Why is Basecamp such an utter pile of shite ???

Sorry, but I totally disagree with most of the above "Basecamp/Garmin is shite" comments above.

You do NOT need to have your GPS device attached to your computer whilst constructing a route on Basecamp. So why have the hassle of attaching it...

And, if you look at the GPS section you will find endless posts giving advice on plotting routes, including lots of do's and don'ts. There are even some Youtube videos on it. We have a big resource of Nav V/Garmin/Basecamp/Mapsource users on UKGSERS and they have spent hours over the years offering advice etc etc. But, unfortunately, launching into a rant is not the way to encourage peeps to spend their time giving advice. Why not simply say that "I am trying to do this, this is what I did, but it seems to do this. What am I doing wrong?" That may have had a better., more positive response.

And why not go in search of previous posts on the subject. Wapping came in for some stick from some quarters, but you will find that he actually offered a hell of a lot of advice, based on his hard-earned experience when first starting off with the Nav V and Basecamp.

+1 well said there !
There's shed loads of highly detailed excellent stuff on here (much very well done by Wapping/Bumpkin) and it it pointless complicating matters by trying to improve what has already been said.
Basecamp is too complicated for some, but that's my only criticism. It is a fabulous planning tool with which you can pin your route in great detail; Spend some time reading/watching tutorials before having an uneducated stab at it (that's not a personal criticism, its just a fact for all of those and there are many, that struggle with it). It is NOT as easy as its predecessor, Mapsource, but it is a better tool.
 
+1 well said there !

Basecamp is too complicated for some, but that's my only criticism. It is a fabulous planning tool with which you can pin your route in great detail; Spend some time reading/watching tutorials before having an uneducated stab at it (that's not a personal criticism, its just a fact for all of those and there are many, that struggle with it). It is NOT as easy as its predecessor, Mapsource, but it is a better tool.


Plus you can't share routes with mates who are coming on same trip unless they have a garmin gps to get more than just base maps on Basecamp.

I've just planned a route on motogoloco and it took minutes.
 
Sorry, but I totally disagree with most of the above "Basecamp/Garmin is shite" comments above.

You do NOT need to have your GPS device attached to your computer whilst constructing a route on Basecamp. So why have the hassle of attaching it...

And, if you look at the GPS section you will find endless posts giving advice on plotting routes, including lots of do's and don'ts. There are even some Youtube videos on it. We have a big resource of Nav V/Garmin/Basecamp/Mapsource users on UKGSERS and they have spent hours over the years offering advice etc etc. But, unfortunately, launching into a rant is not the way to encourage peeps to spend their time giving advice. Why not simply say that "I am trying to do this, this is what I did, but it seems to do this. What am I doing wrong?" That may have had a better., more positive response.

And why not go in search of previous posts on the subject. Wapping came in for some stick from some quarters, but you will find that he actually offered a hell of a lot of advice, based on his hard-earned experience when first starting off with the Nav V and Basecamp.



I have to agree. Both the wife and I use Basecamp extensively for planning trips, both in the UK and abroad. We both find it really easy to use and as it uses the same maps and routing logic as our Zumos we know that the Zumo will follow the intended route. In over 50,000 miles between us involving both individual rides and those in groups of up to 20 people crossing many countries we've rarely had problems other than the usual where roads have been built or closed since the last map update.

We've tried tyre but both agree that it's clunky and since it uses Google's routing logic there's no guarantee that when the routes are sent to the Zumo it will result in the desired route being calculated. It also crashes far too easily. we do have to use it often though when people send us routes in Google maps. We use tyre to load the route and export to GPX, import into BC and then usually have to spend ages tweaking it so it follows the original Google route. Sometimes its so far off we just start from scratch and build the route manually in BC.

We have both found that the best results come from using Basecamp and the Zumo set to shortest distance with avoidances turned off. This gives the Zumo and BC the least opportunity to deviate from your intentions.

Whilst it won't apply to everyone I've found that most people criticise BC far too quickly and don't spend enough time or attention to work out to get the best from it. It's amazing how often the simple things like avoidances and routing preferences get overlooked and then people think it's BC or the Zumo at fault when the two don't agree on the route to take.
 
For me the issue is that I expect software to mirror the way I think.
When I am planning a journey from A to B I like to find those points and create a route, because thats the way I travel. The next steps might be to apply filters to do with the sorts of roads I prefer and any intermediate points.
So I find myself totally frustrated by being forced down a thought process that isn't intuitive. And I find myself wondering what the programmers are trying to achieve that is so much better than the obvious, natural way of thinking about a route.
So I stick with Mapsource.
 
That's how we do it with Basecamp. Create a route with the start and end points then drag it around onto the roads we prefer.
 
Plus you can't share routes with mates who are coming on same trip unless they have a garmin gps to get more than just base maps on Basecamp.

I've just planned a route on motogoloco and it took minutes.

Looks impressive and I AM willing to have a play with it and learn(open mind). Did that route last June and doing half of it very shortly,I know that you'll check that Col D'Iseran and Galibier are open, which means mid June onwards to be sure.
 
Shame it won't work on a Mac!:blast

http://www.routeconverter.com/home/en

Sorry, but I totally disagree with most of the above "Basecamp/Garmin is shite" comments above.

It is shite.
Interface, learning curve, general non logic software design. Utter shite.
You cannot bloody release a map installer that tells you there is no space on the SD card to install the maps and doesn't tell how much fucking space you need... so you have to figure it out by incremental tests with different SD cards... only to figure out the problem is something else :D

Also, yes, you can learn how to make it work almost properly (and many thanks to Wapping and other people over other forums that helped over time) but the software provided is far from ideal.
 
............

We have both found that the best results come from using Basecamp and the Zumo set to shortest distance with avoidances turned off. This gives the Zumo and BC the least opportunity to deviate from your intentions.

.

Setting your Zumo to shortest distance without any avoidances might cause big problems in areas like ours. Here in the Alps such settings will have you riding down farm tracks, going through every town and village and following goat tracks up mountains. Now this may be what you want but most people would prefer the better roads and getting somewhere.

A good example would be staying with us in Maltatal and going to ride the Grossglockner. From our door to the southern toll both takes most people around 90 mins. That's 90 mins of fabulous riding, down the valley to Gmünd, B99 south, local roads to avoid the town of Spittal then pick up the B106 before turning onto the B107 that leads directly onto the 'Glockner itself. Set your Zumo to shortest distance and you will have a very different experience. It will take about 3 hours because the "shortest" route involves narrow roads that pass through every village you can imagine and will end up on very rough tracks joining the B107 just before the toll booth. If you intend to ride the Grossglockner and then continue in a loop back here the shortest route/no avoidances settings will have you putting your bike in the train to get through the mountains to Mallnitz.

I find what works here, and I know it might not work elsewhere, is to set the device to fastest time then set avoidances to avoid motorways but not toll roads, avoid ferries (the train is seen as a ferry) and to avoid unmade roads. That way you will ride the best roads and actually get somewhere.

John
 
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Setting your Zumo to shortest distance without any avoidances might cause big problems in areas like ours. Here in the Alps such settings will have you riding down farm tracks, going through every town and village and following goat tracks up mountains. Now this may be what you want but most people would prefer the better roads and getting somewhere.

Read post #13 above; the preferences tab will let you select exactly that.

Most of the problems I read here are down to those preference choices, but coupled with another set of different "preferences" they have on their device. If you are transferring a route created in BC - why have the device set to follow another, alternative set of preferences?
 
Sticking the Motogoloco fanboy head above the parapet again, sharing routes as Arsey has done is another nail in basecamps coffin for me, because the route can then be imported directly into a TomTom or Garmin / BMW Nav. I plotted this years route down to Austria on Motogoloco, but one of the guys coming down part way with us has a TomTom not a Garmin, but he can still use the route. There is virtually no learning curve, and it's just drag and drop with no software other than the Garmin plugin needed on the laptop. Yes you can only plot routes with an internet connection, but that's a lot easier to find in most parts these days as well (the more hardcore boys will disagree as they float off into the wilderness)
 
Read post #13 above; the preferences tab will let you select exactly that.

Most of the problems I read here are down to those preference choices, but coupled with another set of different "preferences" they have on their device. If you are transferring a route created in BC - why have the device set to follow another, alternative set of preferences?

And if you read my post you would find I know that!

I spend time every day in the summer season loading routes onto all sorts of devices, both Garmin and Tomtom. First I make sure their preferences are set to match those used in creating the route. What is surprising is the number of people who say they either didn't know they had preferences to set or didn't know what effect the preferences had.

John
 
Setting your Zumo to shortest distance without any avoidances might cause big problems in areas like ours. Here in the Alps such settings will have you riding down farm tracks, going through every town and village and following goat tracks up mountains. Now this may be what you want but most people would prefer the better roads and getting somewhere.

A good example would be staying with us in Maltatal and going to ride the Grossglockner. From our door to the southern toll both takes most people around 90 mins. That's 90 mins of fabulous riding, down the valley to Gmünd, B99 south, local roads to avoid the town of Spittal then pick up the B106 before turning onto the B107 that leads directly onto the 'Glockner itself. Set your Zumo to shortest distance and you will have a very different experience. It will take about 3 hours because the "shortest" route involves narrow roads that pass through every village you can imagine and will end up on very rough tracks joining the B107 just before the toll booth. If you intend to ride the Grossglockner and then continue in a loop back here the shortest route/no avoidances settings will have you putting your bike in the train to get through the mountains to Mallnitz.

I find what works here, and I know it might not work elsewhere, is to set the device to fastest time then set avoidances to avoid motorways but not toll roads, avoid ferries (the train is seen as a ferry) and to avoid unmade roads. That way you will ride the best roads and actually get somewhere.

John



Never had a problem in the alps. Setting to shortest distance means that it has least options between points. If the roads are not the ones we want we add shaping points to drag the route onto the bigger roads. This seems to limit the choices the Zumo can take & means the roads that I chose in Basecamp are the ones it follows, with enough shaping points to keep it from selecting farm tracks etc. It's when you start just putting in a destination and using as an "A to B" device that problems seem to crop up.
 
Never had a problem in the alps. Setting to shortest distance means that it has least options between points. If the roads are not the ones we want we add shaping points to drag the route onto the bigger roads. This seems to limit the choices the Zumo can take & means the roads that I chose in Basecamp are the ones it follows, with enough shaping points to keep it from selecting farm tracks etc. It's when you start just putting in a destination and using as an "A to B" device that problems seem to crop up.

Not exactly. I do have a lot of experience here. On average I download at least one route (often several) to half a dozen devices every single day from May to the end of September. Setting to shortest distance means it will do just that, if the main road avoids a busy town centre but the old road still runs straight through that's were it will route you. My route to the Grossglockner will work fine if the settings are as I specified.

A Zumo will re calculate my route according to it's own preferences so unless I put a huge number of via points along the route it will, if set to shortest distance, deviate from the intended route. By setting to fastest time etc it will avoid such poor choices and you don't have to go putting lots of shaping points to keep it off of farm tracks. Here, as a general rule, there is only one good road in each valley plus the numerous passes Often there are other roads but they tend to be very slow-the sort of thing that might be just right on a push bike but can be frustrating otherwise.

My use here is, of course, not quite the same as a person doing routes for themselves. I research the routes(it's a hard life!) and refine them so that whatever device I load them on they work as intended. This does sometimes require extra waypoints or via points- Garmin still shows part of the glorious Nockalmstrasse as an unmade track for instance. Without the extra points the device would route you around it.

I used the Grossglockner route example because several guests have reset to shortest time and then taken anything up to 3.5 hours to get to the first tollbooth. Most would rather enjoy the B99, B106 &B107 and still have plenty of time for the 'Glockner itself.

John
 
Never had a problem in the alps. Setting to shortest distance means that it has least options between points. If the roads are not the ones we want we add shaping points to drag the route onto the bigger roads. This seems to limit the choices the Zumo can take & means the roads that I chose in Basecamp are the ones it follows, with enough shaping points to keep it from selecting farm tracks etc. It's when you start just putting in a destination and using as an "A to B" device that problems seem to crop up.

I have, on two different Garmins, although one is better than the other.

My older unit will even try and route you through a lay-by if it is on the inside of a corner and may knock a few feet off your journey. It also has a terrible habit of taking the most direct route - although this may be as you instructed what it often does is try to route you through a narrow back street or residential road to cut out a few metres if you stay on the main road you were following.

I find using "fastest" route and having enough waypoints is better, and I tend to put mine just after a turning and label them so I know I need to continue for a while after each waypoint even if the sat nav moans, you can even add comment like "stay on D123 for next 5 miles) to the waypoint name.

And regardless of how many pages of writing have been kindly donated to explain how to get Basecamp to create a simple route with a few waypoints, the fact I figured this out with Tyre in a few seconds and mapsource in a few minutes means Basecamp is utter rubbish, the basics should be fairly easy to do without having to take a week of work to figure it out.
 
SNIP .........
And regardless of how many pages of writing have been kindly donated to explain how to get Basecamp to create a simple route with a few waypoints, the fact I figured this out with Tyre in a few seconds and mapsource in a few minutes means Basecamp is utter rubbish, the basics should be fairly easy to do without having to take a week of work to figure it out.

Exactly. Its as though the programmers had not a clue about the basic things that people want to do simply.
 
.........

And regardless of how many pages of writing have been kindly donated to explain how to get Basecamp to create a simple route with a few waypoints, the fact I figured this out with Tyre in a few seconds and mapsource in a few minutes means Basecamp is utter rubbish, the basics should be fairly easy to do without having to take a week of work to figure it out.

Totally agree, Basecamp is about as user friendly as a crocodile in the shower. Basecamp may have more bells and whistles-none of which I need- but it demands that the user spend far too much time to learn how to do things it's way. Unless there is a significant benefit I can't see the point. Mapsource and itn converter for Tomtom do all I need. I have Basecamp but only use it to transfer routes to devices not set up for Mapsource. I find most people are delighted when they find they can set their 390/590 or Nav V to work with Mapsource. Some do prefer to stay with Basecamp having invested time in mastering it. So good on you those who use Basecamp, I doff my hat to your perseverance and the free time you have spent. Until I have time I want to waste I will stick with Mapsource at least until Garmin finally develop Basecamp into modern software. I don't think I will hang by the thumbs waiting!

John
 
I planned the whole 8 day trip on Motogoloco in about 2 hours this pm.

Great website and easy to share/download files etc.

Sorry BaseCamp,you lose !
 
I'd wager that if Garmin made a straightforward "Basecamp lite" option to install that could plan simple routes and upload to GPS with minimum fuss, we'd all be a lot happier than the awkward over complicated software currently on offer.
 


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