Bingo! I have done it! All stand back in slack jawed admiration.
Please note, I am using a Mac and the latest edition of BaseCamp and Garmin maps. The process might be a little different on a PC, someone like Leedude could probably tell you. Here goes...
I imported Berlin’s file into BaseCamp where, as expected it opened up as an off-road route, with loads of flags:
As it is off-road and / or came from a third party piece of software (in this case Viewranger) it is in ‘Direct routing’ mode. I wondered what happened if I just changed it to Motorcycle routing’ mode. I then wished I hadn’t bothered:
Images like the one above often prompt the “BaseCamp is shite” response and bods stomp off in deep dudgeon. Safe in the belief that you can’t break anything, I simply switched it back to ‘Direct routing’ and at least was back to where I started from before I had started to fiddle. I then asked BaseCamp to convert Berlin’s direct mode route into a track, which it did in a flash:
I was though a bit disappointed to see that I still appeared to have lots of flags, which really shouldn’t be there. But then a light came on. I remembered that I had the original route file (with the flags)
and the newly created track file
in the same folder. By default, a Mac will display both at once. So I deleted the route file, leaving just the track file. Hallelujah! The flags, as I expected they should, had vanished:
One step in the right direction, the flags have gone. I then asked BaseCamp to create a route from the track. This it did but it took maybe a minute to do so. That is not surprising as there is a lot of data to process:
After twiddling my thumbs for the sixty or so seconds, BaseCamp delivered me up a ‘Motorcycle mode’ route with no flags. Job done and full marks to Garmin’s BaseCamp software, running on a Mac:
Here it is saved to Dropbox:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kr2aqp0pq7kh1uv/Route for Berin.GPX?dl=0
If nothing else, it does show:
a) The problems of bringing third party routes into BaseCamp. GPX is very good but it’s not perfect. I very often see similar things when I download files from the German magazines. Sharing tracks (as opposed to routes) often helps but even that is not always perfect, as a conversion into a route still has to take place and personal preference settings (the curse of the GPS section and GPS device use in general) can often intervene. There again, tracks are fully useable on most GPS devices, so conversion is not always necessary, especially for off-road use. But if bods want turn by routing instructions, only a route will do.
b) BaseCamp is very powerful software, often more powerful than simpler app’s, like Viewranger. That though can create its own problems, as the mass of flags showed.
c) Operator error can creep in. I had forgotten (that’s operator error) that I had two files in one folder and that BaseCamp on a Mac will display them both if I highlight the folder, or singly if I highlight just one of the files within the folder.
d) Problems and challenges like these are often easiest solved if the file can be shared, as Berin kindly did with me.
e) There was no action that I undertook that could not be undone by using the ‘Undo’ command. If I really buggered anything up, I coujd just delete the file and import Berlin’s file again. A bit of patience, helped by a bit of knowledge as to what I
thought should happen, was a big help.