Basecamp Q&A for those that have figured it out.

Thx Wapping, but my orange flags are alert shaping points, not way points right?

I don’t have my GPS device available but I think the orange flags shown in post #1 are waypoints, not shaping points that - whilst they may have been created by you just to shape a route - the device sees as specific points that:

A. You must go through

B. You can, unlike simple unannounced shaping points, ascribe a quality to. For example give them a specific name, give them an owner created stopover time, give them an owner created symbol other than a flag. In a way, they are just like your start point home, to which you could have ascribed a departure time to. That time, let’s say it was 10 AM, would then have appeared as 10:35 against Birch Bank, the device having already calculated that the journey time between home and Birch Bank as taking 35 minutes

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These waypoints then become intermediate set destinations in their own right, part of (but independent of) your main journey route of A to B. You can see how your Garmin device treats them as specific standalone destinations in their own right in the second picture:

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In short, Birch Bank and 1st Action are specific destinations (waypoints, which Garmin actually calls viapoints) in their own right, set in stone just as solidly as home and your final destination.

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This thread shows how powerful the BaseCamp / Mapsource software, when coupled to the latest Garmin GPS devices, has become. They can do the simplest of things, taking a bod from A to B say and do all sorts of other things as well. Their usage is sometimes not completely intuitive, which I think is what sometimes spoils the experience for some people, who are used to things ‘Just working’. The best way to learn is to keep trying things out and doing so in real life, not just sitting at home. Suddenly, it will all just click into place, though I’ll confess to sometimes forgetting how or why I did something. I can usually guess and learned long ago that I really can’t break it..... and I can always turn it off!

In a separate thread, you can read about how to change announced waypoints (flags) into unannounced shaping points (little blue dots) and back again if needs be, all from within the Garmin device itself. Have fun whilst you muck about.


PS Somewhat confusingly perhaps, Garmin themselves call the flags and blue dots something different, as this cut-and-paste from their manual shows. Leaving aside the name changes, the purpose and role of the little flags and their sisters, the blue dots, is explained quite well:

Trip Planner

A trip can consist of up to 29 via points and one final destination. Up to 125 shaping points can be included between each via point.

About Via Points

Via points are intermediate destinations within a trip. An orange flag indicates a via point on the map. A trip can contain up to 29 via points and one final destination. While navigating a trip, the device announces your arrival at each via point.

About Shaping Points

Shaping points are intermediate points between destinations or via points that can be used to shape the direction of your route. A blue dot indicates a shaping point on the map. You can have up to 125 shaping points between each destination or via point. While navigating, the device does not announce your arrival at each shaping point.
 
oh feckity feck. I thought waypoints were blue flags? Right back to school for me with Garmin youtube. I’ll do some Satnav tests tomorrow too for the sake of my sanity.:D
 
oh feckity feck. I thought waypoints were blue flags? Right back to school for me with Garmin youtube. I’ll do some Satnav tests tomorrow too for the sake of my sanity.:D

IIRC shaping points are greyed out with "do not alert on arrival" rather than time next to them and way points are the orange flags. To change them on the device I think you press and hold for a couple of seconds and an option box pops up. I'll check later when I've got the Nav in front of me.
 
oh feckity feck. I thought waypoints were blue flags? Right back to school for me with Garmin youtube. I’ll do some Satnav tests tomorrow too for the sake of my sanity.:D

That’s great, you’ve learned something already.... and it’s only just teatime!

All joking apart, you’ve made a big jump in understanding what your screen is showing you in pictures one and two of your opening post. Not least, you have also near enough learned why selecting one destination over another - depending on a whole host of other factors - might (but not always) dish up a result you didn’t necessarily want or expect.... and you’ve learned that what you thought was a simple shaping point, isn’t.
 
....... To change them on the device I think you press and hold for a couple of seconds and an option box pops up. I'll check later when I've got the Nav in front of me.


Here’s how to change an orange flag into a blue dot (and visa-versa) from within the device itself:

Home screen

Apps

Trip planner

Tap on route

You should see a screen that shows from the left, three horizontal bars in the top left corner, a list of the points of the route, starting with your start point with a green flag and a series of orange flags. On the right the route’s name, its distance and travel time, map and go buttons.

On this screen, beneath the green flag start point, there’s the series of points with orange flags. These are the announced waypoints

Tap on the three horizontal lines

Tap on Edit Destinations

Tap on all of the orange flags or as many of them as you want to change

The orange flag(s) should change to a blue dot

When prompted / warned that the duration and arrival times will be removed, change to shaping point? Tap yes

Tap Save

You may well see the device recalculate

Tap the back button

You are now back on the screen with the three horizontal bars in the top left

Check total distance, travel time and tap on map. Does the route on the map show a green flag, blue dots for the shaping points and a cheques flag at the end? Does it all look right? Yes....

Tap on back button

Tap on Go!

Job done.

PS You can change all or any of blue dots back to announced point orange flags using the same method
 
Interesting thread.... I've had my Nav V for 4 years now and I'm learning things from this one too.

Thanks Richard :thumb
 
No trouble at all.

I have if you like, grown up with GPS devices. I started with the very early bulky handhelds (HP IPAQ and similar) that you had to slip into a GPS receiver jacket, through the early Quest devices, right up to the latest Garmin devices today. In a sense, they haven’t really changed that much. A latest generation Garmin will, if required to, take you from A to B no more efficiently than one from 20 or even 30 years ago. Indeed, the earlier devices might - as this thread shows - have done it simpler.

But that’s unfair. Of course the latest devices are better. You could not (easily at least) create a custom made intricate route on a very early device that sat in a jacket. Now you can, using either the very powerful BaseCamp / Mapsource software or something equally powerful from one of the third party software suppliers. You can do all sorts of wonderful things besides. Sharing routes, which used to be a real pain, is now so simple thanks to .GPX and cloud based storage facilities of seemingly infinite capacity and 24/7/365 access from anywhere on the globe.

Not least, if you got stuck before, there was no internet to ask for help from or to learn from. Now there is and the answer is always out there, somewhere.

I do though still love a map, not least as one has never let me down.... ever!
 
Thanks Richard, just booted up my Nav VI and exactly as you have listed.:beerjug:

I seem to remember building routes on the device last year whilst we were away with no computer and doing something similar.

You can enter start and finish locations, then use the search facility to add towns, mountain passes, cafe's etc. that you wish to pass through on the way. They can then easily be re-ordered and changed to shaping points if required. We built some fantastic Alpine routes on the fly just using the device!

The Garmin Navs are very sophisticated and powerful devices, you've just got to spend time working them out
 
Ah yes I had an iPAQ in 2002, then moved on to a Garmin GPSIII the following year... the devices and software have certainly come on huge leaps in a relatively short time.
 
Ah yes I had an iPAQ in 2002, then moved on to a Garmin GPSIII the following year... the devices and software have certainly come on huge leaps in a relatively short time.
+1 for the ipaq. I seem to recall having to stop and change the map SD card at the border in Venlo.
 
Some Satnav findings

Whilst it’s all still fresh and with the help of tutorials and prompts from members on here I went back to basics and created a simple route to test out what ‘exactly’ my Satnav wants to do when on route.

1. Home or start point might not be accurate
In this scenario I stood with my Nav V just outside the garage. Set that exact point as a ‘Home New’ Way point and then transferred this to basecamp and created a route in basecamp starting from ‘Home New’.

3125E299-4B69-48F8-8E42-2294242CDAAA.jpg

With my new route I went to the exact point ‘Home New’ outside the garage and selected go and then when prompted by the Satnav selected ‘Home New’ from the list. (Note the device automatically selects the second way or via point on the screen) It is logical to me to select home though as that is where I’m starting from.

E89BD4DA-1639-4B1D-AF4E-884CF18DEB2B.jpg

The interesting point is that the Satnav believed I was 10yds away from My ‘Home New’ start point. Not a problem you would think. Yes it is. Because it is a Way point after driving off the Satnav did not see me as starting off from this first Way point and therefore would divert me back unless I skipped that Way point.

By skipping Way point it ignored all shaping points, i.e. my route until the next via point. The sat Nav is programmed to get you to this point based on your device preference eg, fastest route, shortest route or curvy roads. NOT To follow the route you have created.

Why the inaccuracy of the Way point? Full satellite coverage- checked. Maybe it is because the drive is just off-road and my Satnav has off-road unchecked?

2. Automatic Via points
To my surprise, when you click on a a road intersection ‘Whitchurch Drive’ or little black dot on the map e.g. village ‘Kinnersley’ it will automatically make that a via point, not a shaping point. Easy to change in the points list view.
 
Civilian GPS is not pinpoint (position wise) accurate, delendent on a number of factors. To within 10 meters is sometimes not bad.
 
Reference post 18 when starting a route at home,

Lee, I noted your and others input on this - thanks. Set up a route with just that.

So here’s a thing...say you are on your travels, get to your overnight stop and next day ready to start off again. 2 routes, day 1 and day 2. Chances are Day 2 route start won’t recognise you are there.

Wapping you’ve done this many a time, what’s your trick to answer the above?

Thanks
Glenn
 
If it were me with the above scenario i would bring route 2 up and if not close to the start point or i wished to start between say start and second way point, depending how far this is away, i would just navigate to it using the satnav as a map, or if this is a good distance just add a route by using the function of go here (if it has that function) by tapping the screen at a point where your route 2 goes through and continue on it when you arrive there.
 
So here’s a thing...say you are on your travels, get to your overnight stop and next day ready to start off again. 2 routes, day 1 and day 2. Chances are Day 2 route start won’t recognise you are there.

Wapping you’ve done this many a time, what’s your trick to answer the above?

G&T, exactly as described in post #37.

On older gps devices, there was a voice instruction to: “Please navigate to highlighted route” *. This meant, “Ride your bike to the route, using the screen as a map”. Is it perfect? Well, it’s not bad. You do sometimes get a problem when the place on the second day’s route that you chose to navigate to is not (as you hoped) on a junction but on a bridge, with the road (and route) you want join maybe 20 or so feet above your head, but that’s quite rare.

* There may still be. I run my gps without sound.

You could also touch your screen at a point along your second day’s route that it’s convenient for you to join it at. This point can be saved as a waypoint in the device, so give it a name, something like ‘here’. It will now appear in your favourites. You could then summon up your second day’s route and insert the favourite into it. You could then edit your second day’s route so that you removed the previous start along with any way or shaping points prior to ‘here’. You could then run the route from your new start point to ‘here’ and then continue.

Option one is maybe simpler but experiment with option two. You can’t break it. There are others ways to do it, too. You’ll find one that suits you, I’m sure.

Have a read through this thread. Some of Hatcho’s findings (and his other posts in other threads) might help you, too.

http://www.ukgser.com/forums/showthread.php/475006-More-post-4-90-update-testing
 
I'm just an occasional visitor to UKGSer - mainly 'cos I don't have a GS - but I do like the Zumo and Basecamp discussions which are worth following. - and I've just read through all of the posts in this thread.


A few things of note - when transferring a route from Basecamp to Zumo, the Zumo will always recalculate if the map on the Zumo is not identical to the map in Basecamp. (I always use a copy on the PC - using the copy from the connected Zumo, I find to be slow and cumbersome).

The satnav will always recalculate if you tell it to in Basecamp (which you do by default). Go to Edit / Options / Device transfer. I untick ALL of the boxes on that screen.


There are some confusions arising in these posts due to incorrect terminology. Hardly surprising, as Garmin seem to have changed their own definitions over the years.


A Waypoint is a point that is stored in a database of points and which may be included in a route. (eg the name of a town). A route does not contain any waypoints at all. You can add a waypoint to a route - but it then becomes one of 4 other things. A Start, A Finish, A Via Point or a Shaping Point.


On the Zumo, Via points show up on the map as flags. Also in the route list. Via points will alert.
Shaping points show up on the map and on the route list as blue coloured circles. They do not alert.

So there is no such thing as an alerting shaping point ! (Though I understand what is meant when I see the phrase).

When you start a route on the Zumo, only Via points will show up as possible options for 'Where to Next '

When you select a Via point to go to next, any shaping points between where you are now and the chosen Via point, will be ignored. It is always better to put your start and via points a little way along the route so that if you wander off route (eg road works in a town) it will still navigate you to the route out of town.

You can change Via Points to Shaping (and vice versa) points easily in Basecamp, and also in the Zumo route editing screens.

Ages back I put a load of info on this in a post started by Jersey (search 'aaargh'). Since then I have documented it more formally and have a large pdf on many of the complexities and gotchas associated with the Zumo 590 and similar devices. Its a 3Mb pdf file of about 35 illustrated pages and explanations, which I don't think I am allowed to post on here. I thought I had it available somewhere else, but can't remember where !


It also covers the issues that can catch you out of you are switching your Zumo between car cradle and bike cradle, and how the Basecamp routing profiles and vehicle preferences are treated by the Zumo. I've also eliminated the issue with it creating different routes apparently on a whim.


If you want it, you might have to PM me with an email address - in the meantime I'll see if I can find where else I posted it. Its quite involved - but easy to dip into if you have a niggling 'why the hell is it doing that' problem. I've probably been there, been frustrated by it and sorted out the answer.
 


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