Alternatives to garmin basecamp for car tripsp

#Alternatives to garmin basecamp for car tripsp how to#
#Alternatives to garmin basecamp for car tripsp software#
#Alternatives to garmin basecamp for car tripsp Pc#
#Alternatives to garmin basecamp for car tripsp mac#

The creation/programing of routes can be done either on your computer or on the GPS unit itself. The moral of this story is 'don't save it if you don't need it'. I guess I had over 300 tracks with no recollection of having saved them.

#Alternatives to garmin basecamp for car tripsp how to#

Again, it was easy once somebody took my hand and showed me how to do it, as a result, I dumped lots of old and unnecessary files making room for new ones. I just uploaded from my laptop to the GPS unit the 'Oklahoma Adventure Trail (OAT)' track, but couldn't find it in my GPS. The day before yesterday I had to call Garmin's tech assistance to learn that my unit's memory (Montana 650) was full.

#Alternatives to garmin basecamp for car tripsp software#

think of it as basecamp being the software engineersen first revision attempt at writing a program, vs locus being a seasoned software engineer AND user interface team's collaboration tenth generation release. planning/plotting a trips routes with the ability to quickly and easily turn on/off visibility of thousands waypoints (or thousands of miles of tracks) is very easy to do, and you will be surprised how much it is similar to basecamp once you use it. the database doesn't care if there are zero tracks or thousands. Substitute'waypoints' for tracks, or 'routes' for tracks. group name (for each ride, each planning session, etc)> You can have this same level organization in locus as you do in basecamp, if you like: With the result, only the waypoints are left until those are hidden by the same process. Turning on track visibility for an entire folder-ДЄnd one more touch are the top to temporarily hide them if needed. you can turn on/on visibility of one-to-thousands of points, tracks, routes very easily using locus, just by touching the icon to the left of the database entry, aka known as 'folders', that your waypoints and tracks live in: i know you don't have enough time with locus yet, given that statement. I've seen a lot of bad user interface issues in basecamp, and don't want to pass on any more pain to friends that are already suffering through it.ДЄs far as organizing. it is only opened now to make sure that tracks i export will open properly in it. I gave basecamp a lot of time, changed my planning habits and user interface expectations to a much lower standard, but finally one morning just laughed at basecamp as i did the same operations on a phone.

#Alternatives to garmin basecamp for car tripsp mac#

i use Google earth on the Mac a lot to dig for interesting views. I totally understand the big screen needs when planning and viewing maps. Again, this doesn't matter if you're just planning a day or two - but for an extended trip it becomes very unwieldy. None of the other apps I've tried even come close. I still need to get to know Locus better maybe it has very robust features as well for managing multiple routes/tracks/waypoints/etc for a trip, but if so I haven't found them yet. It's very powerful software that has a few quirks that are pretty easy to deal with. It makes things so easy.ДЄnd Basecamp for Mac, at least, is not really poor software. When you're done, you simply plug in your Garmin and upload the entire folder to it, or export the folder to a single GPX file that you can share with others. From the perspective of screen real estate alone, doing the planning on a computer makes it much easier - and one of the things Basecamp does extremely well is organizing everything you need for a trip into a single folder and displaying only those items on screen. I'll have to put together a more detailed post tonight or this weekend when I'm home and can make some screen shots on my workstation, but from the perspective of planning, say, a two-week trip, Basecamp is so much easier to use than trying to do it all on a smartphone or even a tablet. Or if you have an iPhone, take a look at Scenic - it's the best motorcycle-related GPS app I've found, and has pretty robust route planning features. But if all you need to do is plan a few individual routes, take a look at some of the online planners like Furkot.

If you need to plan complex trips, invest the time in learning Basecamp. If you're just planning a single route someplace, a smartphone will work fine, but if you're trying to put together a trip with multiple routes, tracks, waypoints, etc, all the smartphone apps are woefully inadequate. I disagree with the smartphone comment - it all depends on your needs. The Mac version is very different and a lot more intuitive, especially if you like to build your routes point by point instead of starting with an origin and a destination, then modifying the route in between - but it still has a lot of quirks of its own.

#Alternatives to garmin basecamp for car tripsp Pc#

But yes, it is a complicated app to use, especially the PC version. Basecamp is a very powerful tool for planning complex multi-day trips, and I haven't found anything else that does the job anywhere near as well.