Destination Plotting Software

How much time have you got? AFAIK it would take more than the lifetime of the universe to compute an optimum solution.

Ask Watson, he knows everything...

That's the famous "Travelling Salesman Problem", the archetypical "NP Hard" problem. NP Hard means there is no shortcut algorithm and the only known way of solving it is to list every solution, of which there are N factoral. (130 factoral = 6.47 x 10²¹⁹.)

There is no algorithm to find the shortest route. However, there are techniques to find a "very good" solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem

Join AAA.

Australian Automobile Association

Looks handy, but it should also tell you to start at the furthest, end with the closest.

Thanks Stuart21, a valid point.

Tony

Tony, If you cannot visit all in one day, then unless you intend to sleep over to resume your trip, you should maybe include multiple sites at your home with some sort of constraint to visit say 30 places before it can go back there.

Yes I agree, the reason for putting so many in was to see how it coped, and it did very well.

It produces a round trip, part of which is shown, the first is the departure point [1] with [2], [3] close by and it then returns to this point, you can see [98], [99] and [100] on the return road.

Alternatively it will produce an A-Z where the last destination is the finish point.

I will have to manually select blocks for day1, day2 etc.

Tony

20 locations in one day?, sounds rather optimistic...Don't forget traffic, food breaks, and physical endurance....12 to 15 sounds more realistic....

Did he say that his lovely wife was in the second car ... and his oldest son might be drafted in to help ... wearing a helmet of course on his bike? Aiming for 30 contacts in a day ... and then there is buying a commercial spot on a prime radio station to reach them all (and more) in an instant!

That would rather depend upon whether the mission were to collect or to deliver, though. A collection would work best by going to the farthest location first and work back towards the origin, so that the stuff has the least [weight x distance] to travel with the correspondingly lowest carbon footprint. If it were a delivery mission, then the opposite is true.

As Los Angeles has admitted that global warming is no longer a myth, these things are no longer trivial considerations.

On further examination I realise it has only taken the first 100, that's OK I can't visit 130 in a day and I sorted them by postcode first.

Still think it's a brilliant bit of software.

Tony

Excellent Find! I was very pleasantly surprised to find that A) It's web-based, so works fine on a Mac, B) It apparently works world-wide, C) It came up with my location visible on the map without having to specify, and D) It's apparently free!

Tony,

Great find.

Thank you for updating us on your search. I don't need this type of mapping ability but if I do in the future, I will definitely use Optimap.

Is there any kind of geographical grouping? If so you might be able to come up with 10 groups or less.

As a general rule, with 'milk runs' it is best to start with the furthest, and end with the closest, especially if times / traffic etc are unpredictable. Can be disappointing to 'almost' get finished, but to have to go out to to the furthest the next day -

Most decent GPS/street pilot units have a facility that enables you to enter all waypoints and you can then instruct it to automatically order them in shortest route format.

You can even designate your start and finish points as desired (they can be the same point if need be), you will get turn by turn directions as you go, and can even get it to find fuel and overnight accommodation if you don't get to them all in one day.

Thanks Spades

I use Google maps and am not aware that facility exists in it.

Tony

It probably doesn't, I'm referring to the in car type units. - Garmin, Tomtom, Navman, VMS, etc.

My 15 year old Garmin 2610 street pilot stores only 48 via points and will auto arrange them into the most efficient route, later units go to around 1000 waypoints but, depending on the route length, you may not be able to use all of them as via points.