Routing a round trip and backtracks.

[ChoochCharlie]

When I have routed a round trip, starting and ending at home, I end up backtracking a lot between stops and using the same road in two different directions. Some times the same road will be utilized 3 times. Some times I have to re visit a stop twice or just stop at home and then continue.

SA can't keep track of where I am on my overall route using an LT40. And depending on variables I don't understand, it switches which stop I am headed to. It can't tell which direction I am going on a road and switches stops mid road.

I would love for the software to LOCK onto a stop and route just to it. Give us the power to tell the software, "next stop", and only then will it switch from the present stop. This will prevent it switching destinations mid route, and will allow for the skipping of a stop, like when an appointment cancels.

[ChoochCharlie]

I need to ditto my own suggestion.

The most recent problem: I was getting close to my destination, look down and I am zoomed way out. Can't see where I am going to turn.
I check the "next turn" and SA 2009 has me headed away from my next stop and on to the next. The road is long and a major highway, so it is zoomed way out. I quick, zoom in on the next turn with a drag on my new touch screen, see the name of the road, and SA zooms back out like "how dare you?!" Kinda funny as I understand it is just a program, but still a pickle of a problem.

Happens almost daily in my quest to route 3 to 5 stops that almost always backtrack the same roads.

[John Moran_2]

You need to create two different routes: Out and In.
JM_2

[Djtentman]

Two routes would fix the problem, but it's a hassle when you have 20 stops and need to make 10 or more routes. I would think that the problem could be resolved within SA be making sure that you go to all the stops in order or something like that. We're considering equipping all our vehicles at work with Delorme. This feature would definately push us in that direction.

Add this feature = we buy more Street Atlas Plus licenses

[John Moran_2]

There may be more than one issue at work here.

1) Manually Adding Stops in sequence (as to opposed to Inserting Stops) may* keep them in the correct order if the route must be recalculated during the day. SA2010 Plus XData Features should simplify the Stop sequencing workload.

2) There can also be an occasional issue of "turnbacks" unrelated to the Stop order with curving divided (one-way) highways and ramps, if the display Zoom level at time of calculation is low numerically and the road vectors overlap. This issue may be less of a problem with Topo8 and SA2010 if Delorme's calculation algorithm zooms in far enough before calculating, and if other measures have been taken by the developers.

I personally have just become aware of this second problem because of other posts on the subject, but have been wondering if using a high resolution monitor in the office to calculate the routes might give better results on the road. This would mean that the original route calculated in the office would have to be locked as "Read Only" in a manner similar to that used for routes transferred to the PN-40 portable GPS navigation device.

Edit: 3) Another issue, and apparently the primary one for djtentman, is the inability of Delorme Street Atlas products to always calculate shortest possible route for 20-50 Inserted Stops. No suggestions on that issue. JM_2

*I say may because I am an armchair Delorme Routing user and seldom use the Delome Street routing in a laptop computer in a moving vehicle.
JM_2

[Dan Lawyer]

We're considering equipping all our vehicles at work with Delorme. This feature would definately push us in that direction.
Add this feature = we buy more Street Atlas Plus licenses

This kind of ploy doesn't get DeLorme's attention unless you were maybe going to buy 10,000 copies of Street Atlas. I can probably count on one hand the number of times since the forums started that we've had anyone who couldn't live with the routing options and control already in the programs. If you like the way S&T routes, use it instead of SA

[Djtentman]

Trouble is, I really like Street Atlas and I don't like Street and Trips (except for the optimize option).