Route planner, one of the main features of the mobile outdoor navigation Locus Map, has become an indispensable tool of many enthusiasts for hiking tours, treks, road or mountain bike rides. Its main characteristics is simplicity of controlling in complexity of background data and route planning options. Together with the wide map selection Locus Map offers, running on a portable device like tablet or mobile phone, planning routes is quite a different experience. Let's have a look at its most useful features:

Routing on-road, drawing off-road

When you plan a trip running along roads or paths, use automatic route drawing powered by cooperating routing services - BRouter or GraphHopper.

Each service has its pros and cons. BRouter works offline and offers a lot of routing profiles:

On the other hand, it needs storage for offline routing data and the route calculation is quite slow and power consuming.

GraphHopper is very fast because calculating a route runs on a remote server and doesn't engage your mobile processor. And you usually plan routes at home with wifi internet connection, right? But alas, it offers just a few basic routing profiles:

When you plan a backcountry trip where there are either no roads or paths or required map/routing data aren't available, use the manual mode:

Check route elevation and estimated on-route time

During planning, all necessary info is at hand. Just slide the chart up:

The chart changes according to your editing:

Detailed statistics show also the gradient chart for even finer route tuning:

Avoid obstacles

Forrest works ahead and it's dangerous to pass? Put it in map and let Locus find a detour!

Plan a geocaching trip

Nice warm weather expected next Saturday and you are a keen geocacher. Let's go for a trip somewhere you don't know and hunt a dozen local geocaches. Put them in Locus route planner, it'll find a way connecting them all!

Want to go on bikes instead? Recalculate the route!

You've changed your mind. The weather's gonna be awesome, wow, you will manage to hunt even more geocaches! You've just planned a walking route... doesn't matter, just push Recalculate all button and select bike as the activity.

Cool tip at the end - gradient-colored route

Would you like to know clearly where is your route steep or flat? It's quite useful, especially when you ride a bike. And what's more, you can plan the route according to it and avoid too steep up-hills... Just set up gradient coloring of your route planning line:

Locus Map route planner is very intuitive but if you need to know everything about its features, check Locus Manual.

Happy route planning!

Článek Locus Map – plan your routes like a pro se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.

In recent blogposts we were talking about various aspects of navigation like automatic recalculation settings or offline routing data use. We solved situations when the router creates a route from point A to point B itself. That's a typical procedure when we need to get somewhere quickly and easily and we don't care where the route goes through.

On a hike or a bike ride something else matters. We want to see interesting places, we need to ride some funny trail sections, we'd love to visit that awesome pub for a meal. Alas, no router has this information in its database - we have to draw (click) such a route ourselves. However, a router can be very helpful in this.

So that we can appreciate its help to the full, let's try drawing without it:

Clickmania

Drawing routes in Locus is done with the Add new route feature. After starting it a new bottom panel with routepoint adding and managing buttons emerges. Either we can start tapping the points on the map right away which is quick but inaccurate, or, shift the map to the cursor position and tapbutton.  And again and again, click, click, click... until the whole route is finished:

Uff, really tiresome... and time consuming and inaccurate.

When the router helps...

... we're much happier. Tapbutton before inserting points and select means of transport for which the route is drawn. In case you're not content with the transportation offer, tap the settings button in the top bar and select another source of routing data.

When you get back to the route editing thebutton is highlighted in blue. Shift the map on the desired position on cursor and tap . The router will draw all curves for you up to the inserted point.

You can add as many points as you like this way. You can even change the router or transport during inserting. It may happen that you make a mistake or the router doesn't draw as you like - then just tapand delete last added point (and last drawn section). Then change your settings and go on. Remember, if you want router to draw the route, you have to switch it on first (the button is blue) and then tap, not the other way round.

This way the drawing is easy and fast. We don't have to draw routes on various websites and then laboriously import routes in Locus anymore.

What if the router doesn't know the way?

Just switch it off byand go on manually according to the map. Of course routers don't know every goat path despite their databases are growing steadily (talking about OSM based routers). The moment we get to a more distinct road we can switch the router back on.

The route profile can be checked in the chart accessible from the panel menu.

When you're finished with drawing, don't forget to confirm and save everything by the green button!

Enjoy your trip!

Článek Have you tried engine-assisted route drawing? se nejdříve objevil na Locus Map - mobile outdoor navigation app.