Originally Posted by
SCLee
Have used Garmin GPS units for 20 years and over that time frame have learned a couple of things:
1) When you plan a route with waypoints or just successive points on the roads when you are done. ZOOM WAY IN on the route and verify that each and every point is ON THE ROAD, not in an adjacent parking lot or field. If the point is off the road, move it onto the road while zoomed way in. That will solve your waypoint issue. Note for auto navigating, this applies to INTERSTATE HIGHWAYS, be sure your point is on the CORRECT side of the road for your desired direction of travel.
2) If designing a route on your computer and copying to a device, BE SURE the maps on each are the same version. Otherwise the computer and the Garmin MIGHT calculate different routes.
3) Sharing of routes from one Garmin to the next is technically tricky. A route is transferred to the Garmin unit as a series of points. First, I found even TWO IDENTICAL models might recalculate the route differently. Why the difference: through trial and error: A) map version is different, B) software version is different, C) data sets for roads that connect or even points on the same road are different.
4) These situations are even more complicated between different Garmin models and even worse between different GPS brands.
HTH
Thanks for the info. I will try zooming in the next time I try to set a route/course by waypoints and see if that helps. Though, if the placement of the "road" or "trail" is slightly off of where I actually am (and for the trail example I gave on the west side of a road whereas the waypoint along the road being on the east side of the road = quite far away from the trail it would most likely be an issue either way).
I, too, have lots of Garmin units - 2x marine chart plotters (one with autoguidance, just no hydraulic autosteer on the boat, the routing ability with manual steering), a truck unit (780 model), and a handheld one I used for boating and hiking back in the early 2000's.
The 780 is android-based and it does a nice job of interpreting map detail/scale for the waypoints. If I am zoomed out to show 1/2 a state and tap close to a state route (what I think is right over top of it, but could be several miles off by scale) it will pick the route I was trying to hit. The chart plotter that has the routing (older of the 2 - has Bluechart G2 Vision cartography, maybe the new one will do it, I just haven't tried) will guide both to the track and the waypoint. If I have a 15 mile path in there that weaves through islands and channels and I am fishing 1/2 mile away from the path it will tell me how far off-course I am, but it will keep navigating to the waypoint. Just sitting here thinking - I am not sure what it does with the next waypoint if I'm too far from it, though it does separate the end point from each consecutive "waypoint" along the route.
In any event, the base of where my "routing" question is coming from is normal riding for me - not multi-day, several week, "tours". So if I am out for a day trip, for example, of 40-80 miles and have a route I want to stick to it would be nice to have the directions for it. One of the towns I went through the other day, for example, had me go east in to the town, go through town going north, then meet back up with a road going northwest. I went several blocks too far east in town when I could have cut up through a closer road to get to the one going north west but I wasn't watching the map that close. Not a big deal, at the end of the day, but it was still a deviation from the route I had planned out. If I had turn-by-turn directions to spot the first road I could take all the way through town going north I would have caught it.