Emap & Mapsource Trip Planning

[Guest Haps]

Does this suck. I am beginning to fins the mapsource product extremely useless. And I am dissapointed that the software Garmin created doesn't know the limitations of the GPS units. Now maybe there's a way that I'm missing but I haven't been able to find on.

 

I'm going to be taking a trip next month. I decided I would use mapsource to plan the route. I painstakingly planned the route by clicking along the highways I was planning to take(this is an infuriating process because I would like to get it to snap to the highway so that I get an accurate road distance not a "as the crow flies" distance)

 

So I get my route planned out and figure I'll upload it to the gps. Well this doesn't work right because the GPS will hold 50 routes of only 50 waypoints per route. Well my route has 185 waypoints. I would thing that Garmin's software would know the Emap's limitations and break the route up. Or that there would be a method in the software itself.

 

So now it looks like my only method is to coipy the route in mapsource and then edit it down to 5 different routes that have no more then 50 waypoints. This has to be done by selecting and manually counting each wayppoing in the list.

 

Is there an easier way to do any of this?

[Guest bob_renner]

Do you really want to have a route with waypoints at every bend in the road? What you really need is an indication of how far until you have to turn off the current road onto another road. I would suggest that you limit the waypoints to intersections where you have to make a turn. It can be annoying to have the GPSR tell you about every bend in the road and thereby not know if the next turn is 50 miles or 5miles or .5 miles ahead.

 

The final computed distance will be less than what your car's odometer will read but that should not matter. The GPSR will indicate the straight-line distance to the next waypoint. This may be different than the road distance, but this distance will decrease to zero when you get to the turn. It's nice to see all the bends in your route, but since you have a mapping GPSR, the roads will most likely be on there.

 

Bob

[Guest Haps]

Well part of the reason is that I want to determine which is the best route. There are two main ways I could take to Detroit and would like to figure out shortest(although that's not always best) route

[Guest bob_renner]

Have you tried one of the online mapping sites where you input your starting and ending locations and it gives you a route? I think they will calculate the shortest and/or fastest routes. Also, MS Streets and Trips will do this. I got a copy at Costco for $27 - $20 rebate. Couldn't pass it up.

 

Bob

[Guest jeremy]

Mapblast is free and you can do multiple stops along a route. I use it when I do multiple geocaches in one day. It works very, very well.

 

http://www.mapblast.com

 

Click on the directions tab.

 

If you're on any cache detail page, click on the mapblast link. Then click on directions. Then enter in your starting location (street address or lat/lon. You can add multiple stops, etc in both street addresses and lat/long.

 

Jeremy