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Grouping tracks into sets on Garmin GPSMap 64s


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For my research I upload several hundred short tracks (sampling locations) to my Garmin GPSMap 64s, which makes it very time consuming and frustrating to manage all of them (example- turning 50 tracks to be visible and the same color after uploading them to the GPS). Occasionally I do the same thing with waypoints, but they're just as frustrating to manage on the GPS. Is there any way to manage sets of tracks or waypoints simultaneously to make this easier?

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Well, most GPS models only allow you to set 20 tracks as viewable at a time, so maybe you really want to mark each sampling location as a waypoint rather than a track. In Basecamp, it's much easier to rename your waypoints and change their symbol, which is one way to organize and "categorize" them. But a waypoint is still a waypoint, and if you need to sort them on the GPS in ways other than by name or nearest location, you can use Garmin's Custom POI tool to convert them to Points of Interest, which do have categories, including nested sub categories. You can also use Basecamp to change the color of tracks.

 

The short answer, though, is to manage as much of your GPS data on the computer before sending it to the device itself.

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Well, most GPS models only allow you to set 20 tracks as viewable at a time, so maybe you really want to mark each sampling location as a waypoint rather than a track.

 

A 64 allows for 200 saved tracks that can be viewed, up to 10000 points each. It has been this way since the Colorado, many years ago.

 

No way to make this easy that I know of. I'm pretty sure the color follows from the GPX file though.

Edited by Red90
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I download tracks to my 64s frequently, too. You can manage them nicely in Basecamp and even multi-select them to change colors of multiple tracks at once. They will show that selected color after downloading to the handheld. If there is a way to get them to display on the device other than selecting them one at a time on the device, I do not know of it. Yes, it's quite tedious. At least you can mass-change the colors ahead of time.

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If you know ahead of time which tracks you will want to show together, then combine them into one track before you upload it to the GPS. In MapSource, you can select multiple tracks (within the same file) and right-click to "join the selected tracks." I don't have BaseCamp installed, but I would think it has similar capability.

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The reality is that sampling locations are probably better represented as waypoints rather than tracks, even if they are along a transect. These are specific points where data are collected, and the only time a track might be useful as a sampling location is if sampling is occurring during the act of moving (i.e. a net drag.) .

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