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Peter Höglund Wednesday 25 Oct 2023 16:20:39
@Anders, great suggestion that now is implemented.
"However this procedure is *very* tedious. Would be nice to just be able to type in distance manually as the least, and have fine steps when dragging the icon rather than using the slider as the best approach."
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Anders Torger Tuesday 24 Oct 2023 08:52:38
What I ended up doing was that I temporarily moved the start position of the track with trial-and-error to make it possible to position my custom cues where I wanted them. Very tedious but since I only needed a handful of custom cues it was reasonable.
This works as the course seems to be subdivided in a fixed amount of steps and if you move the start position 15 meters the steps all over the track will move 15 meters. So you first try to position your cue, estimate how many meters off it is, and then move the start position that many meters and try to position your cue again. After that you can restore the start position again, already placed cues won't move.
So from a programmer point of view my guess is a fix to make this easier to work with is just increase the subdivision by a lot, at least if the track is long. You still would not be able to place precisely by dragging the slider as one pixel step will be too large, but then using the keyboard to fine-adjust would work, and I think that would be quite easy and fast to work with. -
Scott Stocking Monday 23 Oct 2023 18:40:34
I saw this post after I posted my own comments about the same issue. We had the same suggestion, using the distance slider to place directions would be ideal as long as you get the point where you need it.
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Willy Van Driessche Saturday 09 Sep 2023 07:15:43
Thanks Anders.
Your experience with both Garmin operations and Plotaroute confirms my own experience about the dedicated Garmin Edges gps and tcx courses.
Being able to place that slider more precisely between track points in Plotaroute would be most optimal.
This distance slider method has so the great advantage that it tsimply works even with multiple overlapping track layers.
The method by Mark allows you to place a track point exactly at the location you need.
You can then use Plotaroute to then promote each track point to a Generic tcx coursepoint.
I should retest and confirm this (But I trust Mark) as I had previously used this in the past.I myself no longer use Edge nor tcx files but exactly the same can now be done using gpx tracks and smartphone navigation.
This gpx navigation track can still be converted to tcx if needed for certain dedicated gps devices using Locus map.
The track design is mostly not done by Plotaroute, so this method is sure out of topic here ;-)Advise: A precise distance slider this to place an extra trkpt (coursepoint) is the most favorouble that could be offered.
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plotaroute admin Saturday 09 Sep 2023 07:04:46
Thanks for all that feedback. We understand the issue Anders and that is a great suggestion to develop a Quick Edit option for the distance column in the directions table.
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Mark Worthington Friday 08 Sep 2023 22:00:50
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Mark Worthington Friday 08 Sep 2023 21:54:23
Admin: I keep getting an error message about size of attached screenshot. It won't accept a 600 pixel width screenshot. Was not like this previously ....
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Mark Worthington Friday 08 Sep 2023 21:52:56
So after adding an anchor, you couldn't add a direction? Worked for me.
Map layer comment was just to give you the maximum zoom level -
Anders Torger Friday 08 Sep 2023 20:48:59
@Mark: tried the workaround with anchor, but it doesn't change anything, the anchor does not provide a new point for the direction to attach. Map layer does not change anything either.
What does "work" however is to alter the length of the course by moving start position slightly, say if you have a long course that yields 50 meters steps like I have, if you lengthen the course with 25 meters your new steps will still be 50 meters between each but shifted 25 meters from previous, so you can for a location you need to precisely place fine tune the length of the course by moving start position until it is possible to line up the direction where you want it, and then move to next you want to manually place and repeat the procedure.
The already placed directions get their distances recalculated when course distance change, and this is done correctly so the directions does not move (noticably) when the course change length.
However this procedure is *very* tedious. Would be nice to just be able to type in distance manually as the least, and have fine steps when dragging the icon rather than using the slider as the best approach. -
Anders Torger Friday 08 Sep 2023 20:32:10
Willy: I'm a gravel bike race/event organizer, the navigators will be whatever the participants have, but of course Garmin Edge of various models is the most common. I use a Garmin Edge 530 to test the resulting file.
Unfortunately Garmin Connect strips the TCX file of any course points, so one have to use the old school method and load it via the USB cable, but that's okay, I can instruct the participants to do that. This is a problem shared by randonnée organizers etc, in any case you have a course defined by GPS track rather than signposted.
The goal is to provide a course file to the participants that contains a quality cue sheet with turn by turn navigation, plus warning of barriers, marking climb peaks etc.
What Garmin wants you to use is their automatic turn guidance and not have any third party course points at all, I guess that's why they strip the data when you import the file via Garmin Connect (they strip elevation data too by the way). The problem is that automatic turn guidance works horribly bad on rural gravel roads mixed with some paths here and there. It tells you to turn where there is no turn, and misses other turns. And of course the auto guidance don't highlight barriers, water food stations etc. Turn guidance works especially bad if the user have a map that doesn't 100% match the course (common around here, I recommend users to get openfeitzsmap for their Garmins, but not all do).
Long story to explain the need to be able to craft well-made TCX files which still is the best way to go for these types of events. TCX with course points seems to work well with Wahoo etc too. TCX course point presentation is primitive on Garmins, max 10 characters ie "turn right" is all you can say, not "turn right onto blabla street", but that's acceptable. There is data fields with distance to next course point etc, so it's fine. One just need to instruct participants with garmin devices to 1) disable auto turn guidance, 2) load the tcx file via USB.
To anyone interested in TCX files and custom cues on Garmin Edge here's a thread, the user L Rouge is well-informed and know much more about it than I do:
Custom cues - Edge 530 - Cycling - Garmin Forums
