I am new to Mappoint. I need to access Mappoint from Excel, calculate a large driving distance matrix (50 x 200) from stores to customers using lat/longs stored in the Excel program and end up with the distance matrix (in driving miles) in Excel. Preferably without the user even knowing about or seeing mappoint.
Is this doable in mappoint? How do I go about it if it is?
THanks!
DaveOKC

Hi Dave,

Mile-Charter might be a viable option for you ...
MileCharter: Create Mileage Charts with Microsoft® MapPoint®

Yes it would do what you want - except it runs from within MapPoint rather than Excel.

Use the Data Import Wizard in MapPoint to load your data into MapPoint. Load the source locs as one pushpin set, load the destination locs as a different pushpin set. Then run MileCharter, and it will create the matrix in Excel.

Richard

Richard - thanks for the input. One question however - about how long would it take to generate a 50 x 100 matrix (table/chart) in Excel? I saw a comment on the Milecharter website that indicated it might take some time to do this. Thanks
DaveOKC

It really depends on how far apart the locations are... but say it takes two seconds per route, then 2 x 50 x 200 = about 6 hours I think. As long as you precalculate I think it's fairly reasonable.
Eric

Good point on the route distances. Most of the measurements will be from 1/2 mile to 4 miles. If the average time is two seconds, or even one second, this will pose a problem for me. Can anyone verify this for me?
DaveOKC

The route calculation time is due to MapPoint. MileCharter adds virtually no overhead (I made sure of that!).

My rule of thumb (on a P4 @2.4GHz) is 1 second per route. That is an average US route - ie. lots of AK-CA would take longer. Within one State is noticeably less (0.5sec perhaps). 4 miles should be even less.
(The rule of thumb comes from some timing tests I did in MapPoint before MileCharter was written. The test data was spread across the eastern half of the US).

There's also an option to hide MapPoint during processing. This can be inconvenient if you're using the PC for something else at the same time, but it removes the overhead of MapPoint drawing each and every route. I would expect this to be fairly constant per route length - so more significant for shorter routes. Also your PC is probably faster than my P4 example.

Try it - there's a free 14 day trial.

Richard

Dave, I've built an Excel model that does just the thing

You input the Lat/longs and it outputs the following:

- a map of all the points
- a road distance matrix
- a straight-line matrix
- a speed matrix
- a time matrix
- and a 'wiggle' matrix (road/straight-line)

You can also select whether you want miles/kms, shortest/quickest, mins/hours and so on, plus drivetime zones for the map itself.

Send me an email and I'll send you the model. If it's for personal use then I won't charge...

Adam

Adam - thanks for the offer - I sent you a PM. Let me know how to reach you.
DaveOKC

maddog,
I am not sure if this thread is too old to post a message, but I am also interested in checking out your Excel Model.

Regards,
diku1

Originally Posted by maddog 2

Dave, I've built an Excel model that does just the thing

You input the Lat/longs and it outputs the following:

- a map of all the points
- a road distance matrix
- a straight-line matrix
- a speed matrix
- a time matrix
- and a 'wiggle' matrix (road/straight-line)

You can also select whether you want miles/kms, shortest/quickest, mins/hours and so on, plus drivetime zones for the map itself.

Send me an email and I'll send you the model. If it's for personal use then I won't charge...

Adam