Having just downloaded the new Microsoft Streets and Trips 2010 I was excited about having the ability to export a ROUTE to my Garmin Nuvi 760. I created the route in Streets & Trips, then clicked on the route in the map screen and selected Send Route to GPS device. All seemed to go well, with the Garmin Communicator software indicating that the route had been transferred successfully.

My problem is I can't find the route on the Nuvi. All of the 'stops' appear in my list of favorites but I was expecting to be able to go to Tools - My Data - Import Route from File and the Streets & Trips route would be listed there, probably using the filename I had used when I saved the route in Streets & Trips. A route by that name isn't here however.

Does Streets & Trips export the whole route or just the stops? If it exports the route how does one find and use it on the Nuvi?

I guess I was looking for something similar to the 'send route to GPS' function in Mapquest, for example.

The route should already be available without having to mess with any files. It should be in your saved routes list.

On your Nuvi you should be able to do something like this ... tap "Where To?", tap "Routes" (I'm using the Mobile PC commands but the Nuvi should be similar) and you should get a list of your saved routes. If you haven't ever saved any then the route from Streets&Trips will be the only one in the list.

...ken...

Thanks Ken, I have a number of saved routes so I'm familiar with how the Nuvi handles them. You always have to go into Tools - My Data - Import Route from File and import the downloaded route before you can access it from Where To? - Routes.

With using Microsoft Streets and Trips, I right click on a road in the calculated route which is what the Help file instructs, and select 'Send Route to GPS device'. S&T reports that all the 'locations' in my route have been successfully transferred to the Nuvi. S&T never asks for a route file name and all the 'stops' in my route appear in the Nuvi's list of 'Favorites'. The only thing missing seems to be the actual ROUTE.

What I think really happens it that, unlike Mapquest or Mapsource, Streets & Trips doesn't really transfer the route but only the 'stops'. Once the stops are on the Nuvi as 'Favorites' it's easy enough to make an actual route using either the Nuvi or Mapsource. I guess I was expecting more out of the command 'send ROUTE to GPS device' than what is actually happening. On the other hand I maybe totally wrong which is why I posted my question.

Your explanation jibes with what RsH has been seeing in the GPX files exported from S&T. Sounds like you are probably right about just the waypoints (stops) getting transferred rather than a complete route.

I'll try it with my Legend but first I need to make sure I've got the waypoints and routes saved in Mapsource. Then I'll clear everything off the Legend so I can see exactly what S&T puts there.

I wonder if it would work to export the route from Streets&Trips, copy the GPX file to the Nuvi's SD card and Import Route From File on the Nuvi?

...ken...

Okay, I cleared everything off the Legend, created a route between two locations in Streets&Trips and sent it to the Legend. It only transfers the waypoints (stops). It does not transfer the route.

That's no surprise. It looks like it's using Garmin's Communicator and I think it's only capable of transfering waypoints and not much else.

The first clue that it's only transfering waypoints is the text in the MSN Direct window:

Second clue is the text in the next MSN window:

The other thing I did was to export the route to a GPX file and open it in Mapsource. I just had two waypoints in the route, the starting point and the ending point. Because of the way S&T creates the route file you get a direct line between the two in Mapsource, as if you had created an "offroad" route. So all I did was recalculate the route in Mapsource and I had a complete route that I was able to transfer to the Legend so it had a proper usable route.

I tried copying the S&T GPX file to the SD card in the Legend and importing the route that way but there is no function on the Legend to do that so that didn't work for me.

The simplest thing for me, if I ever wanted to use S&T 2010 to plan routes would be to plan the route in S&T, export to GPX, open in Mapsource, recalculate and transfer the working route to the Legend.

An interesting side issue... The route S&T chose was 910km. The route in Mapsource is 771km using "shortest" and 789km using "quickest". I couldn't find a way to force it to use the same route as S&T without inserting some additional points. That's interesting because I used City Navigator North America 2010 which should be using the same Navteq 2009 data as S&T 2010.

So that's what I know at this point.

...ken...

From what I've seen the small portable navigation devices, I have the Garmin C550, are only capable of A to B scenarios and not the A to B to C to D.

The advantage that I see for being able to transfer the data from Streets and Trips is not having to put all the stops in with the small portable device which is very time consuming. It's basically a short cut which I think is a great idea.

Thanks again Ken for your research and reply. I'll give your Mapsource/GPX idea a try as it sounds like the easiest alternative for my needs.

I would point out that Garmin Communicator is totally capable of transferring a complete route from Mapquest, and I think Google Maps although I don't use Google at lot, that appears on the Nuvi under Where To? - Routes after it is 'imported. Streets & Trips is so much more powerful and easy to use compared to these web based products I was hoping that 'transfer route to GPS device' was actually that. Oh well one step at a time, maybe in 2011. Being able to transfer the waypoints is a big step forward.

Perhaps later today I'll test to ensure that my Legend will accept the detailed route file from Mapsource. I've transfered a couple of simple routes and they worked well. But this one might be different. The Mapsource-generated GPX file for the route was huge compared to the one from S&T. When I looked inside it it was obvious why. The Mapsource-generated file had many many route segments -- hundreds of them -- to cover the nearly 800km of roads between the start and destination. As we now know the S&T file only has the stops, in this case just the start and end "stops".

I understand the power of S&T for complex route planning. I mostly use Mapsource because mine is usually point A to point B route and maybe toss in a Via or two just to force it to go through a place I want to see. But when a friend of mine wants to plot the optimized route for his residential snow removal business when the first winter snow falls it's Streets that gets the workout. I can just take the spreadsheet with the addresses in it, load it into Streets, tell it to give me an optimized route and print it out for him.

Big_Dave, I would expect that most of Garmin's handhelds are quite capable of handling A to B to C to D scenarios. All of the Nuvis can. My eTrex Legend HCx can, so I'm going to assume that any current generation eTrex (Venture, Vista, etc.) can. I know the GPSMAPs (60 and 76) can. My only question at this point is just how much A to B to ... to Z can it handle? Will it handle anything I can throw at it from Mapsource? I'll test later today.

...ken...

The Nuvi 200C does not do vias at all but the 750 will do multiple vias. I have never tested how many though.

Terry

Ken, I used your suggestion about saving my S&T route as a GPX file and loading it up in Mapsource. It worked perfectly!

This particular route totals 1482 miles (one way) with a total of 8 stops. The single recalculation in Mapsource was all the downloaded data needed to complete the route exactly as I had compiled it in S&T. Once downloaded from Mapsource to my Nuvi 760 I could import it and use it from Where To? - Routes.

The Nuvi 7xx series has the following limits:

Waypoints/Favorites/Locations: 500

Routes: 10

Internal Tracklog: 10000 points

The limit of 10 routes is not an issue as it means that you can load as many routes as storage on the Nuvi will allow, but only 10 are useable at any one time.

Okay I downloaded a complex multipoint 900km route to my eTrex Legend HCx and it has no problem handling it. I used at least a dozen specific points (aka "stops" in Streets) and it eats it up without a hiccup.

One interesting thing is that it does require a recalculation of the route the first time you use it after downloading it. After that it only needs to recalculate it if you change something in the route or the route preferences.

I discovered something else when I was playing with the route. My eTrex Legend HCx will do a 3D display just like the Nuvis do. Neat!!

...ken...

A member over at POI-Factory.com has discovered that if you use the MSN Direct option to send a route to your Nuvi from S&T 2010 THE ROUTE is sent, not just the waypoints. In addition the route is immediately available without the normal additional step on the Nuvi or importing it after it's downloaded.

So, Microsoft had done it to use again.

I downloaded the trial version and then thought I was sending a route to my Garmin 465T but it only sent the waypoints/favorites. I was sending via the USB cable and yes, I did select the second option of sending the route. So, looks like I will continue to use GPSBabel since it works correctly and sends the route. Ideas?

I only had 5 routes in my 465T and it will handle 15.