72b MRA - Exporting / Saving a Route - Which Format ?

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Using Shaping and Via Points with MyRouteApp

The route below has 14 route points altogether.

  • 1 and 14 are the start and end resepctively. These are always set as Via Points.
  • 3, 5, 7, 10 are all set as Via points. I have shaded the hands in the orange of the Via Point flag on the XT screen.
  • The remaining points are shaded in cyan to match the colour of the disc shaping point on the XT screen.

     
The table inset at the bottom left of the map shows the list of Route Points that I have used. (MRA calls them Waypoints) I have named each point as a 2 digit number, followed by the name of the nearest recogniseable place. eg 02 Alston; 07 Leyburn; 11 Sedbergh. Via Poins are shown by MRA as hands - I have coloured them green, red, and yellow. The closest I could get to the colours of the Garmin Via Point flags - start, end and intermediate via point orange flags.

The shaping points are all shown as light blue tear drop icons = equivalent to the light blue circles that the XT shows on the map.

The points have been carefully chosen to show the route with all of the points intact, and to make sure that the route will change dramatically if any of the shaping points are missed out. For example, there is a very obvious direct route from 03 - Middleton to 05 Brough, and another different route from 07 Leyburn to 10 Settle.



Without the Shaping Points, this route would look very different.







Exporting or Saving Routes from MRA

Knowing which of the 4 options to use

Your route is created as a file using the GPX file structure. This is widely recognised by many navigation programs, but it has its quirks. Although there is a standard in the way in which the data is presented, the GPX file structure allows for different organisations to encode there own special features. If a gpx file is loaded into your device and it contains special features devised by another company then the majority of the gpx file will load OK, but the special features will be spotted and ignored - rather than causing the program to crash.

Garmin makes a lot of use of this feature. One thing that it uses in particular is the route point extensions gpxx data. These 'ghost points' ensure that the the precise route is sent from the mapping software to the Zumo.

MRA has included these ghost points in one of its export formats, but not in the other. I assume that this is by design, as sometimes it is just the route points that are required.

MyRouteApp allows you to save multiple route in one gpx file and that same gpx file will contain the tracks and POIs (Points of Interest) that were created with the route.

I will describe briefly the four different options for gpx files that MRA offers. On the next pages I will go into more detailed explanations of what I have learned from using the v1.1 and v1.2 formats for routes.

At the time of writing, exporting POIs to different devices is still under construction (19 Sep 2022)

GPX v1.0 (route, track, POI)

  • The route consists of just the route points (start, end, via, shaping)that you have plotted on the map.
  • No actual plotted route is saved in the file.
  • All shaping points are set to be Via Points. This is possibly to make it consistent with Zumos for which Mapsource is the recommended route planning app - ie those like the 550 and 660 without the trip planner app.
GPX v1.1 (track, POI)
  • v1.1 contains a track. No route points are included.
GPX v1.1 (Route, Track, POI)
  • GPX v 1.1 produces a route which contains the main route points, with Start, End, Shaping and Via Points. The start and finish points are plotted as Via Points.
  • The gpx file contains no detail of the roads to be ridden. The Zumo will calculate its own route when it is loaded, and this route may be different from the roads that MRA selected, but will still pass through all of the route points in turn. The track is an accurate reflection of the route that was drawn.
GPX v1.2 (route, track, POI)
  • This version transfers the route exactly as it was plotted on the MRA map - assuming you were using the HERE maps provided with MRA Gold.
  • The Shaping Points are all stripped out of the route, and the gpx file contains only the Start, Finish and Via Points.
  • However, v1.2 uses the route point extensions to plot the map on the Zumo precisely as it was sent (as does Basecamp), so providing that the route does not recalculate, it will be exactly as was plotted on the screen.
Points of Interest.

All 4 formats will export POI's (still in development). POIs can be created in MRA, saved and uploaded to the library. Any POIs obtained from the library can be added to a route and these are also imported by the XT into Favourites / Saved locations. In this way, they seem to behave in a similar way to Garmin's Waypoints.

Tracks

 All 4 formats export a track version of the original route. The XT can use tracks to navigate - with and without spoken directions and tracks used in this way will never recalculate. It can also display the track underneath a route - making it easy to spot if the route has been recalculated, and if it has, where the original route was plotted.

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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.