Combining road and off-road sections

I discovered a neat feature in Mapsource by accident, probably not new for the GPS gurus out there, but I think it is useful.

I often want to combine road and off-road sections on the same route.



If you have the Route style set to "Auto-Routing", then when you get to the off-road section Mapsource calculates a "detour".



Well, I found you can change preferences mid-route, switch to Use Direct Routes for the off-road section, then switch back to Auto-Routing when you get back to the road.



The 'combination' route downloads and displays on my Quest, but I have not tried following the route yet - maybe the GPS unit itself will object.

Exactly what I do when planning my trail riding Nice clear explanation too Also remember you can get the preferences window by pressing CTRL-SHIFT-P.

The GPS (mine's a 2610) very occasionally objects to a route, and mangles it. But 99% of the time it's fine. So I just check by activating each route in turn on the GPS after uploading from MapSource. If a route has a problem I tweak it in MapSource and try again. But this happens very rarely.

One thing to note is that if you recalculate the entire route (eg by right clikcing on the route in the list and selecting "recalculate") then you'll lose the off road sections, as it'll recalc the entire route using your current setting in the preferences window. So don't do that

Another tip is if you're planning a trip in this way, divide it into sections, that way if it does get recalculated you don't have to redo it all. And remember that if the GPS suddenly decides to recalc a route while you are riding it (they sometimes do even if auto-recalc is turned off!) you can always go to the route menu and reload the route - only the "current" route is recalculated, not the saved copy of it.

Mouse said:

And remember that if the GPS suddenly decides to recalc a route while you are riding it (they sometimes do even if auto-recalc is turned off!) you can always go to the route menu and reload the route - only the "current" route is recalculated, not the saved copy of it.

Click to expand...

If I make a turn not recognised in the route, will my Quest recalculate the route via my original Mapsource via-points?

Yes, the route will be recalculated to visit all the remaining via points in the correct order, I think.

But you have to be careful, because sometimes if you recalculate a route on the GPS, it routes you from your current location through all of the via points - including those you have already visited. I'm not sure exactly what causes this, it's only happened to me a couple of times, and that was when I had built a route from scratch on the GPS itself, not from MapSource.

nick said:

I discovered a neat feature in Mapsource by accident, probably not new for the GPS gurus out there, but I think it is useful.

I often want to combine road and off-road sections on the same route.


If you have the Route style set to "Auto-Routing", then when you get to the off-road section Mapsource calculates a "detour".



Well, I found you can change preferences mid-route, switch to Use Direct Routes for the off-road section, then switch back to Auto-Routing when you get back to the road.


The 'combination' route downloads and displays on my Quest, but I have not tried following the route yet - maybe the GPS unit itself will object.

Click to expand...

I did the same thing when planning a routes in the Alps which had a small section which was not marked on CN8 but was clearly on the Michellin map. However, in my case atleast, I found that if the route is recalculated the new route will not take note of your 'direct' route and will instead find roads on which it can autoroute thereby taking you on a diffrent route to which you originally planned. Sort of makes sense when you think about it as a recalculation can only take account of the roads that the loaded maps know about. Any way you can always try this in Mapsource before committing to the road...

What I did to get round this was create a route to the point of the 'off road section', another route for the 'off road bit' and then another from where the route restarts to complete the final leg. Means creating 3 shorter routes to make up 1 big one but solved the problem for me.

Peter

I have done this a few times and my quest has handled it quite well. On one occasion it did re-calculate even though it was turned off but all I did was stop and restart the 'saved' route from the current position.

The idea of breaking it down into smaller routes is a good one and I will consider this in future.

One downside to this is that once you have created your route and saved it you really cant do anything with it. I tried to modify the start point and add another road in and it recalcultaes the entire route. I also tried to reverse the route and it does the same.

Its a shame that garmin cannot build a bit more flexibility into Mapsource with regard to this.

Nick
You will find that you gps will follow the route okay and will direct you to 'via points' where you start a lane. It doesn't tell you to turn left/right for example even if you have put a via point 'on' the lane itself.

Ralph

nick said:

I discovered a neat feature in Mapsource by accident, probably not new for the GPS gurus out there...

Click to expand...

It's new information to me! Thanks for sharing such an excellent find. I'll use your trick next time I come across one of those little glitches in the cartography data that refuses to route me along a path that I want to take.

Thanks again, Nick. Great post, nicely illustrated.

Michael

I know this an older post, but you've just addressed my big drawback with the SPIII. I'd tried the swapping requirements on the hoof, but not the machine. And the tip of splitting the route into sections is spot on too - simple is good

nick said:

I discovered a neat feature in Mapsource by accident, probably not new for the GPS gurus out there, but I think it is useful.

I often want to combine road and off-road sections on the same route.

Click to expand...

No, it's not new. I - and many other off-roaders - have been using this method for several years. The negative side is that a route created this way is not easy to share with other GPS-owners. The route will not survive a "recalculate" required due to different map versions.

Alternative techniques that works i most situations are:
- Chop up the route in several pieces.
- Make the whole route as a "direct route". (max 50 waypoints)
- Use the track editor and create a track.

The last one, track, is my favourite. But then again the problem that it's only the more flexible Garmin models (276C, 60CX) that can efficiently navigate after tracks.