Garmin BaseCamp experts

[Alan M]

Hi, looking for some help with BaseCamp.

 

 I recently used my Montana 600 on a 3 day trip. I planned each days route on google maps and used a piece of free software to convert it to a GPX file to load into BaseCamp.

 

So far so good, the route loaded successfully into BaseCamp as a track and the complete route was correctly displayed.

 

When I then upload this track from BaseCamp to the Montana 600 only about 2/3 to 3/4 of the route is displayed. This was the same for each track I uploaded, the start was fine but part of the end of the route/track was missing.

 

Anyone have an idea why the whole track is not uploading from BaseCamp?

[AZJW]

@Alan M First off, I feel your pain, in a word, Garmin's BaseCamp sucks as it is one of the most unintuitive interfaces I've ever used. That said, here's a few things to check. Tracks can contain more points than routes, so possibly your Montana cannot display the entire route? If you haven’t already tried, converting the route to a track and also check that your SD card isn't full.  Another work around is to use the older, now unsupported Map Source which in some instances is easier to use. Good luck!

Reference articles:

Differences Between Routes and Tracks | Garmin Support

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Garmin Support Center is where you will find answers to frequently asked questions and resources to help with all of your Garmin products.

 

Ride planning with BaseCamp and Montana | Adventure Rider

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I'm trying to plan a ride for the weekend for the first time with BaseCamp and my Garmin Montana. The map is a routable topo map. I will be riding...

 

[Alan M]

Hi, thanks for the info.

 

 I probably confused things  by mentioning routes and tracks.  What I’m displaying on BaseCamp and uploading to the 600 is tracks.

 

 I had issues previously with routes and discovered there is a limited number of points that can be plotted.

 

I’ll try removing some files but I’m pretty sure it has at least 1GB of storage left.

[AZJW]

Let us know what you figure out.  Moved this to Trip Planning so it doesn't get buried in General Discussion.  

[RobR]

As the previous poster mentioned, sometimes Tracks have too many points for the device to properly display.   The Montana 600 is limited to 9,999 points per track.  If you open the track, in the lower window that pops up there is a icon that looks like a circle with three dots in it, and a down arrow.  Click the down arrow and go to "Filter Track".  Here you can filter your track to less points.  It uses a smoothing algorithm and it works well.  I use the "Max Points" filter and pick a number that is about 10% less than my current number of track points in the track.

[mpatch]

What maps do you have installed on your GPS? 
When I was still using garmins sometimes google maps route planning wouldn’t carry over properly to city nav or topo maps. 

[Alan M]

29 minutes ago, RobR said:

As the previous poster mentioned, sometimes Tracks have too many points for the device to properly display.   The Montana 600 is limited to 9,999 points per track.  If you open the track, in the lower window that pops up there is a icon that looks like a circle with three dots in it, and a down arrow.  Click the down arrow and go to "Filter Track".  Here you can filter your track to less points.  It uses a smoothing algorithm and it works well.  I use the "Max Points" filter and pick a number that is about 10% less than my current number of track points in the track.

Thanks, I think this might be the issue, I was unsure what the points limit was per track.

 

 I just tried splitting the track in approximately 2 equal parts and now the whole track is displayed but over 2 track files so points limit is probably the problem.

 

Thanks again for all the suggestions

[Alan M]

So, filtered the track down to 9500 points and it now loads complete to the 600.

 

Top work guys, much appreciated

[Kosmo]

14 minutes ago, Alan M said:

So, filtered the track down to 9500 points and it now loads complete to the 600.

 

Top work guys, much appreciated

 

The "hive" to the rescue!

[Ray Ride4life]

Just see it now and i do everything in Basecamp.
There is a difference between soft and hard points, the hard points are limited but most points that are hard can be made soft.
A soft point is just a point that is there to get the route how you want it, a hard point is a point you want to go to like a place you want to visit in your way or a planned lunch.
There are always minimal 2 hard points, the start and end.
When you click on the map to make a point to get the route a certain way and it turns out to be an address (a street with a house number) it is seen as a hard point because you might want to visit your grandmother living on that address.
Just keep clicking until the route is how you want it and then double click on the route to get to this window:

 

Then select everything between the start and end or the first point you do want to stop along the way just like in the example and rightclick.
Don't know how it's called in the English version but translated from this Dutch version it's "warn at arrival" but when there are hard points (you can see the selected are light grey which means they are soft) you also have an option "don't warn at arrival".
Click on that and every hard point in the selection is made soft.
It will be taken in account when recalculating but it will not be mentioned which is an extra plus because the GPS is only saying left or right and not "you have arrived...." at places you just clicked on to get the route like you want.
In this way you can visit if i'm correct 28 places in a single route (30 hard points but that's incl. start and end) but if you have 2 or 3 sight seeing places and maybe 1 or 2 lunch breaks you have a lot. In between the hard points you can have 125 soft points and that's more then enough for a very long daytrip.
I always make daytrips, also for long trips and on those trips i never plan my stop at the end. I make a route with a mileage/time i think i'm happy with and if i'm at he end but don't want to stop i start the next daytrip (i call them sections when i make like 3 week trips).
I do it this way to keep track of time and to know if i'm not falling behind (the boss wants me back in time). When i'm ahead i know i can stay somewhere a bit longer if i wish or follow a sign to a place of interest i might spot on the way or visit a place the locals tell me about.
Also plan a couple of days less than i have to spend to not have to cut my trip short when i do fall behind and/or do have time to follow up on tips from the locals.
The example is from day 2 of my next trip in July i'm working on, i will post it in the planned trips section (already made a blog about it)

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