SatNav/ garmin.

malcopopolo said:

Used a Garmin 395 last week on scottish trip (using wappings routes he created)

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Wapping said:

They were all created in BaseCamp on a Mac.

Were they OK? Any significant glitches in the routes or problems?

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malcopopolo said:

Absolutely perfect apart from one way point which was on the wrong side of the road which took me a minute to work out I am not entirely sure but i seem to remember which one, i think it was day 4 PM.

Fantastic routes - took me past gleneagles golf course, some serious money in the car park!

You are the man!

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Wapping said:

Thank you, good to know.

I guess when creating the 30 something routes, there will be a glitch or two somewhere in them. I did try to check them all by zooming in but churning them out, one after another, means that sometimes a fault or two will always get through. Good to know that the bulk of them worked well. If nothing else, it does put the lie to the theory that BaseCamp is unworkable, rendering route creation impossible.

Here is what I did to create the routes:

1. I use an up to date iMac with a big screen. This makes it easier to view the big picture, though I can do the same on a MacBook Air, with its much smaller screen.

2. I cheated, as the routes’ maps and descriptions were already available in the book, I simply had to look at them and recreate them in BaseCamp as best I could. The hard work had been done by the book’s author.

3. If the route was simply A to B, via various places along the way and not circular (as some of them are) I simply asked BaseCamp to give me A to B. I have all the preferences - other than avoiding U-turns and unmade roads - turned off. The only other criteria I have set by default is ‘fastest time’. BaseCamp then gives me a magenta line, A to B, according to my preferences.

5. I then compared this line with the map drawing in the book. Then I used the route shaping tool to drag and pin the magenta line, so that the magenta line took the roads shown in the map. Exactly how I do this varies. Sometimes (most commonly) I start at a point about halfway between A and B and pin that first. Once pinned, that point will not move, unless I move it. Generally, I will then chose points halfway between A and the centre point I have just pinned and between B and the pinned centre point, pinning those. I now have five pinned points: A, B and the three points dividing them.

6. I then shape the rest of the route to complete it.

7. I then zoom in and out, following the route to see if I can spot any errors, correcting them as I go along. If I am creating the route for myself, I would do this thoroughly. If I am creating the routes as a part of an exercise for UKGSer I may not be quite as thorough, as the post above points out. But, on the whole, a couple of glitches in perhaps thousands of miles is not bad.

8. Now I look at the final route in its entirety. Does it look right, compared with the map in the book? Does the mileage tally? If I differ by a mile or two I don’t worry too much. If the difference creeps (or jumps) to be a long way different, I have obviously made a mistake or, as sometimes happens, the book is wrong! There is a mistake or two I found in the Scottish book.

9. Sometimes the book’s maps take small roads that are not shown in BaseCamp. To use track these down I switched maps to Open Street Map’s routable maps and shaped the magenta line from there.

10. To locate and pin the hotels, cafes and ‘must do’ sites, all mentioned in the book, I used a mixture of BaseCamp, Open Street Map and good old Google.

11. Sometimes the route was circular A to B and back again to A. To create these I sometimes used the method described above but sometimes another way: I created A to B, as above. I then created B to A. I then spliced the two together into one single route. Mindful that sone older devices cannot run totally circular single routes, I generally cut short the return to A route, a bit short of A, missing out say the last 100 or so yards.

12. Sometimes the creation of A to B and dragging and pinning just does not work properly. If this happens, I start again. I start at point A and build the route by simply advancing it along as I go. Think of it like digging a ditch, where you simply advance until the ditch is complete. Sometimes, within this process I using the shaping method as well. The ditch making method works well when you have to force the magenta line along, sometimes in quite small increments.

Once you get the hang of it, it’s not too hard or daunting. If you look at what I did, it was actually very few single actions to create a bespoke multi-mile route. More importantly, once you get the hang of it, you can start to use the other functions that BaseCamp makes available. For example, you can set dates and departure / stop-over times. You can decide if you want to insert via points (points you must go through) or just have shaping points. You can colour routes differently. You can make ‘hybrid’ routes, part on-road, part off-road. The latter is useful if you want to take some really small roads that are not shown on the BaseCamp map. I had to do this in order to force a route to cross a bridge, which BaseCamp and Open Street Map said was unpassable. A quick look on Google Streetview (a wonderful thing) told me that the bridge was certainly there and was definitely rideable, so I forced the magenta line to obey me.

If I (who does not know one end of a computer from another) can do it, anyone can. Trust me.


PS Sometimes I forget how to do things. If I do I simply type my question into Google, in as few words as possible. For example: Garmin BaseCamp join routes together. Five simple words; this explanation took many more. More often than not, a good explanation or video will pop up, telling me how to do it. I then give it a go, knowing that I can’t break it.

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DR268 said:

it seems wapping that you do a bit of mapping for people here.

I live near belfast and we were away at the weekend to Westport in Mayo, 320 miles there and 280 home via very twisty, scenic and simply great roads with no dual carriageways etc. All mapped at home for Garmin and Tomtoms

Its a lot easier if someone else has done the bulk of the work and then they can tweak it to their specific needs, plus they will go places they never considered.

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