[SOLVED] Windows/Online tool to change the route of a GPX file?

General talk
1

Hello,

After following a pre-planned GPX route on a bike, I’d like to move parts of it if it turned out there was a better alternative.

I’ve tried RideWithGPS and (deadware) GpsTrackEditor, but they won’t let me change some part of a route: I can only upload/open a file without actually changing a route to make it go through a different way.

Is there a Windows or web-based solution?

Thank you.

2

You could use Basecamp for that task https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uDnxRpjfKo

3

Or online https://www.bikemap.net
Upload the track, change him and download the new one.

4

cycle.travel has an experimental upload feature which might do what you want: http://cycle.travel/user/upload_route (you’ll need to be logged in)

5

nevw > You could use Basecamp

Thanks. I don’t like Garmin’s BaseCamp, but will check it out again if there’s no better alternative.

janus007 > Or online https://www.bikemap.net. Upload the track, change him and download the new one.

  1. 1/3 of the screen needlessly taken by “Enter a title for your route”
  2. No CTRL-Z to cancel last edit
  3. To edit a track to make it go through another way, each waypoint must be moved manually. Very time consuming

Richard > cycle.travel has an experimental upload feature which might do what you want: http://cycle.travel/user/upload_route (you’ll need to be logged in)

Just what the doctor ordered!

Still, I’m surprised I had to ask: Am I really the only user in this entire world who needs to edit a GPX file downloaded from the Net ? :confused:

Thanks mucho.

6

In Bikemap you can make a total new track in 5min.
Changing a old one takes sometime, and yes you have to give the track a name before you can download it.
Did you clich the button “full screen” ?

7

I didn’t find a Full Screen button. But anyway, the problem is 1) that window cannot be hidden and is taking way too much screen real estate and 2) it’s way too slow if I have to manually move waypoints instead of simply pulling the route to go through another way.

Besides Cycle.travel and BaseCamp, it looks like QGis supports editing a GPX file, but I don’t like it either because it’s a beast.

As for JOSM, I haven’t found if it supports pulling a route to make it go through a different way: Apparently, after opening a GPX file and turning it into a data layer, 1) JOSM is unable to simply jump and follow a way like when you plan a route originally, and 2) you have to manully move each and every node that make a track:

–
Edit: RideWithGPS supports editing an existing GPX:

  1. Upload GPX

  2. Copy to My Routes > Edit Copy

–
Edit: JOSM is unable to snap to a new road (“You can’t “pull” it to go a different route. JOSM is not a routing engine. You have to move every node yourself.”)

8

I have a similar workflow, but none of the tools worked for me:
I have planned a cylce trip of ~3000 km (~50000 gpx points). I watch it on different maps and in Google Earth and sometimes I decide that
an alternative way might be better. So I create a new gpx track for that alternative and now I want to replace the corresponding part
of my old trip with the new one. It is possible with GPX Editor [1], but quite a lot of mouse clicks are needed to remove overlaps and
join the parts, and this tool tends to make errors when combining parts :-(, so I sometimes use a simple text editor to do that.

I should be rather simple to code a (batch) program which does this, maybe I’ll do that before I plan my next trip.

[1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/gpxeditor/?source=directory

9

What about uploading the GPX to RideWithGPS, and simply moving the parts you want?*

This is what I wanted to do after a ride to edit some sections, either because I actually went through a different route, or the planned route didn’t look good in the real world.

I don’t record tracks because the GPS already sucks up a lot of juice.

  • You might want to slice that 3.000km ride into smaller files, though. The defunct GpsTrackEditor does this very well
10

If I got that right RideWithGPS only allows editing when you pay a monthly fee. Did I miss something?

11

I use JOSM or Basecamp for this. With JOSM the advantage is that it has a whole bunch of layers (satellite images, free topographic sources, OSM layers, Strava etc). You can convert your gpx track into a layer and split it, combine it with other gpx tracks etc. It does not route though but for small sections you can draw a route manually. For very quick editing and routing I use Garmin’s Mapsource but it is very limited compared to Basecamp.

12

When I have made a gpx track in Ridewithgps, I drop it in JOSM to fine-tune it.
You dont need to move all points to the other road. Just cut it and remove that unwanted part.
And draw some new points, for a track it does not have to be so accurate anyway, just four new points will do.
For small adjustments this works fine:

13

But I don’t think you see the elevation gain in JOSM?

14

OK off topic, just in case someone wants to code a new GPX editor, here is my whishlist:

  • show elevation profile, at least when the gpx data has ele tags.
  • show background layers like JOSM
  • allow to split gpx track into n parts or into parts with ~m points so that the GPS can handle them better
  • easy merging of two tracks (split old track at first and last connection, replace the old part by the new part)
  • easy removement of short spikes (where the track goes like a-b-c-d-c-b-e-f…).
  • export to kml format
  • detection of steep segments : sometimes routers prefer a shorter but steeper path as shortcut instead of following the road,
    and normally I prefer to follow the road
  • hotkey to enable / disable the display of the gpx track so that the underlying background is shown. This would make it easier to see
    what type of road you are on.
  • allow to select a point in the elevation profile and zoom to that place

None of my tools allows to do all those tasks. Maybe this could be done in a new JOSM plugin?

15

@Gerd, nice task when you are done with mkgmap? :wink:
@Janus, yep but there are other tools to lookup elevation easily.

16

Are you sure that there is elevation info in JOSM?

17

There is no information in JOSM, but you can import data in various formats, both vector and geo-referenced raster images.

18

I dont mean tools in JOSM, but other sites like Javawa Rtwtool, gpsvisualizer etc