Zumo User Forums

This is Garmin’s traditional way of route planning, and is described in the routes that I have used as examples at the start of this booklet.

• Create and save some key ‘must visit’ Waypoints in Basecamp. This helps to identify particular locations and keep the name that you give when they are transferred to the XT.
• Use the Basecamp Waypoints to create a Trip.
• Allow Basecamp to calculate which roads to route you along in order for it to get you from one point to the next.
• Add additional route points as required, and then decide which one will be Via Points (alerting) and which will be Shaping Points (silent). The choice of Shaping Points and Via Points is crucial to making the journey as informative and trouble free as possible.

This system works well when used with Basecamp. Some (most ?) routing programs rarely create the same kind of route points that the 39x series, 590, 595 and XT use. Without Basecamp you may lose a lot of functionality.

It is possible to create a Trip and route on the XT itself - but it can be rather awkward. The screen is very sensitive and I find it difficult to place a point precisely. It is made much easier if you have a database of Waypoints that are saved in the XT as ‘Favourites’ or ‘Saved Location’. The Trip can be built up very rapidly and requires just a few Shaping Points to be added.

Unfortunately, software versions up to v6.50 have a glitch - if a Via Point is changed to a Shaping Point using the Zumo editor, it often changes its name and relocates it.