairly well when all caches are near streets, but it gets trickier when there are several caches in a park, or when a cache is near a freeway but not accessable from there, and so-on. Many of these are issues that also exist with any sort of auto-routing, though.

I do basically the same thing but I use DeLorme Street Atlas. I load all the caches as waypoints and then I have the ability to get an overview of all of them and plan a route from their locations.

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I just wanted to say that if you are a mac user, which I am, route buddy does do this and it does it well. Insert a GPX file from your PQ, which will list them as geocaches, create a route from that and then you can change the place they are in the auto route and add or delete waypoints"caches" as you please. I'm gonna try this out with a cache machine we have coming up in washington state and see how it goes ;)

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I have attempted to use Microsoft Streets and Trips for this. It does have the ability, but it is far from perfect. It also doesn't have the ability to let you print off a list of the caches, which I find to be a major pain. But basically, you load in your caches (I use a GSAK export, but its just a CSV file), select them, and select a start and an end. Then you tell it to generate the route, and lastly, to optimize that route.

 

Works fairly well when all caches are near streets, but it gets trickier when there are several caches in a park, or when a cache is near a freeway but not accessable from there, and so-on. Many of these are issues that also exist with any sort of auto-routing, though.

I do basically the same thing but I use DeLorme Street Atlas. I load all the caches as waypoints and then I have the ability to get an overview of all of them and plan a route from their locations.
It sounds to me, from the way you worded that, that you may be comparing apples to grapes. Does the DeLorme Street Atlas calculate your route for you? Or does it simply let you create the drive from cache to cache?
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I have attempted to use Microsoft Streets and Trips for this. It does have the ability, but it is far from perfect. It also doesn't have the ability to let you print off a list of the caches, which I find to be a major pain. But basically, you load in your caches (I use a GSAK export, but its just a CSV file), select them, and select a start and an end. Then you tell it to generate the route, and lastly, to optimize that route.

 

 

Works fairly well when all caches are near streets, but it gets trickier when there are several caches in a park, or when a cache is near a freeway but not accessable from there, and so-on. Many of these are issues that also exist with any sort of auto-routing, though.

You need to go through the caches one by one and make parking waypoints to route to. Using the caches themselves rarely works. Puts you on the wrong side of train tracks, rivers or other obstacles. But Microsoft Streets and Trips with the right parking spots works great.

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There's a reasonable tutorial for doing this in S&T at http://www.gpsbabel.org/formats/s_and_t/TripPlanning.html

 

When I moved the site to fixed width, it looks like I blew out the images on this page...

 

Ok. That sounds more like what I want to do. So, bear with me. What do you do with the info after that? Do you print out a map, or print out the directions? Or print out the list of waypoints and navigate to them in that order? Or send it to your GPSr and it navigates you from waypoint to waypoint?

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There's a reasonable tutorial for doing this in S&T at http://www.gpsbabel.org/formats/s_and_t/TripPlanning.html

When I moved the site to fixed width, it looks like I blew out the images on this page...

Ok. That sounds more like what I want to do. So, bear with me. What do you do with the info after that? Do you print out a map, or print out the directions? Or print out the list of waypoints and navigate to them in that order? Or send it to your GPSr and it navigates you from waypoint to waypoint?

Unfortunately, printing out the list of waypoints is one of the shortcomings that I have found for S&T. Yes, you can type them manually into something like Notepad, or you can do (possibly multiple) screen captures and print those out (which is what I have done), but it seems obvious to me that you *should* simply be able to print the list out from within the program.
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