Zumo User Forums

A Trip contains a Start Point, and an End Point. Via Points are like 'staging posts' - places that you intend to visit and probably stop, and Shaping Points are added to ensure that the calculated route follows particular roads. You probably have no intention at stopping at these places.

The Trip in Pic 1 shows just 2 Via Points and 9 Shaping Points. The Trip as shown is stitched together from 5 screen shots from the Zumo XT.

These are shown in the Trip as orange flags. These are the route points which mark the end of one stage of the Trip and the beginning of the next stage. On the Trip display (Pic 1), they show the lat/long coordinates and the calculated distance and time taken for this stage of the Trip.

The XT also refers to these points as 'Destinations' and regards them as the key points that define your route. They are often used for stopping places - planned coffee breaks for example..

For Via Points the XT will alert you on approach and on arrival with an audible and visual message. Via Points are sometimes referred to as Alerting Points.

The Zumo will insist that you 'visit' a Via Point. If you miss a Via Point, the satnav will navigate you back to it, even if you join the plotted magenta route after the Via Point. It is therefore essential that Via Points are positioned accurately and not up a side road or on the wrong carriageway.

Shaping Points are shown in the Trip display as blue discs (Pic 1). Just like Via Points, the satnav will navigate you back to a Shaping Point if you go past without visiting. However, unlike Via Points, if you continue to ignore instructions and then pick up the magenta route after a missed Shaping Point, the Zumo will continue navigating ahead as if you had visited it. It will not try to take you back. You will not be alerted as you approach a Shaping Point, but you can see them as a blue disc on the map display.

Waypoints are created and saved before you start to create a route. They are sometimes referred to as 'Favourites' or 'Saved Locations' - and they may have properties that other route points do not. eg Address, phone number, website, elevation, special icons. and importantly, their names cannot be changed by the XT when it receives them.

When a Waypoint is added to a trip, the XT is only concerned with whether it is to behave as a Via Point or as a Shaping Point. As a result, in a Trip List and on the route, it is almost impossible to distinguish between a route point that is a Saved Waypoint and one that isn't - unless 'Up Ahead Places' is enabled in 'Map Layers'. Waypoints will show up with a symbol.

For the Trip in Pic 1, I created 4 Waypoints and gave them a sequence number 01 to 04. These were to become my Via Points. The XT has not altered the names of these. All of the other points were created with the Insert Tool in Basecamp. Apparently this is a glitch in XT's firmware (currently v6.30). Acknowledged by Garmin, I am told that they are working on a solution. (Sept 2021). In the Trip list, you can see that the XT has altered the names of some of these. (I didn't add the 3 character county code to my names.)

On the satnav screen, on the Trip list in Pic1, any Via Point can be made into a Shaping Point and vice versa, simply by tapping the orange flag or the orange/blue circle.

Although this is a useful feature, when changing from a Via Point to a Shaping Point, the XT may behave rather oddly - it may rename the changed point and it may also move it to a different location ! I don't do it.