Optimum itinerary routing

roywest · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 13, 2005 Posts: 19

Hi

Simple question really,

Why is it that Tomtom 3 does not have a facility for calculating the best route within a list of destinations without having to actually move the list items about.

If I have for example 10 stops in my journey, I would expect the software to look at the entire route and plan the best circuit for me.

Tomtom 3 allows you to list an itinerary but it simply carries out the itinerary in the order in which they appear on the list!

Is there no way to for example punch in 10 destinations and have the software come up with the best route to cover the entire journey?

I seem to recall that Autoroute does this with ease, using VIA options.

It seems a bit silly that I have to know the physical layout of points across my route in order to plan a route. What if I don't know the route? After all, I thought that was the purpose of satnav software.

Any comments would be appreciated.

lbendlin · Posted: Sat Aug 27, 2005 5:53 pm Post subject:

TomTom say it's too computing intensive and the Pocket PC wouldn't cope. We told them that's crap since CoPilot and Mapopolis are doing it on the device. Nevertheless TomTom have no plans to implement itinerary optimization in the near future.
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julianbarker · Lifetime Member Joined: Apr 12, 2005 Posts: 431

I can't understand this compliant - If I told the software where I want to go, the last thing I want is the software telling me to go a different way. To me a TT itinerary is a list made by me, of the places I want to go, in the order I want to visit them. That is what TT expects. If TT decided to screw about with the list becasue it was not optimum I would be well miffed as I often use Itineraries to go from place to place in the order I want. I couldn't care if it is optimum or not. To be honest, I probably have a better idea of what is optimum most of the time than TT will ever have!

There is software out there that will calculate optimum routes, but TT has never claimed to do this, and I can understand why. It is a very complex task, which is why not even al ot of desktop PC navigation products offer it.

Now, no doubt, in time, as PDAs get more powerful then otimum routwes will be part of all products - but I would rather they got the more simple things right before they go there. There is nothing optimum about a route calculated using faulty navigation algorithms, out of date maps, and buggy software.

roywest · Occasional Visitor Joined: Feb 13, 2005 Posts: 19

Right

Julian barker says he can't understand the complaint! I find that strange.

I use Satnav for work. I am an engineer and I do 10 calls a day, often in areas which are new to me. Thats why I have the satnav, so that it will find my way for me without me having to have a knowledge of the geography through which I am going. I punch in my 10 calls, but then have to re-arrange them so that I do not zigzag and backtrack. That's not so bad in an area which I know, but when it is areas I don't know it is a pain! The bloody satnav software should calculate a suggested route!! Its as simple as that!

So, for example, I am sent to 2 addresses in Leighton Buzzard, 1 in Milton Keynes, 3 in Luton, 1 in Bradwell, one in northampton and 2 in Aylesbury. How the hell am I supposed to know which is first, second third etc? I don't even know where Luton is in relation to the others so I would have to get out a map, look up all the places and get street plans for each area or town, work out where each address is without passing one on the way, only to have to return because I could have done it on the way to a job I later attended.

Thats supposed to be the job of the satnav software!

Even on a local level in a town, I have to look on a map to check each address so that I do not have to backtrack on myself because the software is so dumb, it can't fathom out that the 3rd call on the list comes before the second!

As was stated above, other companies have sorted out this lack of functionality. If Tomtom can't then it is a failure of the software to be practical and useful.

If I wanted to use maps I'd not have bothered with satnav!

Try autoroute, it lets you have a start and finish point with unlimited vias, and it does the job. Shame it isn't satnav. Tomtom, despite it's flashy presentation is a weak performer when it comes to route calculation. Perhaps Tomtom should have ousted the graphics people in favour of logistical software engineers!

peterc10 · Posted: Sun Aug 28, 2005 11:09 pm Post subject:

Roy,

I bet you feel better now you've got that off your chest

:D :D

alFR · Occasional Visitor Joined: Aug 11, 2004 Posts: 27

As a workaround, if you put all your calls into TomTom's itinerary (any order) you could then browse the map and look at where they lie in relation to each other, then move them up or down the list to minimise backtracking. Not ideal, but it'd get the job done without using a paper map. Smile

exfive · Posted: Mon Aug 29, 2005 1:46 am Post subject:

julianbarker · Lifetime Member Joined: Apr 12, 2005 Posts: 431

If you have ten locations and you want to find the optimum route between them, you have to calculate the route from A-B A-C A-D etc until A-J, Then B-C, B-D etc up to I-J. You then need to calculate all the routes in reverse as well. (although you can restrict this if you know the start and end point.

That gives an awful lot of routes. You then need to put those routes together in all the necessary combinations to calculate the duration of each route. Of course there will be ways of cutting corners, once the leg A-B-D-I-F is calculated, for example, that data can be usedt to calculate all the other potential routes that utilise that sequence of legs. Either way, there is an awful lot of calculating to do, and I can understand why TT think it is beyond the scope of their product, which after all, is described as apersonal navigation product by TT.

I am sure that if TT had built it in there would be loads of posts here from people complaining about how long it took.

Nomada · Posted: Wed Aug 31, 2005 10:27 am Post subject:

Hi all,

I can add myself to this complaint. After all as told before other softwares do the job.

I did a little approach to sort this problem in my add-on for TTN and people that uses it is happy with the way it works and it makes the job very quick, just a eyes blink, even it surprised me as I was expecting bigger times due to what TomTom says about it.

Currently it works only in a lineal way, so no round trips. I want to have a new look into this to offer this feature too in the future when I finish some projects like to encode the add-ons in .Net.
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