I am new to MyRoute but not to BaseCamp. The truth is I like MyRoute but don’t as yet quite trust it to run perfectly on a Garmin GPS device. This concern is maybe irrational and, as we’ll see in this thread, might well be something I can forget about.
There is a parallel thread where a fellow had a problem with a very long (a thousand plus miles) MyRoute route that behaved very oddly in BaseCamp on his Mac and mine but, seemingly not in BaseCamp running on PC’s. I have never been a big fan of mixing software products but I thought I’d have a go using a 140 mile route of my own, created in MyRoute and then transferred in to BaseCamp on my Mac for a trip I am making in April to the Ardennes.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wuga5iudnxdq1ga/Day out - Wanne - CORRECTED.gpx?dl=0
I then exported the route (Save as, to use MyRoute’s terminology) as a Garmin friendly 1.2 version. I also exported it in version 1.1 just to be sure. It was then easy to import the route into BaseCamp on my Mac. This was what I found. The track, I have coloured green, is perfect. The magenta route is straight lines.
A. The track of the route exported perfectly.
B. The track converted into a route, perfectly but was then very difficult to amend. Amending a route should be easy and straightforward in BaseCamp.
C. The route, along with its four viapoints (points I must go through) being the start, finish and two points in between, did not display at all well in BaseCamp. It was two straight lines, with the two via point flags. In a word, useless.
I think there are two things happening.
1. BaseCamp on a Mac is becoming increasingly flakey.
2. MyRoute is now built around transfer directly into a GPS device or a phone and / or into assorted app’s, like Garmin Drive or BMW’s Connect. It does not need to be bounced through BaseCamp on a Mac.
To see if hypothesis two is correct, I exported the 1.2 version route to:
A. Garmin Drive, from where it went through into my XT without a hitch. In a word or two, it was perfect. Everything matched. The route was the right shape, the right distance, all the for via points were there and the total estimated time was correct. I am confident it would run perfectly.
B. BMW Connect. Again it was perfect, with one exception. The two intermediate viapoints are missing. Had I planned to meet someone there, I would have sailed straight past. Other than that, I am confident it would run perfectly.
The only real difference between it and a bespoke route that I would normally have created in BaseCamp is that there are no little blue dots of the shaping points. This is a bit of a pity as I quite like them, if only as a guide that the route was near enough right. Other than that, all the checks I’d normally run for any route looked all OK.
MyRoute recommends inserting several viapoints into routes. I think this is in case the rider goes off route. I have my XT and other devices set not to recalculate or set to prompted only ie. I navigate myself back onto the route, so the additional via points are not needed. I might though experiment by throwing more in (basically you’d only need to ask MyRoute to change the shaping points to via points, prior to export) and then let autorecalculate do its stuff or use the skip function.
What does this mean?
I guess I can stop using BaseCamp and just export routes straight to my device and phone. Then just check them, as normal.
PS I have though learned something else rather important about MyRoute routes in an XT but that will have to wait for another post. That being said, I am very glad I have learned it now, not when I am up a mountain in the pouring rain.
There is a parallel thread where a fellow had a problem with a very long (a thousand plus miles) MyRoute route that behaved very oddly in BaseCamp on his Mac and mine but, seemingly not in BaseCamp running on PC’s. I have never been a big fan of mixing software products but I thought I’d have a go using a 140 mile route of my own, created in MyRoute and then transferred in to BaseCamp on my Mac for a trip I am making in April to the Ardennes.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wuga5iudnxdq1ga/Day out - Wanne - CORRECTED.gpx?dl=0
I then exported the route (Save as, to use MyRoute’s terminology) as a Garmin friendly 1.2 version. I also exported it in version 1.1 just to be sure. It was then easy to import the route into BaseCamp on my Mac. This was what I found. The track, I have coloured green, is perfect. The magenta route is straight lines.
A. The track of the route exported perfectly.
B. The track converted into a route, perfectly but was then very difficult to amend. Amending a route should be easy and straightforward in BaseCamp.
C. The route, along with its four viapoints (points I must go through) being the start, finish and two points in between, did not display at all well in BaseCamp. It was two straight lines, with the two via point flags. In a word, useless.
I think there are two things happening.
1. BaseCamp on a Mac is becoming increasingly flakey.
2. MyRoute is now built around transfer directly into a GPS device or a phone and / or into assorted app’s, like Garmin Drive or BMW’s Connect. It does not need to be bounced through BaseCamp on a Mac.
To see if hypothesis two is correct, I exported the 1.2 version route to:
A. Garmin Drive, from where it went through into my XT without a hitch. In a word or two, it was perfect. Everything matched. The route was the right shape, the right distance, all the for via points were there and the total estimated time was correct. I am confident it would run perfectly.
B. BMW Connect. Again it was perfect, with one exception. The two intermediate viapoints are missing. Had I planned to meet someone there, I would have sailed straight past. Other than that, I am confident it would run perfectly.
The only real difference between it and a bespoke route that I would normally have created in BaseCamp is that there are no little blue dots of the shaping points. This is a bit of a pity as I quite like them, if only as a guide that the route was near enough right. Other than that, all the checks I’d normally run for any route looked all OK.
MyRoute recommends inserting several viapoints into routes. I think this is in case the rider goes off route. I have my XT and other devices set not to recalculate or set to prompted only ie. I navigate myself back onto the route, so the additional via points are not needed. I might though experiment by throwing more in (basically you’d only need to ask MyRoute to change the shaping points to via points, prior to export) and then let autorecalculate do its stuff or use the skip function.
What does this mean?
I guess I can stop using BaseCamp and just export routes straight to my device and phone. Then just check them, as normal.
PS I have though learned something else rather important about MyRoute routes in an XT but that will have to wait for another post. That being said, I am very glad I have learned it now, not when I am up a mountain in the pouring rain.