Tuesday, August 22, 2006

 

The Devil...

...is famously lurking in the details. Case in point, my experience with MapSource routing software. Here's what I learned at the revolution.

Routing a a trip all the way across the United States is a big tedious job. The temptation is to set the map scale to about one mile per inch, drop via points on the fly and go. I've spent maybe 10 - 11 hours doing just that. Last night I zoomed in on one of my maps and discovered to my horror that every one of the ten maps I created that way is useless. Why? Because the devil is in the details.

It turns out that placing a via point on a 1-inch-per-mile map results in a lot of via points that are maybe a couple hundred feet wrong. Sounds like no big deal right? It is a big deal if it's a couple hundred feet in the wrong direction at an intersection, because the routing software will add a little "Curly-Q" where the GPS will turn you the wrong direction, then turn you around and send you the other way.

When I zoomed down to 500 feet per inch, I found these Curly-Q's all over my routes. Even worse, MapSource makes no provision for editing this kind of mistake. The route must be entirely redrawn.

Looking through Robert's route drawn in MicroSoft Streets&Trips, I found a few of those, but they're no big deal on a printed map. (Robert must have worked extremely hard to get those routes that close to perfect) On the other hand, the GPS route map has to be perfect or the GPS is going to become the rider's enemy, sending him down roads the wrong way then immediately ordering him to U-Turn. Yuck. So, older and wiser I'm back to square one with routing the entire trip.

This is why you never wait to the last minute to work on a project, Grasshopper...


Comments: Post a Comment



<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?