Cannot use 'Reduce points' functionFORUMS HOME SEARCH FORUMS

Hello all

I am trying to use the "Reduce points - Delete superfluous points on the route" function to reduce the number of points on my route, but it does not seem to do anything. I wanted to ask if I have misunderstood what the function can do, or if there is an issue with Plotaroute?

My use case is to use Plotaroute to create GPX tracks to follow on a Garmin eTrex 30x for long-distance road cycling (randonneuring / audax). The eTrex 30x supports a maximum 500 points per track, so for a typical 200km ride I will plot my complete route, split it into into 2x 100km sections, and then reduce each section to 500 points. I then put those sections on the Garmin to follow while cycling.

In Plotaroute though, the "Reduce points" function doesn't offer the me the option to reduce the number of points. The slider offered by the function is always on the far-left and doesn't offer me the option to reduce the points at all - screenshot below shows an example of 'Reduce points' with a ~200km route with 3347 points:

[IMAGE REMOVED DUE TO SIZE]

I am wondering if there's a minimum number of points this function supports, or something similar that I'm missing that will make it work?

Thanks in advance for any advice - Andrew.

Hi Andrew,

Yes, there is a maximum level of reduction you can achieve, but it is based on a relative increase in the width of the track not the number of points  i.e. there are more redundant points on a 10m wide track than a 2m wide track. If you drag the Reduce Points slider to the right, you should get some reduction in points though. When I tried it on the route shown below, it went from 3347 to 1165. If you need further reduction you would need to split the route into separate routes.

Hi admin, thank you for explaining this.

It is funny with hindsight, but I had not really understood how the 'reduce points' slider was meant to work. I did slide it all the way to the right, but as UI doesn't update the number of points it seemed that it wasn't doing anything - I had not thought to the release the mouse button. In the UI, the default position with the slider on the left meant that I thought I was below a 'minimum' number of points somehow, as to me moving a slider from left to right means 'increasing' and from right to left means 'decreasing'.

This will certainly help me for routes where I can get the number of points to 500 or fewer using the reduce points function. My experience is that a 500 point route up to around 150km works fine for road cycling, and potentially can be stretched out to 200km route without degrading the route too much - that is, you can still navigate fine.

As users of older Garmin devices need to specifically target 500 track points due to limitations, is it possible to request that as a future enhancement to Plotaroute? If a user story is helpful I would describe it this way: As a user of an older Garmin, I want to be able to reduce a route of any length to a defined track point limit so that it will work on my device. I would accept that reducing track points could degrade the accuracy of the route.

Thanks, Andrew

Thanks for that feedback Andrew. I appreciate your suggestion to develop a new feature that reduces the points on a route to a set number. If I'm honest I think this probably unlikely to ever get to the top of the list though, as we already have a large number of competing requests for new features and this one is mainly for older technology. We can look into increasing the reduction limits on the current Reduce Points feature though, which should hopefully help.   

Thanks admin. :) Yes, I think that change would accomplish much the same outcome, plus would allow me to keep my route planning workflow within Plotaroute rather than using several websites.