TomTom Route Planner
For Windows Powered Pocket PCs

1 Introduction

2

Planning a Route

3

The Map

4

Driving Instructions

1
Introduction

This chapter shows you ...

·

A quick overview of Route Planner’s features

·

How to install and run Route Planner

·

Quick Start

About Route Planner

Summary of features

Route Planner will find the quickest or shortest route to your destination (and back), provide you with detailed driving instructions and a route summary with total distance and estimated driving time. Simply provide departure and destination (and up to 4 stopovers) and Route Planner will suggest a route. Route Planner will provide you with the best route meeting your own personal criteria and circumvent any avoided areas you have indicated.

The Map view displays what you would expect to see on a road map. You can display any section of the map at any scale, zoom in/out and set the level of detail you wish to be shown. There are various ways of displaying place names, routes, legends, locators and scales.

The Route view displays the driving instructions of the planned route. In the Split view you can follow your route on the map as you go through the list of instructions at the same time.

Additionally Route Planner will allow you to add locations by creating overlays. These locations of personal interest could be historical sites, where friends or relatives live, etc. Railway stations and airports are included for some countries as an overlay.

Never be lost again! Attach a GPS device (provided it has NMEA output) and Route Planner will put you on the map.

Note:

This manual covers both the European and the American versions of Route Planner.

For overlays, questions and additional information check our web site:

http://www.tomtom.com/

Installing Route Planner

Windows 95/98/NT/2000 and later

Insert the CD-ROM into your PC’s CD ROM drive and it will automatically start the installation for you; the Installation Wizard will take you through the installation and set-up.

Note:

If the installation does not start automatically, you can run setup.exe from the CD-ROM drive.

Quick Start

Figure 1: Map view

This section will show you how to display maps and plan routes in Route Planner.

Switching views

Route Planner has three main views:

·

The Map view - showing a road map

·

The Route view - showing driving instructions

·

The Split view - showing both the road map and driving instructions

In split view, you can swap the place of the map window and the route window.

Note:

The Route view will only display instructions if a route has been planned.

Changing the map detail

The sliders in the Detail Window show the current level of detail (roads, cities, and districts). You can use the pen on these sliders to change the detail of the map window. You can use the up/down control to zoom in/out.

Scrolling the map

You can scroll the map by dragging it with the pen. If you enable the locator from the ‘View’ menu, you can use your pen on its crosshair to scroll to any area in a country.

Zooming a map section

Zooming in or out on a section of the map can be done in a number of ways. One way is to use the up/down control to zoom in/out. Another way is to drag a rectangle with the pen while holding the Action button, and then tap inside it or press the Action button again.

Planning a route

You can use the button on the command bar and enter the names of the departure, destination and stopovers (or select them from the alphabetical browser).

2

Planning a Route

This chapter shows you how to plan routes. It covers the following subjects:

·

Quickest or shortest route

·

Adding stopovers

·

Avoiding areas

·

Route display preferences

Telling Route Planner where you want to go

To plan a route, you have to specify from where you depart and where you want to go. Furthermore, you can specify up to four stopovers you want to pass by during your trip.

Figure 2: The 'Plan route' dialogue.

You can indicate the point of departure, destination and stopovers in two ways. You can either make use of the cursor position or you use the ‘Plan route’ dialogue shown above.

Using the ‘Plan route’ dialogue:

‘Departure’, ‘Destination’ and ‘Stopover(s)’ can each be set in a similar way as follows:

1. Choose the ‘Plan route’ option from the menu or command bar.
2. Select the type of route you wish to find: Quickest or Shortest.
3. Specify the departure, destination and any stopovers by entering (part of) the name of each place using the input panel. A matching name will be highlighted in the list. You can also use the up/down control or the pen to scroll through the list.
4. Select OK when all the place names you want are entered.

Important:
If you cannot find the name of a place you are looking for it may be useful to try an alternative, especially regarding the names of districts and industrial areas.
Districts and Industrial areas are categorised under their city. Thus ‘Crestwood’ denotes the city Crestwood (AR). To find the Chicago district with the same name, search for ‘Chicago (IL) Crestwood District’.

Using the current cursor position:

By tapping and holding the pen on the screen, a menu with options for the location under the pen will be displayed. These options allow you to set departure, destination and stopover locations, or to add the location to your personal collection of favourite locations.

After the route is planned:

The map will zoom in to the planned route, and the route indicator will be shown.

You can clear the current route by selecting the ‘Clear’ option from the ‘Route’ menu.

Quickest or shortest route

The shortest route is based on the distance you need to drive to reach your destination. The quickest route is measured in time, based on average car speeds per road type. The average speeds used are as follows:

Road type | km/h | Mph
Motorways | 110 | 68
Dual highways | 90 | 56
Highways | 80 | 50
Regional roads | 70 | 43
Local roads | 60 | 37
Small roads | 50 | 31
City roads | 30 | 19

Return trip

You can plan your return trip simply by selecting ‘Return’ in the ‘Plan route’ dialogue.

Avoiding certain areas

Avoid area

If there are certain areas you do not want to travel through, you can indicate these areas on the map. Route Planner will plan the best possible route to your destination avoiding all the areas you have indicated. To do this:

1. Drag a rectangle on the screen with the pen while holding the Action button.
2. Choose the ‘Avoid area’ option from the ‘Route’ menu.

A greyed ‘Avoid area’ will appear on the screen.

Note:

Only places in the greyed-out areas will be avoided. Therefore you may notice that a planned route may still cut across a corner of the greyed area.

Figure 3: Example of an avoided area, placed over London

Clear area(s)

- To remove a specific area, first position the cursor near this greyed area.
- Select the ‘Clear avoid’ option from the ‘Route’ menu.
- Specify which areas to clear and tap OK.

Preferences

Miles or kilometres

To select the distance unit you are used to:

1. Select the ‘Properties’ menu option.
2. Select the ‘General’ tab.
3. Set ‘Units of measurement’ to either kilometres or miles and tap OK.

How the planned route is displayed

1. Select the ‘Properties’ menu option.

2. Select the ‘General’ tab.

3. Select one of the display options: ‘Hidden’, ‘Dashed in foreground’ or ‘Soft grey in background’ and tap OK.

GPS

The GPS tab lets you alter the GPS settings. Selecting the ‘Use Global Positioning System’ box will enable the other settings.

Once GPS is enabled, a small indicator will be displayed on the map to show your current position. If you cannot see this, check the GPS receiver is on and correctly connected.

If a route is planned, the route indicator will jump to the point on the route nearest to your current position.

3

The Map

This chapter shows you how to use the Map.

·

Moving around in the Map view

·

Finding places

·

Adding locations

·

Focusing on particular areas

·

Detail and display possibilities

The map view

Figure 4: Example of the 'Map' view.

The Map view displays what you would expect to see on a road map. You can display any section of the map at almost any scale and set the level of detail you wish to be shown. A scale window can be activated to show the current scale of the map.

Moving around in the map view

The locator

The locator (enabled from the ‘View’ menu) serves two purposes. First of all, it shows you where you are in a country (which can be quite useful if you are zoomed in to unfamiliar territory). Furthermore, you can scroll the whole map window by moving the centre of the locator crosshair with the pen. You can also move the locator itself around with the pen.

Dragging the map

You can drag the map around to scroll the map window. Just put the pen down on a place on the map and drag the map to another place on the screen. The empty parts will be filled in once you release the pen.

The indicator

Once you have planned a route, the route indicator will be showed on the map window.

When you are in the ‘split’ view, the indicator will follow the highlighted line in the table view and vice versa.

When a GPS device is connected, the indicator will be moved to the point nearest to your current GPS position.

Focusing on a particular area

Zooming in and out

To zoom in or out on the position of the cursor on the map, you can use the up/down control located on the side of your Pocket PC.

To zoom in to a specific area on the screen…

Figure 5: 'Zoom to' rectangle is shown over the Isles of Scilly just off shore from Lands End (UK).

1. Draw a rectangle on the screen by dragging with the pen while holding the Action button.
2. Press the Action button again, or tap inside the rectangle.

The section of the map contained by the rectangle will be redrawn at full screen size.

Naming places on the map

Tap on the map on the place of which you want to know the name. The place or road name will be displayed.

Going to places on the map

Go to a place on the map

- Select the ‘Find place’ option from the ‘Find’ menu, or press the button on the command bar.
- Enter the name of the place you wish to find. A few letters are usually enough. You can also use the pen to scroll through the list.
- Tap OK to confirm the selected name.

Important:

If you cannot find the name of a place you are looking for it may be useful to try an alternative, especially regarding the names of districts and industrial areas.
Districts and Industrial areas are categorised under their city. Thus ‘Crestwood’ denotes the city Crestwood (AR). To find the Chicago district with the same name, search for ‘Chicago (IL) Crestwood District’.

Changing the level of detail displayed

You can change all detail aspects of the Map view using the pen on sliders in the ‘Detail’ window.

Figure 6: The Detail Window.

Road detail

The lowest level shows no roads at all, while the highest level will display every road available in Route Planner’s database.

Note:

The level of detail you select will also influence the number of cities and districts displayed. Cities and districts will only be displayed if a road to that city/district is shown.

City detail

You can determine how many city names should be displayed. For instance you can specify that you only want capital cities to be displayed or you can choose to include smaller cities (down to tiny villages) as well.

District detail

Similar to the way you can include cities, you can also indicate how many district names should be displayed.

Note:

Districts are not available for all countries.

Adding locations to the map

Overlays

When you wish to add a collection of locations of for instance monuments, restaurants, offices, friends, family etc., you can define your own overlay.

In this way you can build your own collection of overlays by adding or deleting locations to existing overlays or by creating new overlays. For each of these you can design your own symbol to indicate the locations on the map.

Overlays for Airfields and Railways are supplied with Route Planner as examples for most countries and states.

Figure 7: An example of an overlay indicating the locations of airports in the southern part of the UK.

An overlay file is a collection of locations of a specific type, such as airports, customers or sites of historical interest.

To make such a collection visible:

1. Choose ‘Open overlay’ option from the ‘File’ menu options.
2. Select the overlay you want and tap OK.

You can either hide or show the names of locations in your overlays. To change this setting:

1. Select ‘Properties’ from the ‘Route’ menu.
2. Select the ‘General’ tab.
3. Check or uncheck the ‘Show overlay location names’ option.

To make the overlay invisible again:

1. Choose ‘Close overlay’ from the ‘File’ menu.
2. Select the overlay you want to close and tap OK.

Creating a new overlay

To start a new collection of locations:

1. Choose the ‘New overlay’ option from ‘File’ menu.
2. Provide a name for your overlay and tap OK.

You have now created a new empty overlay file, to which you can add locations.

Creating a new overlay symbol

To create a new symbol for your overlay, use ‘Edit Overlay Icon’ on the ‘File’ menu. You can now draw the symbol that will be used to mark locations in the overlay on the map.

The pixel in the top-left corner is used to indicate the colour you want to be transparent. All pixels of that colour will be transparent if the symbol is drawn on the map. Thus the top-left pixel will always be transparent.

Adding and deleting locations

You can add new locations to the overlay, or delete locations from it that are no longer of interest. This can be done as follows.

Make sure the overlay is open. If necessary, choose ‘Open overlay’ from the ‘File’ menu options.

To add new locations:

- Move the cursor to the desired position on the map.
- Choose ‘New location’ from the ‘File’ menu.
- Provide a name for the location to be added to the overlay. If you have opened more than one overlay file you also have to indicate to which overlay file the new location should be added.
- You may also specify a document that will be opened when the new overlay item is double tapped. A document could be a file on your Palm-size PC / Pocket PC or an internet address. E.g. ‘\windows\sound.wav’ or ‘http://www.tomtom.com/’.

To delete locations:

- Move the cursor to the desired location on the map.
- Choose ‘Delete location’ from the ‘File’ menu.

Finding a specific location in an overlay

- Select the ‘Go to overlay’ option from the ‘Find’ menu.
- Select the overlay in which you want to search.
- Route Planner will offer you a choice list of location names. Select the name and tap OK.

Finding the closest location in an overlay

- Select the ‘Find closest overlay’ option from the ‘Find’ menu.
- Select an overlay and tap OK.

The cursor will jump to the nearest location on that overlay.

Installing another map

Insert the CD-ROM into your PC’s CD ROM drive and it will automatically start the installation for you; the Installation Wizard will let you select a map to add. Once the map is installed you can use it by selecting the ‘Switch map’ option on the ‘File’ menu, and selecting the new map.

4
Driving Instructions

This chapter covers the following subjects:

·

Driving instructions

·

Route summary

Route instructions

Route and Split views

Once you have planned a route you can read the driving instructions by selecting the Route view or the Split view.

Figure 8: Split View, showing driving instructions and route.

Note:

Tapping the route in the Split view will make the route active. You can then use the up/down control to scroll through the instructions. The indicator in the map window will follow the instructions.
You can resize the split view by dragging the pen on the dividing line.
You can resize the columns with the pen by dragging the headers. To restore a column to its default width tap its header, to restore all columns tap the left most header.

Instruction types

Instruction types and display forms

Instructions are presented as a table. Each column contains specific information concerning when/where (after so long, measured in time or distance units), to do what (turn off, left or right, or continue, for how long), the bearing (North, South, East or West) and towards which city you should be heading.

You can choose from various display possibilities that differ from one another in the amount of information provided or emphasis being placed on either places or roads.

Additionally you can define which columns should be displayed or hidden.

Figure 9: An example of 'Normal' instructions.

To change the instruction:

1. Select the option ‘Properties’ from ‘Route’ the menu.
2. Select the ‘Instructions’ tab.
3. Choose the type of instructions you need and tap OK.

The major differences between the various instruction types are:

Normal

This will generally be the most useful since it supplies sufficiently detailed instructions.

Complete

This will provide you with complete instructions, detailing every step of the way.

Instructions by place

Emphasis is placed on the places to guide you towards your destination.

Instructions by road

Emphasis is placed on the roads you should take to reach your destination.

Technical Support

For technical support, you can visit our web site

http://www.tomtom.com

send us an E-mail at

support@tomtom.com

or contact us at

Palmtop B.V.

Zandsteen 54

2132 MR Hoofddorp

The Netherlands

ã Copyright Palmtop BV 1996-2001

All rights reserved. This manual and the programs referred to herein are copyrighted works of Palmtop BV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Reproduction in whole or in part, including utilisation in machines capable of reproduction or retrieval, without the express written permission of the copyright holders is prohibited. Reverse engineering is also prohibited.

The information in this document is subject to change without notice.

Geographical data copyright ã 1997-2001 AND Mapping B.V.

Palmtop BV acknowledges that some of the names referred to are registered trademarks.

Microsoft, Windows, and the Windows CE Logo are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries.

Version 3.0 October 2001

English