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anita

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Hi all. I was recently gifted a nuvi 3590LMT to assist me my new business. Despite the good intentions, I have mostly been banging my head over the last 2 weeks! I have never used a nav system before.

I repair dental equipment and need plan routes for sales calls. I maintain my contact information (and other stuff) in an Access database and create smaller "lists" of folks I would visit on a given day. It seems to me that I should be able to take a list, import it to my nuvi and and optimize a route using all of the contacts on that list. Also, I want to retain names and phone numbers associated with the address so they are accessible from the nuvi.

I have played around with BaseCamp, and some POI conversion programs, but generally feel overwhelmed. I have no meaningful understanding of any of it.

If I get a list into a structure the nuvi understands, where do I put it in the nuvi, what is it called, how do I retrieve it?

So many questions.. is there a good tutorial out there I could refer to?

Thanks in advance for your help.





johmazz2006

GPS: Garmin Nuvi 765, Garmin 3950LMT, Garmin 2455LMT, Navman40, Garmin StreetPilot 3







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The only way I can see is to do a route from base to every one of the contacts and save them in the GPS, then go from there, or you can do the same with Basecamp which alows you to select the route you wish to take or allow Basecamp to do it for you, then save them all to the GPS.
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p_james

GPS: Garmin DEZL560







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Hi - I'm a newbie to Garmin but I've used TomToms for a few years so I'll try and help.

Some of what you want to do is possible. You can keep a list of all your clients and some details (phone number etc) in a custom poi file. It will need a little work to create this as you will need to export from your access database and then add location details (latitude and longitude) to the file. Once that's done you can then load it to the Garmin.

Assuming you visit a number of clients in a day you can then use the trip planner to say 'I want to go here, followed by here' etc. As far as I know there is no way of optimising the route - it will do it in the order you specify (although there is something called Ecoroute I haven't looked at yet that might help)

If you want to take this further please post back and I'll try and help you with creating a custom POI file. I've used Access and Excel extensively in the past so I can help with exports etc if you get stuck.
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anita

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Thanks for the replies. It appears p_james has a good handle on what I am trying to accomplish and I will be grateful for your help. Within Access I run queries to create what I am calling my "lists" of offices that I wish to visit on a given day. I have exported these lists to Excel and converted them to .csv files.

It is my understanding that the addresses in these lists need to be geocoded (identified by long/lat coordinates) in order to be read by my nuvi. I made the conversions to csv because I have gleaned (perhaps erroneously, perhaps not) that in order to geocode the data I need that format. This is here I am hitting my first roadblock. I am not sure how to get the results if there are other, more useful tools. Also, I don't understand the file structure that Garmin wants to see. Help getting from my Csv files into the nuvi would be greatly appreciated.

I do know that under the nuvi apps there is one called "trip planner" into which I can load points in any order and then I can choose to "optimize" the route so it is most efficient. So if I import my lists into the trip planner as Trip A, Trip B, Trip C... then I could optimize them.

Thanks for your guidance.
a





p_james

GPS: Garmin DEZL560







Post Creating your POI file     
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Hi Anita

I'll start by assuming that your CSV file has basic information about the client (probably address and phone number) in one column, with each client on a different row of the Excel worksheet.

Each line of the CSV file needs to be in this format

longtitude, latitude, info, comment (comment is optional)

Each one of the items above needs to be in a separate column (you don't need the commas) in that row, so row 1 column A is longtitude, row 1 column B is latitude, row 1 column C is name and address (can just be name) and row 1 column D is any comment you want to add. The data on that row all refers to that client.

So the next step is to add extra columns on the left of your worksheet so you can put longtitude and latitude in cols A and B

The data needs to be in decimal format with anything west of the Greenwich meridian starting with a - (minus) sign. There are a number of ways you can get this information - generally I use google Earth, add a placemark (the little push pin) and then copy and paste the longtitude and latitude into Excel. If your Google Earth isn't displaying the lat and long the way you need it to go into Tools, Options, 3D view and in the 'Show lat/long' section select 'Decimal degrees'

A couple of things to ensure:

Longtitude goes in column A

Make sure you put the placemark on the road outside the building you are visiting, not on the building itself or the satnav may say it can't navigate to the location.

Have a go at that and let me know how you get on. If you aren't sure of anything please get back to me. If you want to look at a POI file to see what a CSV POI file looks like you can always download one of the POI files from here - select CSV format and choose to open it rather than save it and you will see it in excel

Paul
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basirb

GPS: Garmin Nuvi 2579lmt







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Anita,
I use http://garmin.gps-data-team.com/extra/poiedit.php as a geocoder. I copy and paste my daily address list. You can paste your addresses and click on them to get latitudes and longitudes. You can save geocoded files in a Garmin or Excel file format.
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moph269-ext

GPS: garmin







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Try to read all you can about POI, and dont rush to understand all of it in one go. Start with the
1. Garmin CSV format
2. POI loader
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anita

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Hi all, I had to step away from this project for a bit and am back at it now. I will play around with this today and tomorrow as time permits. I appreciate all the help, please check back on me in a day or so!





p_james

GPS: Garmin DEZL560







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anita wrote:
Hi all, I had to step away from this project for a bit and am back at it now. I will play around with this today and tomorrow as time permits. I appreciate all the help, please check back on me in a day or so!



No problem - let me know when you are ready and we can go onto the next bit.
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