Zumo User Forums

I am looking forward to taking a ride this afternoon and decided to shorten a route that I have on my XT. I figured I could just load it, save a copy, then shape the copy. Well, I was able to do that, but it was way harder than I expected it would be. I was surprised to find that a recalculation had to occur following each shaping point deletion or addition (very slow each time for a rural 2 hour ride). Worse though was the randomness that the XT routed between the added shaping points. It made no sense, and the 'Optimize route' option was greyed out. A second attempt produced the route I wanted but I don't have a clue what I did differently. I'm not looking for any help. I'm just sharing the experience and acknowledging the proverb ""if at first you don't succeed, try, try again". But, it just shouldn't be so hard!

I gave up long ago trying to figure out how to shape a route on my XT. It never seems to behave the same way twice. I'll either just make a new route on the device, or I'll pick a spot I want to go to while a route is active and tell it to make it the next stop.

The 'shape route' button adds shaping points and it makes 'intelligent' guesses as to where the shaping point should be placed relative to the Via Point.

Eg if you have Viapoints Start, V1, V2, V3 and End and you place a shaping point on a road which to the Zumo looks as though it should be between V1 and V2 - then that is where it will place it.

Start, V1, S1, V2, V3, End

That seems logical - and it may or may not do that - depending on how it works out that the shaping point should be somewhere between V1 and V2. It's logic will likely not be the same as your logic. You don't tell it where the route point should be relative to V1 , V2 and V3. It guesses.

You could use the trip list to edit points - but it will not let you move shaping points about. It it will let you move vias between the shaping points - but since you do not get to name the shaping points ......

And you can make shaping points into vias (without it altering their position). And you can make vias into shaping points - but the XT may move them backwards onto the nearest faster road.

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I agree - the add shaping point feature was developed - I guess - to try to get away from mapping apps on phones. It didn't work very well though on small screens, not instantly responding to finger presses (if at all), in the rain, for people with big fingers. I tried many times when bored to find a better way to make use of the facility - without success. For me, it was not fit for purpose.

I found that the quickest way to create a route on the XT was to browse the map, and plant a flag - ie a Saved location or a Favourite. In fact a Waypoint. It makes life easier if you name with to include a sequence numbers

Then build a route using Add a location and select your waypoint from the Saved/Favourite lists.

Saving waypoints first - save the route at regular intervals. Just keep adding them - and if the points are numbered it is easy to re-order them using the trip list. The route points keep the name that you give them (cos they are waypoints), and because you built it on the XT screen, it never has any routing issues.

I found that doing it any other way risked me tapping the wrong button and it forgetting everything that I had done. And if I had a 12 point route, it would wait until the 11th before it lost everything.

rbentnail wrote: Sun May 17, 2026 2:25 am I gave up long ago trying to figure out how to shape a route on my XT. It never seems to behave the same way twice.

The was my experience. Attempt number two resulted in the expected result whereas attempt number one produced a route that made no sense at all. Thinking about it now, I'll bet that during attempt one, I attempted to add multiple points at once before realizing a calculation occurs after every change. This actually makes sense. The algorithm should be able to identify existing route points on either side of the added one and then calculate through it. Attempting to add multiple, without any way to sequence them (which there isn't), would require the algorithm to guess at the sequence. That would explain what I saw on attempt one.

The calculation after every change can make the process very tedious though. In my case I ended up removing one via and three shaping, and adding five shaping. Each calculation took many seconds, maybe as many as 10. That doesn't sound like much, but there is a lot of map zooming and viewing in between each route point addition. The end result was a 116 mile route.

Peobody wrote: Sun May 17, 2026 2:57 pm

rbentnail wrote: Sun May 17, 2026 2:25 am I gave up long ago trying to figure out how to shape a route on my XT. It never seems to behave the same way twice.

Thinking about it now, I'll bet that during attempt one, I attempted to add multiple points at once before realizing a calculation occurs after every change. This actually makes sense. The algorithm should be able to identify existing route points on either side of the added one and then calculate through it. Attempting to add multiple, without any way to sequence them (which there isn't), would require the algorithm to guess at the sequence. That would explain what I saw on attempt one.

Basecamp follows the same logic if you have three way / shaping points that cover a couple of miles and take out the middle one, inside of a long route, then it'll still recalculate the whole 2500+ miles route.

Oop North John wrote: Sun May 17, 2026 7:09 pm Basecamp follows the same logic if you have three way / shaping points that cover a couple of miles and take out the middle one, inside of a long route, then it'll still recalculate the whole 2500+ miles route.

Good point. I should have made clear that the route I was shaping was a calculated route. As such, I did not have to worry about changes happening to the part of the route I didn't touch, which was most of it. Picture this... My original route was oval-shaped and somewhere near 200 miles long. My goal was to shorten the oval. That required five new shaping points which is where the funky routing occurred on attempt one.