Export Garmin compatible GPX

News and Updates about Kurviger
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DE: Deutscher Text kommt weiter unter

Dear fellow Kurviger users,

as discussed in the old forum here and partly in the new forum here, Kurviger needs an export for Garmin’s customized GPX format.

Thanks to everyone that contributed their knowledge, hints and tips. Special thanks go out to Heinrich Wack and @rumbrummer for providing feedback and detailed information.

The current version is released as BETA, this means that there is still some room for improvement, please let us know if you miss anything or if something does not work as expected. Currently, this feature is only available on the website and not in the app. This feature will be added to the app soon. This feature is now available in the app as well and is no longer considered BETA.

How does it work:
The start and destination (first and last waypoint/via-point) are placed as a waypoint with alarm / via-point. Every point in between is placed as waypoint without alarm / ShapingPoint.

What does this mean:
When loading a route from Kurviger into your Garmin device (or Basecamp) the route will be recalculated. Therefore we recommend to export the Route & Track after importing it, you will see the calculated route and the track. It is possible that there are some deviations between the two, exporting Route & Track will help to identify these deviations easily. We recommend to export a lot of additional waypoints (Stützpunkte) to reduce the deviations as much as possible.

Things to watch out for:
When starting the navigation, you should be on the route already. If you are not on the route, your Garmin will recalculate the whole route from your current location to the end, ignoring all ShapingPoints. We recommend to disable the recalculation of the route. If you want a perfect representation of your planned route, you still have to use Basecamp, the Kurviger export should work well enough without Basecamp, but there could be deviations.

If you don’t want to convert all waypoints into ShapingPoints you can still use @rumbrummer’s converter, here.

Let us know how it works for you :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Robin

Hallo liebe Kurviger Nutzer,

wie bereits im alten Forum, sowie auch im neuen Forum besprochen, benötigt Kurviger einen Export für Garmins angepasstes GPX Format.

Vielen Dank an alle die uns bei der Entwicklung geholfen haben. Ganz besonders möchten wir uns bei Heinrich Wack und @rumbrummer bedanken die uns mit Rat und Tat zur Seite gestanden sind.

Die aktuelle Version wird als BETA veröffentlicht. Das bedeutet, dass es noch ein paar Möglichkeiten gibt das ganze zu verbessern, hier ist eure Mithilfe essenziell. Der Garmin Export ist aktuell nur auf der Webseite verfügbar und nicht in der App. Die Funktion kommt aber bald auch für die App. Die Funktion ist mittlerweile auch in der App verfügbar und ist mittlerweile nicht mehr in der BETA Phase.

Wie funktioniert das Ganze:
Der Start und das Ziel werden als Wegpunkt mit Alarm / ViaPoint angelegt. Alle anderen Punkte werden als Wegpunkte ohne Alarm / ShapingPoint angelegt.

Was bedeutet das:
Beim Laden der Route aus Kurviger in dein Garmin (oder Basecamp) wird die Route neu berechnet. Daher empfehlen wir den Export von Route & Track. Dadurch lassen sich Abweichungen der Garmin Route zur geplanten Route einfach feststellen. Wir empfehlen den Export von vielen Stützpunkten um diese Abweichungen so gering wie möglich zu halten.

Darauf solltest du achten:
Beim Start der Navigation solltest du dich bereits auf der Route befinden, ansonsten berechnet dein Garmin Gerät die Route bis zum Ziel ohne ShapingPoints (deine Wegpunkte + Stützpunkte) neu und das Ergebnis kann komplett abweichen. In diesem Zusammenhang empfehlen wir, die Neuberechnung zu deaktiveren. Eine perfekte Deckung von geplanter Kurviger Route zu Garmin lässt sich am sichersten über Basecamp erstellen, der Kurviger Export sollte aber auch ohne Umweg über Basecamp funktionieren.

Falls du nicht alle Wegpunkte in ShapingPoints umwandeln möchtest, dann kannst du weiterhin den Konverter von @rumbrummer verwenden.

Lasst uns wissen wie diese neue Funktion für euch funktioniert und ob noch etwas fehlt?

Lg Robin

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Hi Robin,

back when I started to use kurviger with my Garmin Zumo and Basecamp I was desperately waiting for a good solution using kurviger as route planning tool and Garmin for the navigation.

In the meantime I have found a very solid way how to deal with those different tools. This solution results in 98+% route overlap. Only sometimes, very small parts of the route planned with kurviger differs from the route imported and calculated in Garmin. I havent figured out why, but I can deal with that.

Nevertheless I was thrilled to read now about this special Garmin GPX support. So I tested it.

Unfortunately the result is not very satisfying. With this approach more parts of the route in Garmin differ to the planned one in kurviger. I know the reasons, mainly it is because Garmin calculates the route itself and route options might differ compared to the generated route by kurviger. Naturally, the routes will not fit perfectly. Of course I could compare and adapt and add additional waypoints, but this makes it necessary to transfer routes more often between kurviger and Garmin. Probably by using Basecamp in between it might be more convienent to adapt and improve the result. But this isnt a solution for me as I am seeking for a simple solution with no need for Basecamp. I want to be able to plan with kurviger and immediately transfer the result to kurviger even while somewhere on tour, directly from my mobile phone to the Garmin device.

I now compared the result of a small round tour (145) with Start, Endpoint and two Waypoints.
By using the new GPX format the last part of the tour (from last waypoint to endpoint) did not match at all between kurviger and Garmin. The previous part was at 100% overlap.

With the way I previously exchanged kurviger routes with Garmin (as mentioned above) I achieved 100% overlap.

I will try again and see if the results remain the same, especially I am curious to understand why only the last part of the route differs completely and whether there is a way to avoid this. But until I cant achieve a better result I remain using my old method.

Just in case you are interest, this is the way how I deal import/export routes from kurviger to Garmin:

  1. Export only a track from kurviger
  2. Directly copy the result from my mobile to Garmin thru OTG cable
  3. Open the track in Garmin and let Garmin caclulate a route based on this track
  4. Display the track additional to the route
  5. Choose route to start navigation
  6. Disable re-calculation of routes, just in case there are some smaller parts of the route different. As I display the track as well, I can immediately see the difference and decide to follow either the route or the track

Cheers
Thorsten

1 Like
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I did another test with basically the same result. This time however not only the last part of the route (between last shaping point and endpoint) did not match, but there were parts over the whole route that did not match.

For this case I repeated the export by adding many waypoints thru kurviger. Now the result got much better, but still some parts of the route still didnt match. So basically more work (additional waypoints) is required to achieve an almost 100% overlap.

Currently I dont see a need for the Garmin GPX for my personal use case. So I will continue to proceed the way I described above, which almost works every time.

This of course doesnt mean that the GPX is worthless, I am sure other users will benefit of it by using it with their use case.

Can just anyone tell me what the impact is to have these shaping points while navigating with the Garmin Zumo? Are these shaping points somehow considered by Garmin while navigating, for example showing the time and distance to the next shaping point?

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Hi,

from my point of view the method Thorsten described (export track from kurviger, let Garmin device calculate a route based on that track) gives the best match between Garmin route and kurviger route .

Disadvantage: The Garmin route has only start and destination and a lot of (invisible) “routed” points. So there are neither ViaPoints nor Shapingpoints in that route, you can not modify it on Garmin device and can not start the route anywhere between start und destination. Furthermore leaving the route with activated option “automatic recalculation” might lead to not wanted effects.

Workaround: Copy the route from Garmin to PC/Tablet/Handy, use the converter http://gpx.square7.ch/GPX/GpxInsRtePts.html (for details please see help button) and copy result back to Garmin.

Big disadvantage: You have to connect the Garmin once more to PC/Tablet/Handy.

So I prefer an other solution with the converter Robin mentioned above: http://gpx.square7.ch/GPX/GpxShaping.html (for details please see help button). Advantage: You can add further route points in configurable distance to force the Garmin route onto the kurviger route. My recommendation: 2.5km.

I tested it Wednesday on a 550km trip (25km highway, the rest medium and smaller roads, avoid unpaved roads). Result: One or two small deviations caused by map data (City Navigator Europe map on Garmin - perhaps I will do a try with OSM map on Garmin), 4 - 6 small deviations where Garmin said that road was forbidden (~50% Garmin was right - I have to learn how to correct OSM data!). Several (~10?) small deviations caused by road works or dreaming rider - both not a topic of Garmin or kurviger :blush:.

So I think, the possibility to add further ShapingPoints (I do it based on the track from kurviger) in configurable distance might be even more interesting than to change several points to ViaPoints. I have to admit, that I did not completely understand the Garmin strategy - my BMW Navigator 5 tried to reach the next ShapingPoint when leaving the route due to road works - even with with activated option “automatic recalculation” …:thinking:

Regards

Markus

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Hi Markus,

thanks for your detailed description. When I have more time I will have a closer look to the other options you mentioned. Maybe I can consider those as the way to go for the future.

The disadvantage as you described with the approach I use is 100% correct. For that reason automatic rerouting is disabled within my Garmin. Otherwise I will have no fun riding :slight_smile:

In case I have to leave the route, because of an accident or road construction ahead etc, I have my mobile phone with kurviger as fallback. As kurviger is much more intuitiv and easier to handle than Garmin, I use kurviger for quick changes that eventually occur on a multi-day trip. In case I have a bit time I have a break and easily re-adjust the tour with kurviger and transfer the change back to Garmin. The transfer usually doesnt take more than a couple of minutes.

In case I dont have time for a break I then use kurviger until I am back on the original track or I reached my endpoint.

Cheers
Thorsten

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Hi Thorsten,

Garmin divides the points defining a route in two classes: ViaPoints and ShapingPoints (that is the naming you can see in GPX files).

In my post from 29th of May you can read more details (due to your name I think you understand German …) https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/kurviger/5tTTeGXoNSU/v3IDlyOADQAJ

Advantages of ShapingPoints:

  • Large number in one route (1500 with BMW Navigator 5, ViaPoints: 31)
  • they do not “hide” turn hints etc. because they are not shown in the status line / turn field - they only appear as small grey circles on the map

Disadvantages:

  • can not be used as entry point when starting a route
  • Garmin might discard them when using automatic recalculation mode and leaving the planned route (I still haven’t completely understood …)

Regards

Markus

1 Like
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Hi Markus,

I know tested the converter (http://gpx.square7.ch/…). By filling up the kurviger GPX with a ShapingPoint every 2.5 km, the result looks pretty much identical to my originally planned route in kurviger.

Now I have to test and drive this tour to see whether this approach has any benefits as compared to how I have done it before. I am not able to do this right away, but one day I will try and see and let you know :slight_smile:

Thanks for your hints!

Cheers
Thorsten

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Hi,

having a look at GPX exported from kurviger in Garmin mode, I saw, that there is also a description in a tag “desc” exported for each route point.

My BMW Navigator 5 seems to ignore the “desc” tag - but, of course, there is no problem with that tag.

Having a look at several GPX exported in standard mode I got the impression, that the “desc” tag in the route points does not contain any additional information:
Either it is identical to the “name” tag, or - if the name is a street name, the description is always “follow street name”.
Therefore from my point of view the decription could be omitted.

Also the time and elevation tags of the trackpoints could be omitted in Garmin mode - at least my Nav5 just ignores them - but both tags do not cause any problem.

Using routes with additinally added points each 2.5km causes a large number of new route points - to name them, I just used the trip distance of each point as name ( accuracy: 0.1km). During navigation I saw, that it would be nice to have that trip distance info also in the name of the kurviger route points, so I appended that info in braces at the end of the route point names.

This causes an other problem : The Nav5 uses only 30 characters for the route point names, the rest is cut off.

Perhaps users of other devices can do a check and give feedback about that device:
I put a route with 5 points in http://gpx.square7.ch/GPX/NameLength.gpx, the name is always 8 times the string “1234567890”, so it is easy to count how many characters are used by Garmin device, if you download that GPX and import it to Garmin device.

To shorten the names I did several replacements (German mode):

  • “dem Straßenverlauf folgen” -> “Str. folgen”
  • “Straße”, “Strasse” -> “Str .”
  • “straße”, “strasse” -> “str.”
  • “Wegpunkt” -> “WP”

Perhaps those modifications could be also useful for kurviger GPX export in Garmin mode … what do you think?

Regards

Markus

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Thanks for your feedback @anon41824776 and @rumbrummer.

Yes this is correct. If you want the Kurviger route to be very close to the calculated route, you should add a lot of additional waypoints (Stützpunkte), then the route calculated by Garmin and Kurviger should be almost identical.

For now I decided to keep the export mode very similar to the other exports, but maybe it would be better to force adding a lot of additional waypoints for the Garmin calculation mode?

This sounds like a really good approach! Thanks for sharing.

Ah interesting, so Garmin doesn’t use the description tag at all? Some navis do use it.

Yes indeed, we could remove them.

Right now I would like to keep the Garmin format as close to Standard GPX as possible, this reduces the amount of work that is required to maintain it. Unless there is a reason to remove it, I would prefer not to do it :slight_smile:.

Interesting. Yes we could do this in the future, adding a distance along the route sounds interesting.

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Hi,

there is another curiosity with my Navigator 5 - and probably also with other Garmin devices:
If a route point name contains a comma “,”, the comma and all following chracater are cut off in map view:

RP_with_comma

Map_with_comma

Therefore in my converter now I replace all commas including leading / following blanks just by one blank - I propose this also for the Garmin specific kurviger-export. Result: Full name shown in map view:

RP_without_comma

Map_without_comma

Regards Markus

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Interesting, thanks @rumbrummer. I wasn’t aware of any issues with commas. I will have a look to see if we can change that for the Kurviger Garmin Export as well.

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Hi Community, I new here hope to find a solution to my problem. My problem is that frankly speaking, I don’t like Base Camp at all. Can a Kurviger route be transformed to fit a NAVIGATOR VI without going through Base Camp ? I have seen http://www.sdesimeur.com/gmap_xxx/gmap2xxx/ but I don’t know if it allows to skip Base Camp ? Any clue ? Many thanks, Peter

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I just moved your question to the relevant thread. please have a look at the current topic.