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Too many via points?

3K views 18 replies 8 participants last post by  RCinNC 
#1 ·
I tried to download some routes for the upcoming Romney trip. I usually download routes into the Tire to Travel program, and then to my Garmin 660. The routes downloaded o.k. from Tire to Travel onto my GPS. When I tried to import the routes from my 660 to custom routes, an error came up- " too many via points to import". Any suggestions??? Thanks in advance.
 
#2 ·
I use BaseCamp for routing. When a route is too long, it is easy enough to break it into multiple legs so that each leg is its own route. Then when riding and following the route, it is easy to go from on to the next. In BaseCamp cutting a route into sections is done by clicking on the Divide tool icon.
 
#4 ·
When I recreated the MABDR in Tyre to Travel, the total route contained 468 waypoints. When I dragged the route from Tyre over to my Garmin Nuvi 2455, the Trip Planner feature couldn't find it (although I could see the route in the Nuvi's GPX file when I looked at it on my computer). I ended up breaking the MABDR into segments; the largest segment contained 151 waypoints, and the Nuvi had no problem opening it. I didn't do any experiments to see just how many waypoints a Nuvi could read in a single segment, but I do know that 151 works.

Breaking a long ride into segments is easy on Tyre. Create the entire route, then to create the segments, open a new file for the new segment. In the new file, go to the upper left of the screen to the "Waypoints" drop down menu, and select "Add". You'll get two options: "manually" and "from file". Select "from file", and choose the file that contains your complete route. You'll get a menu that contains three choices to import: waypoints, route points or route tracks. I've always used "route points". When you click "Ok", you'll get a list of all the waypoints in the file you selected. Decide which ones you want to copy to create your new segment; you can hold the shift button down, and use your mouse to right click on the first and last point of the new segment, and the computer will highlight the first and last point and all the ones in between. Then click "Ok", and the segment you just copied will appear on the screen of your new file. Then just name the new file, something like "MABDR Segment 1". There may be other ways to do it, but that way has worked for me without fail.
 
#8 ·
I use and love tyre and the magic number I seem to remember was 200 points into my Zumo

What I have found works best for me is choosing a "good town" to break up a ride, by that I mean it is in a good position to use as starting point for many other rides.

I save all my rides so I will build a ride to get me from A to B, then another ride B to C and another from B to D and another from B to E.

That way the A to B will always be useful and relevant.

I hope that dribble makes sense ??
 
#9 ·
Thanks Rolex. The route I want to download onto my Zumo 660 has 1800 waypoints. I tried to break this route into two segments. Apparently, it did not work. When I tried to import these two segments into the Zumo, the GPS froze. I may try as you suggested, and break the 1800 waypoint route into segments of 200. We shall see.
 
#10 ·
I am curious as to the distance involved in your route ? I am assuming it is a very long route over several days ?

Tbh I don't know of any GPS that will take that number of waypoints in a single route. My Zumo 590 has Basecamp on board and it only allows something like 35 or 38 waypoints in a single route. If I put in more then the Unit breaks up the routes for me and that is a nuisance.

Sometimes You will find that removing a waypoint here and there will not affect the direction of your route. When I have finished a route on Mapsource I always look back over it and check where I can remove unnecessary waypoints. If removing a point changes the route then undo the removal action. If the removal doesn't affect the route then it will maintain its direction and that is one less waypoint for the GPS unit to have to deal with.
 
#11 ·
I wish I knew more about GPS and route making, but I do not and have no time at this point to learn. The route I downloaded successfully to Tire to Travel is only a 260 mile day ride in W.V. It downloaded successfully to Tire to Travel, but not to my Garmin Zumo 660. As I stated previously, the 660 cannot utilize Basecamp. This day route, was posted here for the Romney weekend next month. I will spend some time on it in the next few days to see if I can figure this out.
 
#14 ·
I'm a long time Tyre user, and here are the things I've found when trying to work with one of these really large .gpx files.

If you download a .gpx file from an online source, like the MABDR file or the one here that Chirosyd is dealing with, and you try and open it with Tyre, you don't get the option of whether to open it using waypoints, route points, or route tracks; that "import" menu doesn't appear at all, and the route simply opens. Tyre has a maximum waypoint limit of 1000 waypoints, so that's how big these huge files end up being.

If you open the file and re-save it under a new name, and then open the renamed file in Tyre, you do get the import menu that allows you to import the file as either waypoints, route points, or route tracks. However, regardless of whether you open the file in waypoints, route points, or route tracks, the outcome is the same; a file containing 1000 waypoints (the maximum allowed by Tyre). My Garmin Nuvi has a file size limit; I don't know what it is precisely, but it's less that 468 points per route. My Garmin can not read one of these huge unedited .gpx files, and I don't get the option on my particular Garmin to choose if a route opens with waypoints, route points or route tracks.

So at this point I have two choices: I can chop up that thousand waypoint route into five or six smaller segments, or I can edit the route to a manageable size that my Garmin can accept. For me, it seems silly to have to break up a 270 mile ride into five or six segments just so my Garmin can read it, and that gets a lot worse if you're talking about something like the MABDR, or a cross country route; in fact, the MABDR route had so many points that even Tyre wouldn't open it correctly.

My solution for these large .gpx files has been to open the file on Tyre and edit the number of waypoints down to a manageable number. Basically you open the route on Tyre, and then stop the route from calculating as soon as the waypoints load (if you let it keep calculating the route as you edit the waypoints, it makes the computer hang up and sometimes even crashes the program). Then I basically just delete huge chunks of those waypoints, leaving enough to shape the route correctly. I edited the Romney sport touring route this morning, and it now contains 155 waypoints. That will easily load onto my Nuvi as a single route, with no need to break anything into segments. When I edited the MABDR route, it initially contained around 6000 waypoints; my edited version has 468. I still had to break that into segments, because my Nuvi can't read a route with 468 waypoints, but that was acceptable for a route that was over a thousand miles long. It took me about 25 minutes to edit the Romney sport touring ride down to a manageable size. It's boring, to be sure, but it doesn't take much time, and it's been a workable solution for me if I want to use a .gpx file created by someone else.

There may well be other ways of doing it that work better than mine, but this is the way I've figured out that works for me.
 
#16 ·
I'm totally guessing here, but I think it's because the routes are created while actually riding them, and the GPS software creates a waypoint at preset intervals. From looking at the routes, it looks like there's a waypoint every so many feet.
 
#19 ·
Ultimately Blaustrom, that can be the easiest solution. It's what I ended up doing with the MABDR file. Editing out the extraneous waypoints from the Romney file wasn't too bad, but the MABDR was over 6000 points, and that would have taken forever to edit. I just started from scratch on Tyre.
 
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