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4K views 22 replies 11 participants last post by  Voyager 
#1 ·
Hey All;

does ANYBODY really understand basecamp. wow, Garmin cant come up with any thing better.
I have a short ironbutt ride coming up and every time i plan a route it takes me the slowest way possible.
i need expressways and interstates. Yes i have all the avoidance off, it should route the fastest way. and add to that all the way-points i want to stop at. my god man the most frustrating thing on the planet, and i have ALOT of patience.

Zeke
 
#3 ·
The common problem that I h ave is that after creating a route on the PC, when it's transferred to either my Zumo or Nuvi it is recalculated by the GPS and can look very different than what I laid our on the PC. Seems like the transfer includes only the way points and not the actual route. Of course this can be avoided by including additional intermediate way points in the original route. Seems like this was not necessary with my older Garmin GPS devices. They would accept a route exactly as it was planned on the PC without the additional way points.
 
#6 ·
If you don't want the Zumo or Nuvi or BMW Nav convert your route to a track and then follow the track. Tracks don't get modified by the on-bike unit. You can create your trip using the route routine in Basecamp and then convert to track before you transfer into your on-bike machine.
 
#4 ·
Check to see what activity profile you are using. On the toolbar at the top, are you using the motorcycle icon or the car? If you want the fastest and interstates, use the car.

Ron
 
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#5 ·
I gave up on basecamp simply because I don't ride enough unknown routes to retain the memory of how to quickly use the software.

I use Furkot now but I still have to use plenty of "vias" and even then I have to be real careful about placement of the vias because it makes a difference which side of a 4 lane highway you place the point! Had me going in circles a few times.

I still have not found a simple way to reverse my exact route for the return trip or how save an on-the-fly route.
 
#12 ·
Riders:

If you want to have a static path to follow, I suggest converting your "routes" to "tracks." Tracks won't change if you take a turn off the path, but it will not reroute your trip as well.

I always use tracks because we don't often get too far off the planned path.

Give basecamp some time, that is what it takes. You have to experiment, fail and then do it right.

I'm most used to basecamp generated tracks on a Montana 680 with my KTM690. I've got to come up the learning curve on my NAV VI here soon!

I tried loading my 24K Topo maps on the NAV VI and it was too busy in my opinion - I need more time experimenting!
 
#13 ·
If you want to have a static path to follow, I suggest converting your "routes" to "tracks." Tracks won't change if you take a turn off the path, but it will not reroute your trip as well.
ok I will bite. How do you convert a route to tracks? I did not see any options in BaseCamp. I have many "via points" in a route and make sure to turn off alert for each point. If I create a 100 mile ride on back roads, I can have 20 "via points" in the one route. The "via points" makes sure I stay on the roads I want and not have BaseCamp route me on a different road.
Thanks!!!!
 
#14 ·
I have not tried the TRACK option - Furkot has an option on the export screen to save as a track or a route and they give the following explanation:

"Track is a point-by-point representation of your trip course. Route is a series of points that help your GPS device or navigation app navigate along your trip course."

FWIW, even when I use Furkot, when I load my route into the NAV V the night before my ride it looks perfect but when it actually links up with the satellite the next day, it usually doesn't look the same. I think it must continuously dynamically adjust the route. Perhaps the Track option would get around this? As others have said, if you have enough vias or waypoints, you force it to go a certain way but from my experience this can be a LOT of points to plot.
 
#15 ·
...if you have enough vias or waypoints, you force it to go a certain way but from my experience this can be a LOT of points to plot.
Correct, but you have to load a lot of vias and waypoints to stay on your route. The further they are spaced, the more chance the gps will recalculate your route. I mainly use my routes with many vias when planning a two to three hour local group ride. I have not noticed any deviation from this.
 
#22 ·
Hate to beat a dead horse here. But, it seems to me that converting a TRIP to a TRACK is not a practical solution to the problem of having the GPS (ZUMO) re-calculate a route that is different than what was originally created and downloaded. I under stand that a TRACK is simply a collection of co-ordinates and when viewed it simply overlays those points on a map. I believe there is no connection between the roads on the map and the collection of co-ordinates. Therefore, again my perception, I believe that after converting a ROUTE to a TRACK on the PC, downloading the TRACK to the GPS, then viewing the track on the GPS it will look exactly like what it did on the PC. However, it will not provide voice prompts for turn by turn travel. The GPS does provide on board capability to convert that TRACK back to a ROUTE however, it seem like that function uses only the start and end points and calculates what it determines to be the most efficient route depending on the navigation preferences established by the user, which again may not look anything like the original ROUTE. This brings us full circle back to the original problem. Where-as the older GARMIN devices would exactly duplicate a route as created on a PC when it was downloaded to the GPS without any modification. Wonder why they changed it? Or, perhaps it is my feeble mind that just cannot comprehend all this computer crap and I will just have to continue placing a plethora of redundant via points in my routes.

Sorry for all the verbiage here but I keep hoping that there is actually a light at the end of the tunnel and that someone out there can educate me in the fine art of programming a route on a GARMIN GPS.:confused:
 
#23 ·
I also have a love/hate relationship with Basecamp. I have tried many alternatives: Google maps, Harley Trip planner, Furkot, Mapquest and a few others I can't remember. All have serious deficiencies.

I find Basecamp to be the most capable and to interface best with my Nav V. Most issues with Basecamp are related to ease of use and lousy documentation rather than wholesale missing capability as with most alternatives. Although, I found one ridiculous bug just this week, although Garmin of course denies it is a bug.

I often start planning rides in the prior calendar year. I started planning my September 2018 Ireland ride last October. As in the past, I found very odd things when I loaded the routes into my Nav V. The routes would appear in random order rather than chronologically. And the categorization seemed random with some days showing as upcoming, some as scheduled and some as unscheduled. I think I got this correct from memory, but maybe not the precisely correct category names.

I saw the same behavior three years ago with my Scotland tour, but didn't take time to research it. Now that I am retired, I decided to dig into it. After two days of experimentation and emails to Garmin support, I think I found the problem.

I create my trips using Trip Planner. This organizes trips by calendar day which is logical. The problem is that each waypoint within each day's route also has a separate date. And this date seems to be completely independent of the day in which it is contained. I found that even though my trip dates all occurred in September 2018, the waypoint dates were a mixture of 2017, when I first created the trip, and 2018 for changes I made this year as we finalized hotels and such. It does appear that only the first waypoint each day needs its date to be manually changed to match the date of the Trip Planner day. Once I changed the first waypoint date to the correct 2018 date, the other waypoints in that day's route updated to match. Having done this for each day of my trip, things now seem to load into the GPS in chronological order and all days are now correctly categorized as upcoming.

When I mentioned this bug to Garmin, I got a response that Basecamp was not designed to plan trips a year in advance. What a pile of bovine excrement. This would affect trips planned only a month in advance if planning a January trip in December. I don't know why they simply can't admit they made a mistake and forgot to have waypoints inherit the date of the trip day into which they are inserted.

I am still not completely clear what changes a given day's route from upcoming to unscheduled and then to scheduled. And I have found no Garmin document or video which addresses it.
 
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