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Getting A 60cs - Question About Garmin Software


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I am getting the 60cs and this will be my first GPS that lets me actually download maps. My current gps is an Etrex Summit. I am looking at the City Select and the US TOPO. My question is, for plain auto routing on streets can the TOPO do that? I see it has pretty much the same streets and the City Select. I really plan on hiking and geocaching with this unit most of the time. So would the TOPO just be enough to cover that or do I need to get the city select to have auto routing also? Thanks in advance for any help.

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I don't believe Topo supports auto routing. I do find it much more useful for hiking and geocaching than the other Mapsource software though. It shows more streams, ponds and swamps than City Select and I find knowing what is between me and my destination - ravines, rivers, mountains, etc... to be very important to me. It can also help you narrow down which side of a river to start out on when looking for a cache and help you figure out if a cache is at the top, or bottom of a cliff. THe Topo has saved me a lot of unecessary walking since I've owned it.

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The 60CS does support auto-routing without mapping software. The only advantage you would have with City Select is you will get more detailed streets. Example, our street is not on the CS but since I uploaded the City Select our street is now on the CS. Our street is only a three year old street. If the Topo's are important that is the way I would go as the CS will give you the majority of the streets.

 

murph

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I have just the topo maps and it auto routes. Just not very well. At least the few times I've used it, it generated directions that would get you there, just not in the most efficient way. I'll test it some more and try to give you a better answer. One thing you cannot do with out the city maps is lookup/goto by addresses......and I may by it for this reason.

Edited by RSorak
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I have just the topo maps and it auto routes. Just not very well. At least the few times I've used it, it generated directions that would get you there, just not in the most efficient way. I'll test it some more and try to give you a better answer. One thing you cannot do with out the city maps is lookup/goto by addresses......and I may by it for this reason.

Your 60C seems to be autorouting with Topo because the basemap supports autorouting. Topo is not doing the routing - it's the basemap. Your basemap does not have much street detail, and therefor does a generally poor job. If you loaded City Select, it'd do a much better job (while using City Select - not Topo). If you load Topo with City Select, and use the Topo maps, you will still get poor autorouting.

Edited by Neo_Geo
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My brother-in-law (Renegade Knight) has both pieces of software loaded on his Garmin V. He used the one to auto route to the end of the road and then switches to the Topo for hiking. You would be surprised how much time it saves if you don't have to figure out how to get to the jump off point. This is a great advantage his Garmin has over my SporTrak Pro. Even if I upgrade my GPS to use the auto routing I am unable to load both the auto routing maps and my Topo maps at the same time so I have to choose one or the other. That is why I am currently leaning towards upgrading to the new Garmin 60CS.

:)

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