Ok, I have read the manual and searched the forum, but I still have questions about the 2014 Navigation system. My first issue: are there any Youtube videos about how to create a “Trip” with waypoints and then saving that route/trip to the system? Second, can you enter a town as the destination/waypoint, you know without having to enter a street address or intersection? I want to take a trip next month and want to plan a route via the back roads and through towns of my choosing.

 

 

I don't know about trips with waypoints, but you can just put a town in the address.

 

Army Command Pilot?

 

Army Master Aviator.

 

Do you just enter the town when it asks for an address?

 

Waypoints... When you are traveling on a route (i.e. you've programmed a destination) you can go to select another destination. Once selected the system will notice that you're already navigating a route. At that point you have two options - 1) cancel previous route and set this as the new destination or 2) set this destination as a waypoint. Note you can have up to 5 way points before you run out. Also, I think with the C7 it tries to be "smart" and optimize the route I guess so that it has the least distance. I haven't played with that that much to figure that out. With the C6 it was the order you put the waypoints in that they would be.

I guess you could test this by setting up a route with a final destination say 10 miles away and a waypoint 5 miles away. I would think the car would optimize the route to go to waypoint #1 first and then final destination.

Then do another route where the final destination is 5 miles away and the way point is 10 miles away. If the car optimizes the route such that the final destination becomes the first waypoint then that's how it works. Otherwise I would assume it goes in the same order as you enter the waypoints.

 

I'll give that a try. It sure seems that they could have made it easier to do this.

 

I can only confirm that you can use only a town name, no address required. I never tried waypoints yet.

 

I know this doesn't answer your question but I'll just throw this out there. Garmin has a software program called "Basecamp" that you can download to your computer from their website. You can map out an entire "scenic" route detailing exactly where you want to go and then download that route to your Garmin GPS unit. I use that exclusively when I want to do what you are trying to do with the on board system.

 

I thought of that at one time but I have an old Nuvi 50 which is not able to load or program multi point routes. I guess that I will pull the Vett out tomorrow and run the battery down trying to program a "Trip".

 

Here is a seminar. He explains it in detail. Scroll down to the 2014 version.
http://www.theredlion.us/C7Navigation.htm

 

Something I stumbled upon the other day is that even without a current subscription to OnStar you can use the remote link app to send addresses to the nav. Works pretty good. Just send it whenever and it will load the next time you fire up the car.

 

Yup, I've used this before. It works great, but you can't send a route with waypoints, just a destination.

 

Enter town and state. You can also enter the intersection of two streets in that town as a destination. Another stumbling block is; if the address is a route, that has to be entered as a state route or the system will not recognize the address.

 

I noticed that when providing voice commands for going to simply just a particular city when we are traveling that is a small berg of about a thousand people and we just want to drive though it, just providing the city and state name doesn't get it done. So you are saying if I type in the state and city you are good to go?

 

I didn't try the voice command to program, but when I typed in the city, state it worked great. It will list "one town", and number of "streets" with that name. Just choose the town.

 

OK I'll bite. This is difficult for you? Tell me how would you make it easier?

 

And you have to use the mobile app - can't go to a web site and use a real keyboard to type in and find an address then send that. Dumb.

I use Android Auto now. It's great. Hell all you need to do is search for something in Google Maps - no sending anything. Go into the car and fire up AA and there'll be a card for that destination. Tap and go. Or go to Google Maps on your desktop. Find an address - send to your phone. Find another address - send to your phone. Repeat as needed. Then you have a number of destination notifications on your phone. Simply tap that to start navigation - connect to AA and off you go.

Also, if you use Google Calendar(s) (I do) you'll see cards come up for events you scheduled (I think provided you gave the event an address). Again, tap and go. I do meetup.com events. RSVP to them, subscribe to my RSVPed meetups into Google Calendar. I leave work and wham I get a navigation card on my screen for tonight's meetup event. Sweet!

P.S. AA is adding routes with what they call "stops". Basically routes with waypoints. It's in beta now. I have the beta. It needs some more work though.

P.S.S. While navigating a route using AA hold the "push to talk" button on the steering wheel (or tap the mic icon) and say something like "Hardware Store". A search result of hardware stores will appear on the screen. Tap the one you want. AA will add it as a stop. Pretty neat.

 

Oh, I don’t know, maybe by providing a way of programming a “trip” as one of the options under destination. My Jeep has this and is very easy to put together an entire trip with multiple waypoints. It can be done easily, in much less time and also be programmed using voice commands.

I don’t have an Android so the methods you described are not an option for me. Don’t get me wrong, I love the system and the way it interacts with the display, and HUD. What I meant by “make it easier” is to make it function possibly like a Garmin system for example. Go on the computer, plan a route with waypoints and stopovers, then send them to the GPS in the car or save them to a Flash drive and down load it to the car. But like everything else in life I’ll just adapt.