Garmin Montana

Forgive me but there is ONE Montana routing question nobody has answered here... and I am still hoping to have an answer in this thread, so that I can quote it in the new routing thread as a fact to build on.

Regarding:

My question is...

After a route is on a Montana, how can you tell if you have Shaping Points on it or Via Points? I mean based on my earlier distinction between the 2 in BaseCamp, once it is on the Montana how can you which ones are Via Points vs. Shaping Points? What specifically are you looking at on the Montana?

The whole shaping point thing was created because of ZUMO owners. They didn't want all the Via points cluttering up the map display, You can imagine how bad it looked having 300-400 via point flags being displayed in a couple hundred mile route. So Garmin created shaping points as a way to turn them off so they wouldn't display on the ZUMO's, and to make them non announcing. As far as I know, none of the other units outside of the ZUMO hide the shaping points. Of course with only a max of 50 points with the Montana, not like there's a lot of clutter anyway.

I believe the 276,376,478 supported shaping points before the Zumo's.

???????

Ahhh think I got confused, PONI Killer is what eliminates the points from being displayed, not making them non alerting. Been a while since I used my ZUMO

EmmBeeDee,

Thanks for the clarification. I did not realize the limit issue was with the newer Garmin stuff and not BaseCamp.

No problem and no blame placed

You had/have questions just like the rest of us.

Besides, now that I've gotten older I probably need to defrag my brain so there is room for all this new stuff

Well that explains why I never really came across those things in the Zumo threads. And to be honest I have totally forgot that the reason I bought the Montana was as an upgrade to my old GPSmap 60C which I was having a hard time seeing the screen when riding off road. Now that I've sold my off-road bike and only have the FZ1, my Zumo 550 is all I really need on the bike. So I suspect I'll probably not run into any limit issues very often unless I retire the Zumo.

Jon...

My 550 is ancient in tech terms, but it's still a great unit for some of my riding. As it stands right now, I can't use the Montana as my only GPS so I still hang onto the ZUMO.

Rocky, can you PLEEEEZ be kind enough to also post this into the new thread that MBD created:

Routing with Garmin's Montana/Oregon/62/78/eTrex XX

Because I have already (WITH a little PAIN :eek1) added all of my preliminary information about terminology etc, and this would be a great place to continue this discussion!

See you there!

Oops, sorry.....I guess there is no way to delete a post, so maybe I'll just edit both if them to point over there.

BOY! There's a whole lot more there than yesterday!! Anybody want to guess when THAT thread goes past 400 pages?!?!!

EDIT: Hey, I just figured out how to delete my posts!! Nuke in the editing window....

Looks like this one got overlooked. Yes it's creating a GPX file ("current.gpx"). On the device. So the PC program (eg. Basecamp, Mapsource) can read it if you want it to load that data from the device.

...ken...

Indirectly, I suppose. (Caveat: I do not number a Montana among my many Garmin devices.) If you can edit a route on the Montana the Via points would show up in the list. Shaping points would not show up in that list.

Just to clarify (confirm) a related issue; "Direct" means exactly, and only, to connect the dots (points) "as the crow flies". Do NOT try to follow any roads which may be in the path.

This definition applies to *everything* ... to Mapsource and Basecamp on the PC and to *all* Garmin navigation devices. Regardless what maps you have selected.

Just as you surmised from your testing. Eg. the Direct profile essentially tells the PC program or the nav device "Do not do any routing, regardless whether routing data is available."

...ken...

Actually, shaping points have always been hidden on Garmin devices. Except Zumos. Or at least in the 10 or so years I've been using Garmin products (iQue 3600, iQue 3600A, Mobile PC, Mobile XT, nRoute, GPS10x, eTrex Legend HCx, Nuvi 765T, Nuvi 255W, Nuvi 40). (My Approach G6 probably doesn't count cuz it's dedicated to the golf course.)

Don't take my word for it. Do this test. Create a two point route (A to B) in Basecamp or Mapsource. Make sure there are a few turns necessary to get from A to B. Export the route to a GPX file and view it in your favorite XML viewer or a text editor like Notepad. You will see a bunch of shaping points in the route. Transfer that route into any (non-Zumo) Garmin nav device that supports loading routes. Activate the route and look at the map. You will only see points A and B disolayed. None of the shaping points you see in the GPX file will be displayed nor will they be announced ... except that the appropriate turns they mark will be announced, of course.

Except on a Zumo.

When Garmin created the Zumo to support the sorts of off-the-beaten-path routing that motorcyclists and some RV travellers like to use, a side-effect of the way they implemented some of the features was that shaping points became visible, in all respects, eg. they showed up on the map display and they were announced just like waypoints or POIs used in the route.

This, of course, was an undesirable side-effect so a workaround had to be devised.

The "shaping point" and "via point" terminology has existed in the Garmin vocabulary for a very long time. But it had to be added to the GPX spec so the Zumo could distinguish them and handle them appropriately. And, of course, the code had to be added to the Zumos.

The side-effect is that the features can now be used in devices like the Montana and future devices aimed at folks like us who like to travel like cats. :)

...ken....

Thanks KGhanshirt for your expert "testimony"

Hi guys... I have done a good deal of searching on this issue and so far have come up empty.

I have begun having a frustrating issue with my Montana 650. It is not properly displaying the tracks.

I have maybe 12 tracks on the GPS at the moment, and maybe 7 or 8 enabled. I ensured that they are
all shorter than 10,000 points before transferring them to the GPS. At this time, it seems some of the
tracks that I have enabled with "Show on Map" will show properly, but some will not. If I zoom way out,
the missing track will appear but as I zoom back in it will disappear. If I navigate the track by choosing
it in "where to?" the track will appear on the screen and I can follow it. There does not appear to be
any obvious pattern to which tracks will decide to not appear. I even had problems yesterday with the
active track not showing properly. The trail behind me on the GPS was maybe a mile, even though I had
ridden more than 30 miles.

Aside from the 10,000 point per track limit, and the 200 stored track limit, are there any other limits I could
be running up against? Even disabling tracks (i.e., "Hide on Map") has no effect so I would say hitting a
limit seems unlikely.

Has anyone encountered this behavior on the Montana before? Getting ready to lead a group on a
major ride and I need the tracks to display properly and reliably.

I have been having other odd behavior with the GPS since installing the latest firmware so perhaps there
is a connection there?

I think the biggest confusion is because Garmin CREATED a new type of shaping point. In other words, one that the user manually inserts while creating a route, They should have named it something else, or better yet, just left it what it actually is, a Via point with a preference selected for not being announced.

OK, I just did the test with BC. Original route was a direct route with one via point. It exported to a .gpx file of about 5 Kbits, which only contained the usual xml stuff and the three points, as expected.

Then I removed the via point in the original route and switched it to Automotive activity in BC. This exported to a .gpx file of about 56 kbits, which contained the usual headers, etc. and about 280 lat/longs, none of which were specifically called shaping points in the xml viewer, just the start and finish were identified as via points. Upon simulating the route with CNNA and automobile routing, only the points where turns were necessary showed in the Nuvi dashboard's header field on the Montana and in the list of turns when that was clicked. (The only way you can see what points are in this route once transferred to the unit because you can't edit a follow-road route, only a direct one, unless you create it in the Montana.)

This is exactly what you indicated!!

So it seems to me that this all boils down to semantics, and both Garmin and us users penchant for not being explicit in our use of the terms. As Albie posted above, if you can see it, greyed or not, in the route properties box in BC, the Montana will treat it as a via point. Period.

Bottom Line: We cannot see shaping points in either BC or the Montana, only by looking at the gpx file with a viewer.

I know that for me, most of this confusion came from my years of experience with non routing GPS's, and thinking that I just HAD to put in a bunch of via points in order to make a route work more or less identically in BC or the Montana. Unfortunately, this is still true to some extent and varies a great deal depending on where your route is and what kind of roads you want it to be on. I've never had the least problem with the Montana and BC using CNNA to route me identically from major city to major city or most any town on secondary highways, but that's not what I bought this GPS for.

Maybe that's why they called it CITY NAVIGATOR!!

It's been my experience as well. I've yet to see a route calculate differently on my Montana then from what I created in BC. It just frustrates the hell out of my that I have to make multiple routes because of the stupid 50 point limit, or worse, have to redo a route someone else has given me because it contains more then 50 points.

That's why I NEVER accept routes from anyone, only tracks......

In fact, I've gone back to using direct routing or tracks with non-routable topo maps for almost ALL of my dirt riding.

Well, my second Montana is on it's way back to Garmin for an RMA with regards to the endless loop that it gets into when I try to do a screen recalibration... fingers crossed for me.

How long before this one gave the same results?

Why were you recalibrating the screen?

What was the firmware level?

I guess about 6-8 months I've had this one.

I had noticed that the touch point seemed to have "drfted". I would have to press about 1/4" below the point/button I wished to activate.

Latest (4.70, I think).