Most of the menu options are quite obvious if you know that the main purpose of the application is to display maps and to find routes. We have therefore added this "Quick Start" chapter which summarises what can be done WITHOUT using the menu.

Use the TAB button to switch between the map and the route description. You can also use the pen on the first two buttons on the Toolbar:

• the first switches between the full-screen map and the full-screen table.
• the second switches between the "split" view and full-screen table.

The indicators in the toolbar show the current level of detail (roads, cities, districts, and scale). You can use the pen on these indicators to change the detail of the map window. You can also use the following keys:

+ and - for more/less roads

> and < for more/less names (of cities and districts)

i and o to zoom in/out

A lot of options make use of the cursor (e.g. "set cursor as destination", "add new location at cursor", "name the road closest to the cursor" etc.

The crosshair cursor is turned on and off using the ENTER key (or the "mode" button on the toolbar). You can move it around using the arrow keys or the pen.

If the crosshair cursor is disabled, the arrow keys can be used to scroll the map. You can also click near the edges of the map with your 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.

If the crosshair is disabled, you can find the name of a location or road simply by pointing to it with your pen. Whether locations or roads are found depends on what menu option was used last: "Name closest location" (Ctrl-L) or "name closest road" (Ctrl-W).

If the crosshair is enabled, you can use the "Set..." button on the toolbar to use the cursor location as departure, destination, or stop over. You can also use the "Plan" button directly and type the names of the departure, destination and stopovers (or select them from the alphabetical browsers).

Once you have planned a route, you can use the spacebar to enable or disable a route indicator. The LEFT/RIGHT arrow keys move it along your route. The UP/DOWN arrow keys also move it, but will stick to either locations or roads.

When you are in the "split" view, the indicator will follow the cursor in the table view and vice verse.

Route Planner has 3 main views:

• the Map view - showing a road map
• the Table view - showing driving instructions
• the Split view - showing both the road map & driving instructions

As in most applications you can 'zoom' the text displayed in the different views by pressing CTRL-M and SHIFT-CTRL-M respectively, by using the zoom buttons at the side of the screen, or by using the menu options ‘Zoom font in’ or ‘Zoom font out’.

Zooming a section of the map can be done in a number of ways. One way is to select one of the "Zoom..." options from the ‘Map’ menu. You can also use the CTRL-I or CTRL-O, or press ‘I’ or ‘O’ without pressing the CTRL key. Finally, you can click on the "scale" indicator in the toolbar.

• Quickest, shortest or preferred route
• Adding stopovers
• Avoiding areas
• Setting average road speeds
• Setting road preferences
• Route display preferences

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.

‘Departure’, ‘Destination’ and ‘Via’ can each be set in a similar way. Selecting the point of departure will be taken as an example.

1. Choose the ‘Plan route’ option from the menu or toolbar.

2. Select, which type of route you, wish find: Quickest, Shortest or Preferred.

3. Specify the departure, destination and any stopovers by typing (part of) the name of each locations. At any time you can press TAB (or click the "browse" button) to get a dialogue similar to the one shown in Fig. 3. As you type, locations starting with the characters you type will be highlighted. You can also use the arrow keys or the pen.

4. Press Enter when the location name you want is highlighted.

Important:
If you cannot find the name of a location 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 typing "Manhattan" will find the CITY Manhattan. To find the New York district with the same name type: "New York Manhattan".

1. Select the ‘Set cursor as…’ option from the ‘Route’ menu or click the "Set..." button on the toolbar.

2. Choose whether the cursor should be set as Departure, Destination, or as Stopover (1-4).

3. Press Enter

Using the current cursor position allows you to set unnamed nodes as departure, destination or stopover.

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 your ‘Car speed’ settings per road type. The preferred route is planned in such a way that it takes into account which types of road you prefer to drive on. See also next section "Trip planning tips".

You can plan your return trip simply by selecting ‘Quickest return trip’, ‘Shortest return trip’ or ‘Preferred return trip’ in the ‘Plan route’ dialogue.

Before planning a route, you can specify area's to be avoided. See next paragraph.

• If you wish to plan a ‘Preferred route’, don't forget to specify your preferences using the "Set Preferences" menu option.
• If you wish to plan a ‘Quickest route’, don't forget to specify your average car speed using the "Set Preferences" menu option. To obtain reliable estimates, make sure these are average speeds. See end of this chapter.
• If you enable the preference ‘Always zoom to planned route’, Route Planner will automatically zoom to the section of the map that displays the entire route that has just been planned.

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. Choose the ‘Avoid area’ option from the ‘Route’ menu.

2. A rectangle will appear on the map. Use the arrow keys to position the rectangle, or the arrow keys with Fn to resize it. You can also use the pen to move or resize the rectangle.

3. Press Enter (or click the "Set area" button on the toolbar).

• Press Shift and an arrow keys to take smaller steps;
• Press Control and an arrow keys to take larger steps.

Note: Only locations 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.

1. To remove a specific area, first position your cursor near this greyed area.

2. Select the ‘Clear area(s)’ option from the ‘Route’ menu.

3. Specify which areas to clear.

4. Press Enter.

To allow Route Planner to determine the quickest route for you (and to obtain a reliable estimation of the total duration of trips) you should enter the average speed (which is usually not the maximum speed you are allowed to drive) you attain on the different road types.

1. elect the ‘Set preferences’ menu option.

2. Select ‘Car speeds…’
3. Provide the values for your average speed on each road type.
4. Press Enter.

Here you can indicate how much you like or dislike driving on certain road types. When calculating the ‘Preferred route’ Route Planner will take these settings into account.

1. Select the ‘Set preferences’ menu option.

2. Select ‘Preferred roads…’

3. Set your relative preference for each road type (respectively more to the left or more to the right).

4. Press Enter.

Technical note: The scale is meant only as an intuitive one. For example, you dislike city roads, but you do like dual carriage highways. So for city roads you indicate maximum dislike and for double highways you indicate maximum preference. The effect of these settings is that Route Planner will rather do 16 miles on a road you like (the double highways) than 1 mile on a road you dislike (city roads in this example).

To select the distance unit you are used to:

1. Select the ‘Set preferences’ menu option.

2. Arrow down to the line ‘Units of measurement’.

3. Select either kilometres or miles.

4. Press Enter.

1. Select the ‘Set preferences’ menu option.

2. Select ‘Preferred roads…’

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

4. Press Enter.

This setting determines whether or not Route Planner will automatically zoom to a planned route once it has planned it. You can also do this manually at any time:

1. Select the option ‘Zoom to’ from the ‘View’ menu.

2. Select ‘Route’.

3. Press Enter.

The Split view shows both the driving instructions and the planned route on the map. Change this setting to ‘Yes’ to let the route indicator follow the planned route on the map as you browse through the driving instructions.

Note: To switch to the indicator mode on/off press Space. See indicator mode section.

• Moving around in the Map view
• Finding locations
• Adding or ‘Memorising’ locations
• Focusing on particular areas
• Detail & display possibilities

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.

A flashing crosshair indicates that you are in "cursor mode". The cursor allows you to point to specific items on your screen. Many options make use of the cursor.

• Pressing Shift and one of the arrow keys to take smaller steps;
• Pressing Control and one of the arrowkeys to take larger steps.

To switch between ‘Cursor mode’ and ‘Scroll mode’ press Enter, or click the "Mode" button on the toolbar.

No cursor is visible in this mode. The arrow keys can now be used to scroll the whole window. You can also scroll by clicking with your pen near the edges of the map. Clicking anywhere else on the map will find the closest location or road (see "Naming places on the map").

Once you have planned a route, you can use the spacebar to enable or disable a route indicator. The LEFT/RIGHT arrow keys move it along your route. The UP/DOWN arrow keys also move it, but will stick to either locations or roads.

When you are in the "split" view, the indicator will follow the cursor in the table view and vice verse.

1. Select the ‘Zoom to’ option from the ‘View’ menu.

2. Choose ‘Full map’.

3. Press Enter.

The country (or group of countries) will now be displayed so that it fits on the screen in its entirety. See previous figure, showing Europe. A number of detail settings will be automatically changed. See further on as described for the zoom to ‘Maximum precision’ option. For most countries, no detail will be shown, just the outlines, when fully zoomed out.

1. Select the ‘Zoom to’ option from ‘View’ menu.

2. Choose ‘Rectangle’.

3. Use the arrow keys to position the rectangle above the area on which you want to focus. You can adjust the size of the rectangle using the ‘<’ and ‘>’ keys. You can also change the position and size using the pen.

4. Press Enter, or click the bottom toolbar button.

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

1. Select the ‘Zoom to’ option from the ‘View’ menu.

2. Choose ‘Maximum precision’.

3. Press ‘Enter’.

The effect of using ‘Maximum precision’ is that a number of settings affecting your view of the map are set simultaneously. ‘Road detail’ will be set to ‘100%’, ‘City detail’ will be set to ‘All’ and ‘Screen height’ will be set to the minimum value. The resulting display will show a "close up" of the map, centred on your cursor, showing as much detail as possible.

1. Select the ‘Zoom to’ option from the ‘View’ menu.

2. Choose ‘Route’.

3. Press Enter.

Tip:
If you want to always automatically zoom to a route as soon as it has been planned, enable the option ‘Always zoom to planned route’ in the preferences.

In Cursor mode (i.e. when the crosshair is displayed), use the menu options "Name closest location" or "Name closest road" (Ctrl-L and Ctrl-W). If you aren't in cursor mode, it's even simpler: simply click with your pen. Whether locations or roads are named depends on whether "Name closest location" or "Name closest road" was the last option you chose.

Route Planner will keep displaying names until you clear them, either by clicking on them with your pen, or by using the "Clear names" menu option.

With ‘Memorise cursor’ you can assign locations to the numeric keys 0-9. Later you can easily "jump" to that location by pressing the correct numeric key.

To memorise current cursor location:

1. Select the ‘Memorise cursor’ option from the ‘Find’ menu.

2. Choose which key location should be assigned to (0-9).

3. Provide a name for the location.

4. Press Enter.

The name you have provided will be shown as a corner flash message.

1. Select the ‘Go to location’ option from the ‘Find’ menu.

2. Type the name of the place you wish to find. A few letters are usually enough, since you can also use the arrow keys to scroll through the list.

1. Press Enter to confirm selected name.

Note: To delete the last letter you have just typed press Delete, to clear the entire location name and go back to the top of the list press the left arrow key (¬ ).

1. Select the ‘Go to co-ordinates’ option from the ‘Find’ menu.

2. The dialogue will show the co-ordinates of the current cursor location. Simply enter longitude and latitude.

3. Press Enter.

The cursor will jump to that location, (provided that these co-ordinates are within the boundaries of the countries supported by your Route Planner database).

1. Select the ‘Go to overlay’ option from the ‘Find’ menu.

2. Select the overlay file in which you want to search.

3. Type (part of) the name of the location contained by this file. If there is more than one name matching, Route Planner will offer you a choice list of those names.

4. Select the name and press Enter.

1. Select the ‘Find closest overlay’ option from the ‘Find’ menu.

2. Select overlay.

3. Press Enter.

The cursor will jump to the nearest location indicated by the overlay and its name will be shown as a corner flash message.

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

In this way you can build your own collection of overlay files by adding or deleting locations to existing overlay files or by creating new overlay files. For each of these files 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.

Use ‘Memorise cursor’ to assign a position on the map to one of the numeric keys (0-9). This is typically useful for memorising locations used often as destination or point of departure. See "Going to places on the Map".

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

To make such a collection visible:

1. Choose ‘Open overlay file’ option from the ‘Overlay’ menu options.

2. Select the overlay file you want.

3. Press Enter.

Note that there is a "Legend" menu option to display a legend for each overlay file currently open.

To start a new collection of locations:

1. Choose the ‘New overlay file’ option from ‘Overlay’ menu.

2. Provide a name for your overlay file and indicate on which disk you want it to be saved.

3. Press Enter.

You have now created a new empty overlay file, to which you can add locations. See "Editing existing overlays".

You may wish to edit an existing overlay file by adding new locations or deleting locations that are no longer of interest. This can be done in the following way.

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

1. Move your cursor to the desired location on the map.

2. Choose ‘Add location’ from the ‘Overlay’ menu.

3. 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.

1. Move your cursor to the desired location on the map.

2. Choose ‘Delete location’ option from the ‘Overlay’ menu.

You can manipulate all of the most important aspects of the Map view using the option ‘Detail…’ from the ‘View’ menu, or by using your pen on the indicators in the toolbar.

Detail can be set between 0-100%; the lowest level showing 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.

Note: You can increase or decrease the level of road detail displayed by using the ‘+’ and ‘-‘ keys.

You can determine which 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.

Note: You can increase or decrease the level of city detail displayed using the’ >’ and ‘<’ keys. Pressing ‘>’ repeatedly will increase city detail until it has reached maximum detail and then continue by adding more and more district detail.

Large cities > 500.000 inhabitants

Medium cities > 100.000 inhabitants

Small cities > 50.000 inhabitants

Town > 20.000 inhabitants

Village > 5.000 inhabitants

Small village > 1.000 inhabitants

Tiny village < 1.000 inhabitants

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

Note: The hot keys ‘>’ and ‘<’ will increase/decrease city detail. Once city detail is displayed at maximum detail, pressing ‘>’ again will increase district detail.

Note: Districts are not available for all countries.

Use ‘I’ and ‘O’ instead of using the menu options as hot keys to zoom in or out.

This switches the display to mode emphasising city roads.

You can enable several types of legends from the "View" menu. Legends can be moved around using the pen.

Once you have planned a route you can read the driving instructions by using the Toolbar options "Map/Table", or "Split" to switch between the views

You can change the font size, number of columns and choose various forms of driving instructions.

Use Tab to alternate between left and right screen when in Split view.

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 locations or roads.

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

Pressing Enter will pop up a dialogue displaying the full instructions in a large font.

To change the instruction:

1. Select the option ‘Instruction type’ from ‘Table’ the menu.

2. Choose the type of instructions you need and press Enter.

Use ¬ or ® for horizontal scrolling.

Use Tab to switch between different instruction types. (Only in Table view, NOT in Split view.)

The major differences between the various instruction types are:

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

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

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

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

Will display all instructions in a formally structured table, each type of information is in a separate column.

To change which columns are being shown:

1. Select from ‘Table’ the menu option ‘Configure columns’.

2. Enable or disable columns listed in the dialogue.

3. Press Enter.