71c Point to Point Navigation
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Using Off Road, Direct Profile and Straight Line Navigation
Basecamp has a profile specifically tailored to deal with Point to Point Navigation. This is called 'Direct'.
The profile has not options available - you cannot set the vehicle, the routing preferences, any avoidances or anything else. All of the options normally available to the route are greyed out for the Direct profile.
What you get is the start, the finish and all of the Via Point (alerting) and Shaping Points (non-alerting) joined together in the correct order with straight lines.
Pic 2 shows the same route transferred and imported into the XT. This is shown on the Preview screen before Go ! has been pressed.
When the route is transferred it has the 'Direct' Transportation Mode. Because of this, it adopts the 'Straight Line' Routing Preference (which is in the same list as Faster Time, Shorter Distance and Curvy Roads - although you may not have noticed it.
Also because of this, if you change either of those two properties of this route (ie the vehicle or the routing), the XT will calculate a normal route along navigable roads.
When the Route is Loaded into the XT
The vehicle is set to Motorcycle. No matter what it was set to before, it is now using the Motorcycle properties - if it needs to. This seems to be important - especially if you re-read the paragraph above, thinking that it should now be set as 'Off Road'.
I have yet to work out why this is, but notice a similarity with routes from Basecamp that use the 'Off Road' profile. They set the Zumo to use the Motorcycle preferences as well. See Section 5.
Creating a Point to Point Route on the XT
This is much easier if you create some Waypoints to show up in 'Favourites' (or Saved) first.
In theory as long as your vehicle is set to off road or motorcycle and your routing preference is set to Straight Line, you should get a point to point route like the one in Pic 2. But sometimes I don't, and I don't know why. I can always get straight lines if I set the vehicle to Off Road and its preference to Straight Line before I start to create the route. Something odd is happening. Between starting this paragraph and reaching the end I have tried to create the same route 5 times without starting with an Off Road vehicle. 3 times it failed, twice it worked. There must be something. Computers don't do random errors. Watch this space.
Starting the Route - However it was Created.
Press Go ! and the familiar options to Select Next Destination appear - and a list of start points, via points and Closest Entry Point is given. Again - different circumstances have created different results for me. Sometimes the first part of the route is a straight line, sometimes all of it is straight lines. Sometimes it all starts as straight lines and then when I reach the start it becomes a curvy road route. I haven't pinned down the reason or circumstances yet.
My suggestion is to get to the start of the off road route, and then load it. One of my early tests described elsewhere in this section was carried out on an earlier version of the software - around v2.60. We are now on v6.30. But I noted that when starting an off road route, the XT would take me to the start along roads, and then I would have to reload the route and start the route again. This observation may be related.
But - assuming that you have reached the start and your route is still showing straight lines ……..
When Navigating the Route
The screen display is very informative - especially with the Trip Data selected as shown in the image below. Here I have a point-to-point route loaded - even though the points are in towns or on roads, and I am testing it in a car. It works equally well - better in some respects because you can see the roads that I will be travelling on.
The solid Magenta line shows the direction I need to be travelling to reach the next route point (I've set it as a Via so it is marked with an orange flag). Being on the A65, I am well off the straight line route - but the dotted lines show:
The direction I need to take from my current position in order to reach the next route point
The direction I need to go in order to reach the point that is closes to me on the original course
The Trip data shows me the direction and distance to the next route point (1.2mi, NW) and the fact that I am 0.4 miles away from my original course.
As with normal navigation, Via Points must be visited. If I don't the dotted magenta lines will always be attached to the point that I have missed.
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The information on these pages has been acquired from personal experience of using and testing the behaviour of Basecamp and my Zumo XT. I have no links with Garmin, and these pages should not be regarded as instructions. They are presented for interest only. The contents of these pages must not be shared, copied, transmitted, redistributed or re-published in any form without my permission. (C) JHeath 2021.