Route Planning Questions

[rgleason]

In planning routes I have found some questions.

1. Where is the default speed set? Which menu? Don't find it under Own Ship. Every time I open a route it changes to 6 rather than the 5 that I've set. Is it necessary to change back to 6knots?
2. In route properties screen How do I get the "Next Tide Event" to show?
3. ETD shows blank however I did enter Date and Time of Departure and @LocalPC in the summary line 3 from the top.
4. Shouldn't ETD then be filled in? Or does it work some other way?

I was wondering if the route could be calculated with the tides, to show revised and more accurate ETE "Estimated time and Enroute"?


I think Mike has a plugin that does some of this but I have not investigated it enough.

We need to update this part of the manual it is out of date!
https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/do...ger#plan_speed


and the screenshots.

[P_Dub]

Otidalplan of Mike does the job nicely, providing you have the current file in your tcdata.
Bye

[CarCode]

How many years you are working with OpenCPN now?
And now think of a new user or someone using it only a few times a year during his holydays.
He will be completely lost to find anything because the software is not userfriendly and not self explaining. I am afraid a manual does not help too much.



1. Goto the first settings page.
2. In the settings of the waypoint of the route the nearest tide station must be set.
3./4. I use ETA and not ETD. ETA is for me Expected Time of Arrival and ETD might be Expected Time of Departure (?).

[rgleason]

Thanks Carcode, I think its been 9 years, similar to many of this great community.

I think it would have taken a long time for me to find that in Waypoints. I completely forgotten that the tide station has to be set.

ETD Expected Time of Departure - for when to leave.
ETA Estimated Time of Arrival - for when to arrive.
These are almost the same because you will find the ETA of one leg is the ETD of the next.

Your points are reasonable, we are trying to get the plugin documentation working better in the stream of development and edited by the devs and those who can contribute with git commits. (You will be able to do this I hope) And Yes, I and others would like to get the main program documentation streamlined and updated too.

We don't intend to be user unfriendly and I hope you are overstating the situation.

Originally Posted by CarCode

How many years you are working with OpenCPN now?
And now think of a new user or someone using it only a few times a year during his holidays.
He will be completely lost to find anything because the software is not userfriendly and not self explaining. I am afraid a manual does not help too much.

1. Goto the first settings page.
2. In the settings of the waypoint of the route the nearest tide station must be set.
3./4. I use ETA and not ETD. ETA is for me Expected Time of Arrival and ETD might be Expected Time of Departure (?).

PS: I had to go into opencpn.ini and set

"PlanSpeed=5"

I think this should be brought into the user interface and put in "Own Ship" as a default setting.

I am not at all convinced that it should override ANY previous setting that is different, but it should be used as a default for blank or incompleted speeds

[P_Dub]

If you open the properties of the route you can set the speed you want on any leg course by clicking on the speed column of each line. Also, you can change in the speed set at top bar line for all at the same time.

[rgleason]

PSS: Every waypoint has to have its closest tide point manually selected. I wish that was more or less automatically completed base on the leg approximately, except when manually over-riden. We need better documentation here I think.

@Pdub Yes, however when you close and reopen, the boat speed changes back to the opencpn.ini setting say, "PlanSpeed=10" or whatever is there. I don't think this should happen.

Regarding otide you seem to pick a pre-established route to follow, name a new route, pick the tide folder to use, Set how many departure times, and then pick DR or ETA and select the Route for currents, and when a message says it calculated, you go to Routes at the top and pick "Route Tables" or Route Summary is better where you can see results, even with start times spaced 1 hour apart.

What I did note was the both Opencpn Route Manager and Oitideplan has the same arrival time for the first example, as shown below. I wonder if both are using tides to calculate ETA or ETD. I don't think so, but that raises some questions.


The second image is otideplan only.

[P_Dub]

It does not seems that you have the current connected to your route, that is probably why you have the same arrival time. You need to connect to the current predictions and not to the tidal predictions. As far as keeping the time you must keep your route ETA calculated until you arrive.
Bye

[rgleason]

Right.
I found the New Routes and took one and tried to apply the current to the first waypoint. There was no change. Then I tried to apply other currents. There was no change. This seems to be very tedious, why not automatically select by location?
I am not going to do this for every route becuase it would take a day.

[bdbcat]

Rick...
@Pdub Yes, however when you close and reopen, the boat speed changes back to the opencpn.ini setting say, "PlanSpeed=10" or whatever is there. I don't think this should happen.


This sounds like a bug.
I'll take a look.


On your other point:

Automatically finding a tide station that is "close" to your drawn route point is not a trivial thing. How close is "close enough"? Many OCPN users are in parts of the world with no nearby tide stations at all. I think you will agree that Florida tide stations are of no use at all in Brazil. And all of us can find places for which a "close" tide station is just plain wrong in the harmonics.
So the navigationally conservative approach is taken. If you know a particular tide station near your route is reliable, then enter it manually.


Thanks
Dave

[CarCode]

What about to make the boat speed setting at the right place (e.g. Own Ship settings) so the user is able to find it? Too many things in this software are not intuitive.

[Rasbats]

Trying to clarify the oTidalPlan (beta) situation...

P_Dub has been testing an update to oTidalPlan.

This version uses the boat speeds from the route table, which can be entered at each waypoint. Not yet in the beta catalog. The experimental version (0.9) is here:

https://cloudsmith.io/~opencpn/repos...lpha/packages/

The github wiki has not yet been updated.

Mike

[P_Dub]

Mike, it works great one must learn of how to use it. I was checking it over the last few days and my estimation for ETA was within 5 minutes for 120 miles routing, so I don't thing anyone can do better.
Have a good day.

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by rgleason

We don't intend to be user unfriendly and I hope you are overstating the situation.

No, it is not being overstated. OpenCPN is very hard to learn, but very easy to use once you do. It is especially hard to get up and running, with working charts, weather routing, and GPS. If it is any consolation, I recently installed qtVlm, and I am baffled by it.

Originally Posted by rgleason

PS: I had to go into opencpn.ini and set
I think this should be brought into the user interface and put in "Own Ship" as a default setting.

It is in the interface somewhere, but I'm not in front of that machine to find it right now. But I do know that I have fiddled with it as projected wind speeds change. I don't think I have changed it since 4.xx though. Maybe it vanished. As you cursor around and in the status bar it tells you how long to get to the point your cursor is at, I think the same setting changes both of those.

[rgleason]

Originally Posted by wholybee

..It is in the interface somewhere,....

No you cannot set opencpn.ini "PlanSpeed=5" the default speed from within the program. You are thinking of setting speed within Route Manager. This is not the same.

[rgleason]

Originally Posted by bdbcat

Rick...
@Pdub Yes, however when you close and reopen, the boat speed changes back to the opencpn.ini setting say, "PlanSpeed=10" or whatever is there. I don't think this should happen.
This sounds like a bug.
I'll take a look.

Thanks.

Originally Posted by bdbcat

On your other point:

Automatically finding a tide station that is "close" to your drawn route point is not a trivial thing. How close is "close enough"? Many OCPN users are in parts of the world with no nearby tide stations at all. I think you will agree that Florida tide stations are of no use at all in Brazil. And all of us can find places for which a "close" tide station is just plain wrong in the harmonics.
So the navigationally conservative approach is taken. If you know a particular tide station near your route is reliable, then enter it manually.

Thanks
Dave

Dave, I agree with you about this issue. These stations are just points where tide and currents are measured. They are not like a grib file.
1. I think I might accept an automatic selection of the closest station if the station were within a certain distance. Say 1 to 3 nm.

2. Automatic selection could be an option with a heavy warning to review all the selections that has to be accepted. It could even be a running pop up that keeps asking for each waypoint if that was necessary.

3. Quite honestly, attaching current stations to waypoints is very tedious particularly when you are planning an entire cruise.
4. There are certain areas where the current is strong with complex bathscopy and dangerous waters, when there are many stations to pick which are where more care is needed in selection.

4. Is there any chance of interpolating between stations and using that for the midpoints of the route?

Rick wrote

No, you cannot set opencpn.ini "PlanSpeed=5" the default speed from within the program.

Could a user setting be added to Own Ship?



Thanks.