OptiMap version 4 is here
New user interface
Hold down shift while pressing reload to make sure the page fully reloads if OptiMap appears broken.
The first thing you’ll notice is a complete makeover of the user interface. The functionality has grown considerably since I first posted OptiMap in 2007, and the controls were scattered randomly around. Now, they are organized into neat little drawers on the left, in the order you are likely to be using them.
There is some new functionality as well. The ‘Edit Route’ section gives you the chance to re-order the trip after it has been computed. Have to visit one client first? No problem, drag to the top. You can also delete stops from the itinerary here.
OptiMap 4 also has a more powerful TSP solver routine. The new solver kicks in when there are more than 15 stops, and produces better and more robust solutions than the old engine. It is guaranteed to perform better than before, and in some hard cases I’ve tested, it improved the solutions by as much as 6-7%. That means that if you spent 8 hours on the road before, you now get home half an hour earlier.
Support for Garmin GPS units is now added as well. Support is experimental, since I only had access to one Garmin device, which did not support routes. I’m interested to hear whether this works on your device if you have a Garmin GPS.
There are some bug fixes as well: When pasting data from Excel spreadsheets into the bulk add box, the cell delimiters were lost. This is fixed. The print function used to show half a page of unnecessary white space at the bottom, thus it sometimes would print blank pages at the end. This is fixed so you won’t be wasting paper needlessly any more.
As a bonus, you may now access the service from a shorter address: www.optimap.net (the old address will continue to work, and the page will remain identical)
I hope you enjoy the update! Please post questions, feedback, bugs and suggestions here. I’m sure I broke something during the update…
January 25th, 2012 at 21:38
Hi, quick question does optimap require a certain browser? ie 8 or 9? My problem is that my company computer i use has ie 7 installed and the map portion doesnt show up. Any thoughts would be great. Thanks.
January 25th, 2012 at 22:31
I wasn’t aware of a browser restriction. Did OptiMap work before for you? I’ll check to see what I can find. I’ve tested on Chrome, Firefox and Safari, but IE isn’t available for macs, so I can’t easily test it.
January 25th, 2012 at 22:35
I did some searching, and found a guy who had a problem similar to yours:
“Do you have IE enhanced security turned on? We recently were scratching our heads over problem #1 until we added the following sites to IE’s list of not-restricted (e.g., trusted) sites:
- http://*.google.com
- http://*.googleapis.com
- http://*.gstatic.com ”
Maybe it helps?
January 27th, 2012 at 08:34
Thanks Geir.
I have been using your TSP Solver on my iPad and Garmin GPS while doing a trail delivery network in Brisbane Australia. V4 looks good, more stable, a little quicker and more robust. Safari on iPad runs out of memory at about 25-30 stops.
Again Thanks.
p.s. Look forward to the Garmin export.
January 27th, 2012 at 09:05
Thanks for the report. I’ll see if there’s anywhere I can save some memory and I hope to have the Garmin code ready this weekend.
January 30th, 2012 at 12:25
Garmin code is added, but it’s experimental. The device I tested on had no support for routes, so the route export feature is untested. There is an option to just export waypoints, which works on most units, but is a bit cumbersome to use.
January 30th, 2012 at 23:47
The export to Google Maps is helpful thanks! If you could show the trip time between locations it would be very helpful! (now i currently export to Google maps to accomplish this)
February 2nd, 2012 at 16:27
Does anyone know a api that can convert the route data to other formats for other devices?
@gebweb, do you code custom solutions for paying clients, i may be interested. Can you please contact me?
February 8th, 2012 at 18:26
Love this program. However, the latitudes and longitudes when you export the “Toggle Raw Path Output” are often different than the latitudes and longitudes that are bulk entered. This makes it difficult to compare what was entered with the resulting output.
Is there a way to make the longitude and latitude “Raw Path Output” data match what was bulk added?
Or perhaps a “Calculate As Entered” functionality could be added so that the “Raw Path Output” can first be associated with the data that is bulk entered. The “Fastest Route” could then be calculated and compared to the revised latitudes and longitudes that the program uses.
February 9th, 2012 at 10:33
Hi,
I think adding labels to each lat, lng pair is more efficient than trying to match them with the original data. There is a way to do this, albeit a bit cumbersome, with the http interface and the name parameter. E.g http://www.optimap.net/?loc0=(60.0,10.0)&name0=home&loc1=(60.1,10.0)&name1=geocache1 . I’ll try to come up with a way to add labels to the user interface, but as always, user interface is my weakest side…
Geir
February 18th, 2012 at 20:53
A simple but useful output would just be a list of the ordered stop addresses without the driving directions. One additional column of output information would also be helpful: the position index from the bulk added input list.
February 19th, 2012 at 19:53
Hi,
Really liked the new look and options. It would be really great to have the option to add label. I would think a three column setup of lat, long, label would be very user friendly.
If it is difficult to split, you could add an option to label upload that would correspond to the lat long in the same sequence.
From new stuff, the ability to give an input of number of vehicles available would be great. Not sure how complicated the model becomes. It is something that a lot of people planning multiple routes would need.