Nuvi 350 route planning

According to the garmin site the 350 does not handle routes so you have to navigate between waypoints stored as favorites or custom POI. Also, the 350 is not water resistant and not recommended for motorcycle use. If you can return it, you may want to look at the 550 as it is designed to be water resistant and does routes. It is also labeled as motorcycle compatible.

to use it inside a Givi sat nav holder that protects the instrument and attaches to the bike so saves having to spend a fortune on motorbike specific sat navs. Also the 350 was up for a good price.

I will have a look at the 550 and see if I can fob the 350 off on my wife

I use my 350 on a Goldwing with no difficulty whatsoever. A plastic case or alternative is good to weather protect it.

The Nuvi 350 only allows 1 waypoint so doing a complex route is complex. I generally wander in an area, knowing that getting home is no difficulty when I want to (or any other location).

It is possible to construct a series of destinations which you store as a favorite & then sequentially head to each of them.

Try it. You may not find it so onerous.

Fred

Thanks Fred

I`ll see if I can work out how to do that.

The 350/360 does NOT support routing.

If I am plotting out a longer trip, or want to deviate from the GPS-proposed track, I simply add waypoints to the FAVORITES category and navigate from point to point to point. Not quite as elegant as the routing function (on my 760), but it does the same thing. You could perform this pre-trip planning on Google, Mapsource, Mapquest, Nuvi, etc.

I found something interesting on Mapquest this past week. I haven't had a chance to demo it in detail:

Create a route in Mapquest from Pt A to Pt B. (You can drag the blue routing line to tweak the route to your liking...you can also do this in Google maps.) You then use the "SEND TO" button at the top of the page and say "send to GPS". I then see a new dialogue box that asks if you want to send X waypoints OR route to GPS, then you select the radio button. I'm not sure if this is a technique to add multiple waypoints in one shot to a 350/360. I'll try to demo it this evening and figure out if it works.

I have the latest version of Garmin Communicator.

it has been my experience that while you can drag the route to your preference, and then send it to your nuvi, when you then import the route, the nuvi recalculates it anyway.

the only way around this that I have found, is to right click on the dot that represents the new intersection that the dragged route goes through, and make it a viapoint or waypoint, I can't recall which they call it.

this will cause the nuvi to indeed follow your preferred route, because it will be going through those waypoints, but it will also annouce it's arrival at each one.

disclaimer: this is how it works with my 765T which does support waypoints and routes...not sure if this will work for models that don't allow them to be entered on the unit.

Ahh, thanks for the heads-up on that. I didn't realize the Nuvi was doing that.

OK, I've just tried this on my 360, and even though Mapquest says it's sending 5 waypoints to the unit, it only pickups up the start and end points...the via points I added don't appeared to be transferred

I guess the route feature must be supported by the model in question for the Mapquest route and waypoints to be used then.

maybe someone else here can confirm that

one other point...though I have not tried this, I read in a post here a few months ago, that you can create a route in Garmin's Mapsource (not to be confused with Mapquest), and send it to your nuvi, and that there is a utility called UnFlag that apparently removes the spoken arrivals at each waypoint created to force the route.

has anyone had success with that approach, and is it worth the effort?

I don't understand how a 350 series Nuvi could store more than the 1 waypoint that Garmin says is the max waypoints. It must be a hardware/software limitation of these systems.

Fred

I didn't want to state that myself, as the 765T is my first GPS unit, and I am still learning from everyone here.

but that certainly sounds logical

I use the unflag utility on every custom route I create. Works very fast and I've never had a problem with it. It does exactly what it says - it removes all the extra flags on the screen and the spoken announcements from the via points so you don't get annoyed with all the announcements as you pass through an intersection. It does not affect any waypoints that you designated.
UnFlag will turn this route:
http://cdn-2-service.phanfare.com/images/external/2897704_15...

into this route:
http://cdn-2-service.phanfare.com/images/external/2897704_15...

was I correct in stating that it works with Mapsource but maybe not MapQuest?

I have not yet learned my way around Mapsource, but I believe I tried using UnFlag with MapQuest once and it didn't work....but that may have been an error on my part.

anyone else have success using UnFlag with MapQuest?

The 350 doesn't do route planning, sounds like you'd rather plan a route based on interesting points than just getting there. In the meantime, try setting your avoidances (toll roads, maybe) and try checking "Shorter Distance" to keep you off the freeways.