Comments on: TomTom Itinerary Planning

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:30:38 +0000

The |2| causes each entry to be a destination, so the Stats displayed on the GPS, are to the next stop, as opposed to the last stop. Occasionally you will have to tell the GPS you have visited a stop already under Itinerary Planning, if you did not physically come close enough to the lat/lon.

Lot of work, but should make you more efficient, and worth the Office Help. May take a few times to get the office help aclimated.

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:27:14 +0000

Do you have a computer savvy assistant? The way to do this is put the Name, Address, City, State in Excel as columns. Import them into MS Streets & Trips versions 2002-2006 Only (pick one). Nothing older or newer. Once imported, you will see where they are on a map. Pick one push pin to start with and one to end with (Right click, Route, Add as Start or Ad as End). Right click the rest and set them as Stops. Then click on the Car Icon on top row. That will show the route as a list on the left pane. Click Optimize. That will set a route that makes the most sense. You can change it afterwards by selecting a Stop on the left pane and moving it up or down. Save the file as yyyymmdd. Then, download a free copy of gpsbabelgui. That will read the yyyymmdd.est file (MS Strees & Trips) and convert it to a TomTom ITN file. You have to select these from the menu. Point to the EST file and tell it what kind of file it is from another pull down menu. Same for ITN pick TomTom ITN from pull down, and browse for a file location, and give the file the same name yyyymmdd.ITN. Be sure and add the ITN to the end of the file name you chose. Hit Lets GO, and it will create that file. Then, open Notepad, and open the ITN file. Change all the zeros at the end of the Latitude|Longitude|Name|0 to |2| except the last one, make that a |3| so it looks like this Lat|Lon|Name|2| and the last entry, your End, as Lat|Lon|Name|3|. You may have to fiddle with the length of the Name field if it is too long. Then, hook your cable up to the GPS and Computer, and copy the ITN file into the ITN subdirectory on the GPS. Disconnect when complete and hit the menu button, go right arrow to Itinerary Planning/Options/Load Itinerary and pick it off the list. If you DON'T see Strikethroughs through all of your entries, you have done it right. All of this can take some time, so I hope you have someone back at the office that can do this for you. Perhaps you could use 2 GPSs and they could be setting up Tuesday, while you are doing Monday. I would take a laptop with the addresses in Excel loaded on the map also. MS Streets & Trips displays Baloons with Name/Address/City, State (and phone if you like) but you can right click and say Show Name on the Push Pins (individually) and have less clutter on the map. You can print the map and take it with you on as many pages as you like. If you really get lost on the GPS, you can refer to the MS S&T paper or electronic map. Hope this helps.

By: Linda

Linda — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:09:04 +0000

I am a house inspector and need to visit as much as 60-150 houses per day. I would love a portable GPS system that would hold that many stops at one time and use the best possible route for each stop. I don’t want to fiddle through multiple menus to select the each destination. More importantly I would like to be able to download the destinations from my desktop to my GPS system. Is that possible with any of the TomTom units?

By: sandeep

sandeep — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 23:42:00 +0000

hi
i am asda lorry driver. have tomtom go 530. just checking with others which tomtom offers best itinery planning. i can make planning on 530, the itinery works but when i want to save it, or load it, it says are you sure you want to delete all the destinations in the current itinery. i cant understand this problem

By: Rob

Rob — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:34:05 +0000

I too am a school bus driver. I want to be able to lay out routes for sub drivers. Could you give me the sequence of selections on the screen to make an itinerary? I am not well versed on the computers but getting there. Thanks Rob

By: Jim Groves

Jim Groves — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 16:36:14 +0000

Thanks Tim, will give it a try. Played with the unit a little last night using each stop as a destination. I had stoped at each house and used the “My Location” feature. This worked but there were a lot of key strokes to trigger the next stop. Will try your suggestion this pm using the stops as waypoints. Thanks for the help! Jim

By: Tim

Tim — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 11:13:22 +0000

The way to do that would be to create more than one itinerary. One of the “out” trip and one for the “back” trip. That way the triggers will still be there for the locations on the other side of the road.

By: Jim

Jim — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 23:18:56 +0000

I am a school bus driver. I drive out in the country to houses that don’t even have mail boxes. I bought the xl 330s because TomTom support people told me it would do the following: Using the itinerary feature I can put in gps cords for the houses and the 330 will direct me in the order to pick up the students if I put the cords in the correct order. Some of the students I have to bypass and pick up after I turn the bus around at the end of a road. The 330 will mark the stops on lift side if I have passed them as visted even though I have not turned around and picked that student up. (lucky kid, gets to stay home that day)What is the best was to set up an itinerary where you have multiple stops on the same road, but have to stop in a certain order. Please help! Unit is headed back for a refund! Thanks Jim

By: Connie

Connie — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:35:20 +0000

Hi! Just bought a Tomtom Go 730. I am in advertising sales and need to use the itinerary planning feature. Is there a way to export a list of addresses from excel to the tomtom?

Connie

By: Doug

Doug — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 00:36:50 +0000

Well that sounds like a pain. Any other GPS besides Garmin that will optimize routes?