Route Planner Software

Cant make my mind up which Route Planner Software to get so I am seeking thoughts and advice.

Memory Map or Anquet Maps - Discuss

73 Glyn

In reply to GM4CFS:
I use Memory Map and find it quite useful, not just for planning hillwalking and routes etc. but also use the route profiling facility to plan the locations of relay stations for RAYNET purposes.
Anquet may well have similar facilities, but I will stick with what I have.
Oh, and one added bonus is that GM7PKT and GM4COX also both have Memory Map, and I have received quite a few compatible route overlays by email from them.
73 de Ken

In reply to GM4CFS:

I Use Memory Map, only because I designed the Road Angel to be able to use it, making it a road and off road device. So I have most of the maps to hand.
I could have gone with Anquet Maps in the design stage but liked what I saw at MM.
It is easy to work with. Uploading routes to the GPS or Road Angel is simple. The elevation profiles etc are great.
This was the reason I went with Memory Map for the Road Angel as well because of its ease of use. It is easy to email routes to mate and share GPS routes. They have good customer service, maps of Europe, Yacht Charts and aviation charts as well.
It may cost a bit more but it is worth it in my opinion.

In reply to GM4CFS:

I have Anquet V6. It’s used by two work colleagues, both who are keen walkers. One is just about to finish his 2nd complete round of Munros. I asked them about Memory Map or Anquet and they both said Anquet. I got the full UK 1:50000 DVD version at the discounted price of £117. That has all the 1:50000 OS maps, the OS road atlas and Philip’s road atlas.

I can’t say if it’s better or worse than MM. You can enter a route and it will give you a routecard with time and ascent between waypoints, elevation profile. You can tune the Naismith’s Rules to your legs etc. It has a 3d mode to help you visualise the terrain if you can’t see it from the contours. You can download and upload from a GPS.

You also get the ability to download a copy of the programme and as much data as you can to a modern PDA (running WinCe/Windows Mobile5/6). If you have a PDA with GPS built in (Acer do some like this) then you can overlay your position on to the map and have a mapping GPS displaying the OS map.

It seems to work fine. It’s never crashed on me or done anything bizarre. The only downside to either is that you cannot import routes from program into the other. Though you should be able to download the route to a GPS from one and upload that into the other program. There has to be a way to virtualise that!

Andy
MM0FMF

In reply to MM0FMF:
Though you should be able to download the route to a GPS from one and upload that into the other program. There has to be a way to virtualise that!

You can once the route is on the GPS, it can be passed back to any mapping prog with ease. Mem Map to GPS to Anquet to GPS to Mem Map etc

In reply to MM0FMF:

Hmm, looks like the latest version of GPSU can convert between Anquet and Memory Map and back. The freeware version is limited to 100 waypoints in a route along with other limits.

If someone wants to send me a MM route (.rxf) I’ll try and convert it and try it with Anquet. If it works I’ll snapshot the screen and post the image so MM users can compare with what they see.

Send me a route to mm0fmf AT hotmail DOT com (do the obvious to that address)

Andy
MM0FMF

In reply to MM0FMF:
Send me a route to mm0fmf AT hotmail DOT com
Done GW/NW-012, route walked two weeks ago
Steve

In reply to 2E0KPO:

Converted with GPSU 4.87 in Freeware mode. It complained the route was too big but seemed to convert it ok. No doubt finer points and annotations may be lost but it has converted the route so Anquet can load it. Screen capture of part of the display can be seen at http://www.flickr.com/photos/mm0fmf/2023782087/

Not bad for nothing :slight_smile: At least there is some method of moving between the 2 most popular programs.

Andy
MM0FMF

In reply to MM0FMF:
Does Anquet support gpx format yet? It really should do if it doesn’t already. MM supports gpx format as does Garmin mapsource and Google Earth and there are others as well. GPX is essentially a simple XML format has that gained fairly wide acceptance as the format for mapping data exchange.
73 jim

In reply to G0CQK:

I dont know Jim. I forgot to start the VNC server this morning at home so I cant get access to my PC from work to find out.

Of course the problem with these mapping programs is that for a long time they have used proprietry file formats in order to lock in their customers. It looks like that there is slowly some convergence in data exchange.

I had a look inside the Anquet .aef files and they are quite simple to understand. It shouldn’t be too hard to parse them into XML and back with a sniff of Java. I’m off to read the GPX site whilst everyone else is in a meeting :wink:

Andy
MM0FMF

Waypoint Workbench may be useful to those using mapping software for SOTA route planning as it is an Excel spreadsheet that converts waypoints between various software formats. There are some strange glitches with it from time to time but overall it is quite a useful tool. For details see Chris n Marias Geocaching Homepage
Not sure if it works in Excel 2007 but it did in Excel 2000
73 jim