Are Via points and Shaping points always necessary?

[Mikey]

A question based on the following planned Route please:

- I prepare a Basecamp trip with two points; Start and End only, say 200 Km long.
- I need no intermediate stops.
- My chosen Start is 2 Km ‘out of town’ along my outbound route.
- I check the Route selected by BC and it looks good.
- I am ready to load the Route onto my XT.
- BC and XT map versions are the same.
- I intend no modification of my Route once on the XT.

Q: Before sending the Route to the XT, should I now insert other Via or Shaping points?
Are they 1. essential 2. wise or 3. not needed. ?

Thank you, Mikey

[lkraus]

3. not needed.

Actually, there is no reason to prepare such a route. Just put the destination in the GPS and go.

Prepare a route with multiple via/shaping points when you care which exactly roads are used and wish to be sure that if circumstances force a recalculation the new route will closely match the old one.

[Mikey]

A helpful reply, thank you Ikraus.
Mikey

[Oop North John]

It would be a 2 for me because Basecamp does not have the faster roads bad algorithm the XT etc has, so the route you send to the XT might change when the XT calculates it.

If the route takes the faster roads eg motorways naturally in Basecamp, then I'd say it's a 3.

[lkraus]

I actually avoid the XT's "Faster Roads", because it often makes the route longer in both time and distance, just for the sake of including a "faster" road.

Basecamp offers more reliable "Faster Time" routing, though you may want to customize your average speeds a bit.

If your maps match, a route sent from Basecamp should not be recalculated on the XT. It will always say "calculating" when started, but that is only the portion from your current location to the starting point of the route.

[Peobody]

If your maps match, a route sent from Basecamp should not be recalculated on the XT.

Emphasis here should be on what happens when the XT finds a reason to recalculate the route. When that happens, it will likely change the route from what Basecamp created. That is not an issue if you care about just to the end point but, as @lkraus mentioned, if you wish to control the roads you wish to ride on then shaping points are needed to attempt to insure that a recalc results in routing over the intended roads.

[colirv]

As a general rule, before uploading a route from Basecamp to your XT, make sure, in Basecamp, under Edit/Options/Device Transfer, that all the boxes are unticked. You'll only need to do this once.

[Mikey]

Thank you everyone, above, for your comments.
All very helpful and educative.
Mikey