Using Waypoints to Make Custom Maps

This is part of a tutorial that we use to show members how easy it can be to use Waypoints to make Custom RTA maps. After a suggestion by RoadTrip Advisor, Lifemagician, it occurred to me that it might be helpful to post it here....

Here's a sample route that was created for RTA Member, Natalie....

The way this is done is through what we call WAYPOINTS. Imagine that the RTA Map Center page is a paper map on the wall. The electronic Waypoints are like darts that you’ve stuck onto the paper map and when you create the route, the mapping program automatically creates a route using your waypoints. The combination of Waypoints, Custom Places and the Route, when saved creates the map that can be shared via e-mail, printed, etc.

OK, Let’s do a route using the Waypoints….

Let’s do a route from Cleveland to Milwaukee that will be going through Detroit, Rogers City, Chicago, Rockford… (to see how cool this might be… look at the links below!)

A. Add the start and End address: Cleveland as the start and Milwaukee as the end.

****When this program was first created the limit was eight (8) waypoints plus the beginning and ending locations. But as of March, 2018, we have increased this to twenty-three (23) waypoints, plus the beginning and ending location.********

B. We need some Custom Places to coincide with the those cities I referenced above, so let’s add them...
...........1. You can either use Method 2, if you know the address you want to use as Custom place or…
...........2. Method 1. I recommend zooming in so you can see what you’re clicking on
..................a. I’ve named the first one Detroit – Natalia #1 – When you fill out your Custom Places there are all sorts of information fields you can fill in

...........3. You can go ahead and choose all of your Custom Places than make some of the Waypoints, but let’s do them in order..
.................a. So, next to “Add Waypoint” click “select marker” --> And then click on the Detroit - Natalia #1
.................b. As soon as you do that, you’ll see a list of “My Current Waypoints” and that list will grow as we go along.
.................c. Next, type Rogers City into the box for Method 2 (or you could type in an address) –
..............................i. Let’s call this – Rogers City – Natalia #2
.................d. Next, type in Chicago in Method 2 and let’s say that we want this to actually be Millenium Park, so you can put your cursor on the red marker and move it to Millenium Park, save this as Millenium Park
.................e. Next let’s add Rockford, Il

...........4. And then you think………Duh! I forgot to make those darn waypoints. No worries, scroll out on the map so that they are all visible and make them waypoints in order.
.................a. So ………Select Marker and click on each of the three Custom places…

C. So, now you have a start and end and four Wayponts…. You could optimize the route, with that little check box, but you’re smarter than the average computer, and you put them in the order YOU WANTED TO GO IN, so you leave that unchecked.

D. So, now………… click “Find Route from Addresses”

E. And wow… there’s a route connecting those places

F. So for now save this route – let’s call it Natalia -- Cleveland to Milwaukee and you know it is 1036.3 miles, because it is listed on the bottom of the window.

G. So, now this is listed under “My Routes” under the name Natalia -- Cleveland to Milwaukee

H. And maybe this is just what you wanted, but let’s see what RTA recommends for attractions along your route within 50 miles…

I. And the program returns 35 RoadTrip Attractions. – You could save them all or you can look at each one and see which ones appeal to you. You do this by either clicking on the flag or by clicking on the list found on the left-hand column under “RoadTrip Attractions”

J. You can remove any attractions you don’t want on your eventual map… click “Remove” in each information box

K. You can also remove any waypoints if you don’t need that info – so in this case I removed the Rogers City waypoint and one up near the end of the upper peninsula of Michigan. And then when you are happy with the map, you name it and save it Gomez Test Map

L Once saved there are a bunch of options, you can print it, you can share it on e-mail, you can even get a 2-D graphic representation of the elevations of the route.

Here is a link to your shared map:

Here’s a link to your print ready map – you’ll see you have a bunch of ways of customizing this!

***And if you really want to see some cool possibilities for your personal customized maps, click on "Check All" under print options and click on "Print Set-up" -- That resulting list of attractions can be customized just for you....

And you can re-open your maps or your routes and make new version – just remember to save them!

****Now, you can create Custom Maps just about anywhere in the world, using your Custom Places, but if you want to add any of the RTA Library Road Trip Attractions, your maps need to be located in North America!

Mark

Mark,

Thank you very much. It is much appreciated.

• Is this in the Map Centre or the Map Wizard?
• If I put in start and end points, it creates a route. I do not want to take this route. How did you get the route from Detroit to Chicago to go all the way up the peninsula? I cannot find a way to change it.
• If I put in just the first day start and end points, how do I extend that to route for the second day? I can't see which box to type that in either.

Just for now, attractions, etc. can wait. I just want to lay out the route, the route I want to drive, not the one the map wants me to take. Once I get to master that, then I will look at adding the markers, etc.

Lifey needs the basics first

p.s. Can it be changed to kms?

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Originally Posted by Lifemagician

Is this in the Map Centre or the Map Wizard?
If I put in start and end points, it creates a route. I do not want to take this route.

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There is relatively little customization on the Map Wizard Map Creation Tool. Map Wizard is probably what you were using...

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How did you get the route from Detroit to Chicago to go all the way up the peninsula? I cannot find a way to change it.

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To create the map shown above...
1. Go to the Map Center page. and follow that tutorial -- Exactly in the steps I did. Once you can build that map you can create one in Australia or Siberia, it doesn't really matter.

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If I put in just the first day start and end points, how do I extend that to route for the second day? I can't see which box to type that in either.

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See above!

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Just for now, attractions, etc. can wait. I just want to lay out the route, the route I want to drive, not the one the map wants me to take. Once I get to master that, then I will look at adding the markers, etc.

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Ummmmmmmmmm. You need to re-read it, if you're going to make a custom map, using the Map Center tools, you'll need to create waypoints and so you need to create what are called CUSTOM PLACES.

Its the Custom Places/Waypoints that create the route where you want it to go.

EXACTLY, like a paper map. The computer program can't draw a route (a blue line) without knowing the points along the map (these don't have to be overnight stops, they are only there to create the route)

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p.s. Can it be changed to kms?

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The program was created for use in North America and so miles was the unit chosen, we might offer a choice later.

Seriously, if you make a new map, following those instructions -- you'll be able to use it to create what you want.

I was planning on making a quick version of your custom route in Australia to give you further incentive to play with this, but... there's an odd bug that only seems to be affecting routing in Australia. Once the bug is fixed I'll let you know.

In the meantime, you can create custom routes in North America.

Mark

Lifey-If I can do it, you can too! I had the same issue it sounds like you are having. It took me a little while to understand that the route is created from the waypoints. Once I created those (I just did major towns & cities along the route, generic, no addresses) and clicked optimize, it made my route for me! Sweet!
Mark - Any chance that the number of waypoints allowed on a single route will be increased?

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Originally Posted by DanaCleg

Lifey-If I can do it, you can too! I had the same issue it sounds like you are having. It took me a little while to understand that the route is created from the waypoints.

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Yes, that's what I'm trying to convey! Good job.

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Once I created those (I just did major towns & cities along the route, generic, no addresses) and clicked optimize, it made my route for me! Sweet!

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You actually don't need to optimize it, if you click the waypoints in the order you want the road to go, so that they are displayed in the list in the order you want the route to go, you have more control that way.

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Mark - Any chance that the number of waypoints allowed on a single route will be increased?

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In most cases, 8 waypoints + the beginning and ending will make a really custom route. That one I did for the UP required only 3-4 waypoints.

***As of March, 2018 -- RTA members may use 23 waypoints + the beginning and ending points.******

But, it's entirely possible that we can increase the number of waypoints at some point, but we'd have to change the underlying software to make it all work.

Thanks for the input!

Mark

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Originally Posted by Mark Sedenquist

That one I did for the UP required only 3-4 waypoints. Mark

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So how did you get the route to go through Rogers City?

I used waypoints.... You can remove them from your map when you are done. The same way you remove RTA Library attractions (click on the marker and click "remove")

Look at 3(c) in the instructions above...

Mark

I'm a bit frustrated! I created and then saved a route I made from 4 waypoints. When I went back to add another waypoint in the middle, it will add it to the map with a marker (I first made it a custom place, then a waypoint) but won't change the route to run through it. It treats it as just a random marker on the map, as if the original route is closed and this is a new waypoint to go on a new route. HELP please!

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When I went back to add another waypoint in the middle, it will add it to the map with a marker (I first made it a custom place, then a waypoint) but won't change the route to run through it.

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That's correct, you need to make a new route with the five waypoints and save the new route. At this point the software doesn't have any way of adding a waypoint to an existing route. One of the things we are looking at it is adding a drag and drop feature that would allow adding waypoints in this way.

But there is no limitation on how many new routes you create using the waypoints, you could make hundreds

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It treats it as just a random marker on the map, as if the original route is closed

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Yes, the software that creates that route is calculating each leg of the route and it doesn't see the other markers unless you include it in the calculated route.

Mark
Map Support

A new member posted this comment and then edited his post to render it unreadable. It's posted here again for clarity:

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I found this experience to be entirely too frustrating.

I want to create a road trip that takes me from Dallas Tx, to Fresno Ca, then to Salt Lake City Ut, then back to Dallas. I muddled around and created the 3 places. I couldn't see any way to create a round trip, so I guessed at making a trip where the start and end were my house. Then i would add the waypoints (Fresno, and SLC). That was impossible.

I gave up.

I'll try Streets and whatever from M$. Hopefully it will have a UI that comes close to making sense.

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MG: First of all, thanks for the post. We're continuing to make changes in the UI and we might be closer to rolling out a new version of the waypoints that will be more intuitive. We make round trips all of the time. Here's one such route using the waypoint system:


This was created in about six minutes... I'll put a similar map in your folder, (look at your "My Maps" that you can edit and then save exactly the way you want it. You can remove any of the RTA library attractions by clicking on the flag and clicking remove...

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Originally Posted by Mark Sedenquist

A new member posted this comment and then edited his post to render is unreadable. It's posted here again for clarity:
MG: First of all, thanks for the post. We're continuing to make changes in the UI and we might be closer to rolling out a new version of the waypoints that will be more intuitive. We make round trips all of the time. Here's one such route using the waypoint system:

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I didn't see the link you referenced.

Thanks for your post. I tried to delete it, and couldn't, so I edited out my comments, but you found them anyway. I apologize if they were harsh. Thanks for responding so quickly.

It's been an interesting evening. I feel like I had a taste and I now I want the whole meal. Before I gave up, I was able to, in the map wizard, create a simple trip, a-to-z, and see the coolest feature EVER, which was the ability to quickly see points of interest on the trip that include the stupid stuff I want to see (cadillac farm, the corner of winslow arizona) on my road trips. That's the first time I EVER had that ability. Even so, I had to give up.

Here's the evenings journey.
Download demo of M$ S&T and in 10 minutes had my map completly built in tool I had never experienced. I easily added waypoints and adjusted the map. It gave me the critical info I needed, running totals of distance travelled.

It did not give me the cool POIs RTA gives me. Desparate, I came back and tried again. I even showed the easy cool map to my wife. She loves it too.

Perhaps I'm just being stupid. Here's what I tried:
1. Map Center Full Service
2. Create automatic Route
2a. Entered my home address as start and end
3. Tried to select to include waypoints (have 4 saved, my home, my dad's house, Napa CA, SLC UT), but the waypoints buttons are grayed out.
4. fail

2nd Attempt:
1. Cleared map
2. Chose Select Marker
2a. Selected home, Dad's, SLC
2b. waypoints displaying in "My Current Waypoints" on right side
3. Create route between all waypoints.......
3a. ..... (how? can't figure it out. This is where I'm stuck.)
3b. I go ahead and put in 6504 Texana Way in start and end under Create an Automatic Route, and it works! Well, kind of works. The route is really funky (Dad is in Fresno, I'm in Dallas. The route to Dad's matches all the other map generators, but it's the route from Fresno to SLC that is weird (it makes me go back down through Los Angeles).

holy crud... I finally noodled it out. what a goober, please someone take away my computer.

Create Custom Locations
Click on them to add them to the map
Add them as waypoints
Put my home as start and finish
then click Find route from addresses

now the magic of finding stuff along my route works. AWESOME!

Just taking the time to write out my problem, and reproduce my steps helped me. (FWIW: this should be easier, if the other tools had your POI db, it would be well worth the $40 for the UI alone.)

Thanks again for getting back to me.

Now I can see what you created for me. (I've been using two browsers with your site, both IE9 and Chrome. I guess I was posting in Chrome. I couldn't see the map, now I can).
How did you get it to route north of Fresno, without the Napa connection? As I said, my map went to LA to SLC from Fresnol

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Originally Posted by Michael Green

I didn't see the link you referenced.

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I see from your message above that at least one of the browsers is not opening the map. Which one was it? Also you need to enable pop-up windows or none of the mapping application will work for you.

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Thanks for your post. I tried to delete it, and couldn't, so I edited out my comments, but you found them anyway. I apologize if they were harsh. Thanks for responding so quickly.

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Luck of the draw, I've got this section of the forum set up so I receive an e-mail alert when someone posts in the support forum. Your comments were fine -- new technology is often a source of frustration. But once you get the hang of our system, I think you'll be favorable impressed. We don't have the prettiest design and UI could be improved, but it works. I should tell you that just by trying the Map Center tools, you're already in the upper 12% of mappers. Most folks are not eager to learn new things. Streets and Trips and other such software has it's place, but the RTA Custom Mapping program is the only one I've tried that really lets you be as creative as you want to be!

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Before I gave up, I was able to, in the map wizard, create a simple trip, a-to-z, and see the coolest feature EVER, which was the ability to quickly see points of interest on the trip that include the stupid stuff I want to see (cadillac farm, the corner of winslow arizona) on my road trips. That's the first time I EVER had that ability. Even so, I had to give up

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. That was a mere appetizer of what we've built. About 15% of the active programming is available to users of the Map Wizard application.

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Here's the evenings journey.
Download demo of M$ S&T and in 10 minutes had my map completly built in tool I had never experienced. I easily added waypoints and adjusted the map. It gave me the critical info I needed, running totals of distance traveled.

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I'd be willing to wager that with 20 minutes of practice you can build any mapping program on the RTA Custom Maps application about twice as fast as you can on the S&T software... And our program is 100% free and you can build thousands and thousands of maps and routes.

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I even showed the easy cool map to my wife. She loves it too.

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Map Wizard is cool! We've got another version of the Map Wizard under development that will enable one-day road trips from any spot in North America ... Still got some testing to do on that one.

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Perhaps I'm just being stupid. Here's what I tried:
1. Map Center Full Service
2. Create automatic Route
2a. Entered my home address as start and end
3. Tried to select to include waypoints (have 4 saved, my home, my dad's house, Napa CA, SLC UT), but the waypoints buttons are grayed out.
4. fail

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Wow, you were so close (in the description). Once you create the Custom Places, you need select each custom places as waypoint (ideally in the order you want to go).

a. Enter the start and ending location
b. Create and name and save the custom places
c. click "Select Marker"
d. click on the Custom place flag and do c and do over and over and over until you've got them done
e. Click "Find Route from Addresses"
f. Save and name route, add any details you want, there are dozens of fields.
g. If you want to add some of the RTA Library of attractions, you can either add them by Search Along the Route, (you can specify the radius distance from your route from 1 mile to 100 miles)
h. Remove any of the RTA Library attractions by clicking remove
i. You can also use the keyword search tool to further reduce the number of attractions
j. Name and save the MAP.

The map will be on your personal mapping page under "My Maps"
The route (f) will be on the list of "My Routes" that you can continue to customize.

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3b. I go ahead and put in 6504 Texana Way in start and end under Create an Automatic Route, and it works! Well, kind of works. The route is really funky (Dad is in Fresno, I'm in Dallas. The route to Dad's matches all the other map generators, but it's the route from Fresno to SLC that is weird (it makes me go back down through Los Angeles).

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Yeah, you can add up to 8 waypoints on any route and force the mapping app to go on the roads you want.

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holy crud... I finally noodled it out. what a goober, please someone take away my computer.

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Ah ha!

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Create Custom Locations
Click on them to add them to the map
Add them as waypoints
Put my home as start and finish
then click Find route from addresses

now the magic of finding stuff along my route works. AWESOME!

Just taking the time to write out my problem, and reproduce my steps helped me. (FWIW: this should be easier, if the other tools had your POI db, it would be well worth the $40 for the UI alone.)

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Yes, it could be easier, but this is powerful software and you've only seen about 1/2 of it now....

Actually if you look at the rest of the thread, I have written out the process 2-3 times. Your version is the simplest I've seen. Good work.

Mark

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Originally Posted by Michael Green

Now I can see what you created for me. (I've been using two browsers with your site, both IE9 and Chrome. I guess I was posting in Chrome. I couldn't see the map, now I can).

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So, Chrome was the problem? What version?

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How did you get it to route north of Fresno, without the Napa connection? As I said, my map went to LA to SLC from Fresnol

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That's weird. With this mapping API we're limited to 8 waypoints between the start and finish, on the map I created

(and displayed for you above) I only used three. Hint: Be sure to scroll in to see the detail on the map!

But you could take the same MAP and add five more waypoints and resave as a new map to get it go wherever you wanted. And yes, if we had the R&D budget that Microsoft has to improve our UI, that would be awesome. The POI, or as we call them Custom Places/RTA Attractions Library db is unique to RTA. IT IS VERY EXPENSIVE TO CREATE. Every single RTA Attraction is created by a freelance writer, field-checked by a pro road tripper and edited by me. There is a lot of low-value information on the web. Our standards for content are higher....

Enjoy your time on the forum and most importantly! Thanks for continuing to try to learn this program. It's been carefully thought out -- the logic makes some sense once you understand the concept.... I welcome any improvement suggestions you might have!

Next you've to check out the "Draw Circles" tool and the Elevation tools!

Mark

I'm now not able to reproduce the problem viewing the map in the forum. It shows in IE9 and Chrome (v13.0.782.112 m).

Things I'm ready to learn:
1. adding a waypoint in the middle of my route after I've calculated the route.
2. Seeing the details of my route, including cumulative miles.

My workflow today is that I took S&T data, figured a 70mph avg, and decided how many hours I would drive on each day of my trip to figure out when I'll be reaching certain waypoints. For example, dad's house is 1500 miles and I'll be starting out with a 5 hour evening drive after work. I'm logging all this in a spreadsheet (labels: date, day, hours driving, Distance/day, CumDistance, target destination).

Am I in the right tool (RTA) to get there? Am I just an education away? or is the spreadsheet the best tool still?

I applaud you for supporing your website (and me) so well.

Thanks,

Michael

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Originally Posted by Michael Green

I'm now not able to reproduce the problem viewing the map in the forum. It shows in IE9 and Chrome (v13.0.782.112 m).

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Well, that's good news. I'll be back in a moment, you apparently deleted the maps that were displaying in this thread. I've got to recreate them to keep the thread from crashing.

Mark

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Originally Posted by Michael Green

Things I'm ready to learn:
1. adding a waypoint in the middle of my route after I've calculated the route.
2. Seeing the details of my route, including cumulative miles.

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The good news is that once the Custom Places are saved in your folder, you can recreate the map shown above in less than a minute. So, you could recreate 1000 different maps in a 1000 minutes.... Not that you'd really want to!

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My workflow today is that I took S&T data, figured a 70mph avg, and decided how many hours I would drive on each day of my trip to figure out when I'll be reaching certain waypoints. For example, dad's house is 1500 miles and I'll be starting out with a 5 hour evening drive after work. I'm logging all this in a spreadsheet (labels: date, day, hours driving, Distance/day, CumDistance, target destination).

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Part of the fun of any road trip is the planning, so I guess if you like creating spreadsheets this is as good a plan as any. My approach is a lot simpler. I've done about 1/2 million miles in the last couple of decades, but any approach is fine for this stage.

Mark's simple ways:
East of the Mississippi River, over the course of 8 hours on the road, you can average about 53 mph. West of the Mississippi over the same hours on the road you can average 57 mph (This assumes that you'll mostly be traveling between 63 mph and 70+ mph), and includes fuel, food stops and the normal traffic flow.

If you use the "Draw Circles" tool on Map Center, you can see how far 500 miles is on a radius from any given point. Or you can look at increments of 100 to 500 miles. 500 miles is about 10 hours of travel on, dry pavement. You can look at lots of circles and figure what are reasonable driving distances from any one point, or series of points.

If you click on the Route number on any of your maps, you'll see the cumulative total each route. (on the pop-up information window) and on the information bar at the bottom of the map. MAKE SURE POP-UPS ARE ENABLED.... OR YOU WON'T SEE ANY OF THE COOL STUFF THIS APP DOES FOR YOU. All of our support hints are in the information bar as you work along!

To add a waypoint, you need to open the associated route, "My Routes" add it, re-save it and add the RAs and CPs you want.

Does this help?

Mark

One of the things that would make adding a waypoint to an existing map would be the drag and drop technique found on several mapping applications. Thus far, we've been unable to make it work. It's a pretty funky bit of code that we have to use. I've pulled our programming staff off this task for now. If we upgrade to a more expensive version of the Google Maps application I think we can get this to work better, but it makes it real tough for us to continue to offer the RTA Custom Maps for free for use. So, it's one of the things that I still need to think about.

Mark

If you open your route or the map (by the way, a "map" is a collection of a route and markers either custom places for RTA's Library Attractions) and then open the Draw Circles tool, you can see how far is a reasonable drive for a day. Use several circles and you can place CPs (custom places) wherever you want the route to go. Zoom in and drop in a CP and then re-do the route... Etc.

OK, the Draw Circles is working correctly. Once you draw a circle, you'll see a "Cancel" button, clicking that ends the Draw Circle mode and allows you to enter a new CP. The circle display will remain on the page as long as you want it too (or until you reload the page).

Mark

How do I save a change? Here's what I'm doing:
1. click map in my maps
2. make changes
3. give map the same name, which results in 2nd map with same name.
4. delete outdated map

Here's how I add a waypoint:
Click map in my maps
re-add all data including start and end address and all waypoints (plus new ones) in order needed
calculate
Save map
delete old map

Am I doing this the most efficient way?

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Am I doing this the most efficient way?

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Uh, no, sorry, but you're defeating the system for a lesser outcome....

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How do I save a change? Here's what I'm doing:
1. click map in my maps
2. make changes
3. give map the same name, which results in 2nd map with same name.

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This is fine, but I'd make a new name -- Green map #2, or something. You might want to use some former ideas later. I have 163 maps I've created for support purposes -- I can't think of a good reason to delete any of them.

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Here's how I add a waypoint:
Click map in my maps
re-add all data including start and end address and all waypoints (plus new ones) in order needed

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OMG, no. Remember I recreated your map in less than a minute, you don't think I was creating new CPs just for that?

No, look at your left-hand column, this is where all of your personal data (for maps) is stored.

Plus, if you merely reload the page, the start and finish "addresses" are retained. You never have to reload the information boxes more than once.

"My Maps" = the list of saved maps (you've got that one nailed)
"My Custom Places" Every CP you've created is stored here. DON'T DELETE THEM! When you open a new route or want to work on a map, you can click on the CP link you want on the map, and it puts it on the right spot. Then you can use it to create waypoints.
"My Routes" These are calculated routes with no CPs and no RTA RAs. They are the building blocks of your maps. Don't delete these either, just save edited ones with a new name.
"My Drawn Routes" these are hand-drawn routes.
RTA Library Results: has RoadTrip Attractions -- easier to click on the link than the flag on the map. If I ever get them built, there will also go RTA Library Routes and Maps listed here, that you've chosen to save and use.

When you get the planning process all completed and you're ready to print or share your maps, you can always save with a "pretty name."

Wait until you see the custom printing options, we have. It's one of my favorite sections of this app!

Seriously, you should be able to create new custom routes in less than 3 minutes, if it takes much longer, you're doing unnecesary steps.

By the way, the Draw Circle tool is working correctly. See post #20 for more information.

Mark

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Originally Posted by Mark Sedenquist

Uh, no, sorry, but you're defeating the system for a lesser outcome....

No, look at your left-hand column, this is where all of your personal data (for maps) is stored.

Plus, if you merely reload the page, the start and finish "addresses" are retained. You never have to reload the information boxes more than once.

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Thanks again for the special attention.

I'm not seeing what you're seeing. When I come in fresh, I DO see, on the left, all my data. I see the 2 maps, 6 custom places, and 2 routes that I've created.

Here's what I experience:
1. refresh screen (for experiment's sake, imagine I was logged out and logged back in)
2. select a map or a route. I see all my waypoints and POIs drawn on the map. The fields below such as starting and ending address and waypoints are empty.
3. Add in addresses for start and end.
4. Drop in a CP
5. Add the waypoint
6. Calculate route.
I get a route from starting address to new waypoint to ending address. The other waypoints in the map are removed from the map and I have a fresh map.
I cannot recreate any scenario where the starting and ending addresses are populated, and the waypoints already defined in the form below the map, so that I can add, remove, re-order. In all my attempts, I've had to recreate all the waypoints. Probably a browser bug.

This is the same for the map name field.

I see your point about not wanting to delete maps. Still, I may revize a plan several times. I'm not sure I want to have to create new maps for every revision, and have the list cluttered with old discarded revisions of a map. The ability to edit a map is something that I recommend be a native feature. Each map should be like a document in a word processor. If I want to keep multiple versions, I "save as...". If I want to edit the document, I edit it, save it, and I know my previous version is lost. This would be a metaphor that all your users are familiar with as they use it every day in all their other applications.

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Originally Posted by Michael Green

I cannot recreate any scenario where the starting and ending addresses are populated, and the waypoints already defined in the form below the map, so that I can add, remove, re-order. In all my attempts, I've had to recreate all the waypoints.

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The start and ending addresses fields stay populated if you refresh the page, but don't log out. I think I may have misunderstood one of your previous posts. When you say recreate the waypoints, are you creating the custom places from scratch or using the ones in your list to re-populate the route? If you're using the ones in your "My Places" list that is how this application is designed to run. But you can create a new route with waypoints in a matter of seconds.

The issue of being able to edit an existing map and retaining the waypoints is technologically challenging. For a 45 day trial period, we retained all of the saved points from any route on our database. Hundreds of thousands of data points every day were being saved in this way and our database was doubling in size every 12 days. That proved to be technically unsustainable. So, we're back to using the Google Maps super computers to recalculate the route every time. Essentially every time a route is created or reloaded from a member's list, it is being generated "from scratch" and so that's why there's no "saved" route that you can edit. We've spent scores of hours programming a drag and drop feature that would allow you to drag a route to a new waypoint, without creating a whole new route, but there are serious UI problems with the UI due to the number of times such a route could be dragged and so we suspended for now, further work on that feature.

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This is the same for the map name field.

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Yes, as above, from the point of view of the application, it's a brand new, never-seen-before map and needs a new name.

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The ability to edit a map is something that I recommend be a native feature.

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When we started programming this application in earnest (March, 2010), that was one of my primary objectives, but due to the complexity of how such a routing program works, that ability to edit - save - re-edit and re-save a map still eludes us.

It's not an unattainable feature. One of our goals, is to create a RTA Library of Routes that any member can save (SAVE-AS) and use as starting point to build their own routes and maps. Once that programming puzzle is resolved, we'll add it to the basic tools here. And I agree about the metaphor, I wish the back-end was a easy to implement.

Thanks for your thoughts, this is still very much a beta work-in-progress and the programming staff will take your thoughts into consideration.

Mark

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Originally Posted by Tollhouse

I'm a bit frustrated! I created and then saved a route I made from 4 waypoints. When I went back to add another waypoint in the middle, it will add it to the map with a marker (I first made it a custom place, then a waypoint) but won't change the route to run through it. It treats it as just a random marker on the map, as if the original route is closed and this is a new waypoint to go on a new route. HELP please!

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I had same problem today. After spending a big part of my afternoon trying to master mapping job I still don't have my route/map that goes from Chicago to Glacier, then through Grand Teton, Yellowstone and Badlands (National Parks) back to Chicago.
I took a Chicago- Glacier route as my basis and added other destinations as custom places and waypints but they remained just markers in the field and were not connected to the route. I will try again but I give up for today. It's almost midnight here anyway.

OK, editing this to tell you that I just made my sleepy self to go back to what I was responding to (on page 1 of this thread) and read just 1 post futher which explained possible reason. I should learn to be less spontanious reacting to posts :-)

Thanks for attention. I'll finish reading all thread tomorrow and apply things learnt in for my new mapping project. Goodnight.

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Originally Posted by USvisitor

I took a Chicago- Glacier route as my basis and added other destinations as custom places and waypints but they remained just markers in the field and were not connected to the route.

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Tollhouse and USVisitor: Thanks for the posts. The way our program calculates the route you need to, in essence, create a new route every time you add a way point. This really is easy -- your Custom Places are saved in your "My Custom Places" list and so creating a new route is simply a matter of clicking on the Custom Places + making them waypoints + adding the start/finish locations and clicking Calculate Route and then saving it. Once your Custom Places are saved -- you could create a new route in about 90 seconds.

To be clear, there is no "effective" way to bend an existing route to include a new Custom Place. We did the programming to enable this -- but I've disabled this function -- It really doesn't work that well. Currently we provide the RTA Custom Mapping program as a free service to our members. But we've considered purchasing an additional annual license from the vendor that would enable us to add more capability -- including adding new Custom Places to existing routes -- but so far, we've not found a business strategy that would lead us to spend $$$ in this way.

The public version of Google Maps does enable some of the route altering options -- but Google Maps doesn't have access to RTA's Road Trip Attraction database.... so that's the trade-off for now.

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OK, editing this to tell you that I just made my sleepy self to go back to what I was responding to (on page 1 of this thread) and read just 1 post futher which explained possible reason. I should learn to be less spontaneous reacting to posts :-)

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I'm not sure I followed this...

Page 4 of this thread, from another member, features another way of describing what I was trying to say on Page one.

Mark

I made a map the way I wanted! With some minor exceptions.

I tried to follow Mark's tutorial with some

I started from the fresh map page in Map Center this morning (with my saved custom places and routes still on left side).

Step 1: I marked 8 custom places- for future 8 waypoints.

I zoomed map much more than yesterday and found out that 2 of 3 points I marked yesterday were not on any road although I though they were. This could be the reason I got messages that system couldn't find addresses and make my maps. I used "edit" option to move those poCustom places to better positions.

Note to myself and everyone: ZOOM+ a lot, to get a really detailed road view.

Step 2:

I typed in the beginning and ending cities for automatic route.
I'vebeen thinking how could I make a roundtrip route (a circle) starting and ending in Chicago. I know that I wouldn't get any result if I used same city for both ends. My solution was- a town closest to Chicago (maybe even it's suburb, don't know how it is in US). This way I had 2 different names and relatively same place for the start and the end of my tour. Automatic route was drawn very short of course but that's not a problem at all because next step are Waypoints- they extend the blue line like elastic band making it fit any wishes :-)

Step 3:

Added waypoints. It's really easy to do but again, yesterday I was doing mistakes because I didn't notice where they appear as the list at the same time showing if they are really marked or not (I used to click on custom points several times and thought that they are selected as waypoints only if the info baloon pops up. Today I noticed that each time I toutch the custom point marker, it's name appears on the list called My current waypoints next to the "Select Marker" box. (Silly me!) After that adding waypoints was smoth and fast job. I left the "Optimise..." box unchecked.

Step 4:

I gave my map a name, added tags and saved it.

Step 5:

I picked the saved map from left side list of My maps and added flags with places of interest to it. I know, I could and probably should have done that before Step 4- saving the map, but I was skipping Method 2 for making a route and thought the option "Search for places within 100 miles" belongs to that alternative. When I couldn't find how to add the labels I decided to try that. I didn't take 100miles though. 50 more than enough I think.

Step 6:

I saved a map with flags under a different name. And here is the result:

http://www.roadtripamerica.com/maps/...%20tour%202012

I guess I could use even less miles for POI :-)

Now I'm sure I'll make nnext 100 maps much easier and faster!

If only won't get stuch with a glich I had today:

While adding new custom places I started to experience a strange glitch which is still occuring even after logging off the site and rebooting computer.
When marking custom places on the map we get a table to fill the name, address etc about that place. After filling these for 3 or 4 places I couldn't type in more than a single letter at a time. I don't know how to explain that properly and if it's an issue of mapping software or my computer (I'd think rebooting would have solved the last, plus it's happening only for maps). When I try to type in the info dialog window, each time, after each single letter, I'm "kicked off" the box I try to write in and boxes shown in that dialog window scroll up sending me from the first line to about the middle of the window. To get at least one more letter added I have return to the top of the dialog window again. This didn't happen to anything that I was filling in yesterday. Today it's happeneing for custom places,, custom route- everywhere where we get pop up "speach bubbles" for adding custom information about created object.

Thanks everyone who cared to read this long post now and help with your advice before.

First of all, excellent work creating your map and documenting what you noticed as you did -- that's very helpful.

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After filling these for 3 or 4 places I couldn't type in more than a single letter at a time. I don't know how to explain that properly and if it's an issue of mapping software or my computer (I'd think rebooting would have solved the last, plus it's happening only for maps). When I try to type in the info dialog window, each time, after each single letter, I'm "kicked off" the box I try to write in and boxes shown in that dialog window scroll up sending me from the first line to about the middle of the window.

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This is a recurring bug and it seems to happen more often when using Firefox and/or using a wireless router. Were you using either of these parameters? Just about all of the RTA contributors have run up against this problem. Rebooting helps (as you thought) and weirdly the problem often corrects itself on its own. We've chased this darn issue for months -- We know that some versions of FF are buggier than others -- Most of us use FF 8.0 and it seems to work better. But I can tell you this is a very frustrating and persistent bug.

Thanks for the post....

Mark

I guess it was the second- wireless. I was working on laptop with Google Chrome.
Sorry to hear this bug is so hard to get rid off. Aren't all bugs? :-D

Thanks for explaining and compliments regarding my efforts.

Oh, thanks for telling us that.

What version of Chrome is doing this? I thought we had solved that issue.

Mark

I's 15.0.874.120, I think.

it sucks that someone cant make a better map like this. Here is too complicated and more work than it should be

It's really not all that complicated -- once you get the hang of it. Literally thousands of maps have been created and saved by our members since we launched this program a couple of years ago.

What in particular are you having difficulty with?

The RTA Custom Maps application was constructed in such a way to have a relatively narrow focus -- there are dozens of similar mapping programs available on the Web, it is possible that another such program would work better for you.

Mark