MapForums

Hi,

Okay I am doing some research for my company into if MapPoint will do what we need.

Heres the deal, what we would need to do, is import into MapPoint a list of addresses (we would mainly be working on Post Codes / Zip Codes etc) and then generate a map with a route on it from these.

My original idea after reading through the technical info for MapPoint was to this:

Now it is at this point I got stuck, I was under the impression I could something like this:

I know thats very crude, but its just an example of the idea I had. I thought I would probably need some kind of function to return perhaps a geographic co-ordinate based on the post code I am passing etc...

But I got stuck when I realised that a WayPoint object requires something called an "Anchor" which can either be a Locaton object or pushpin object.

Now I am totally confused after reading Microsofts documentation on how the hell Pushpins work. I read somewhere that an imported data set already has pushpins... but what do these pushpins represent, each record in the dataset? I know pushpins represent marks on the map, I get that, but how do they relate to all this.

How do I get from my post codes in my dataset, to a pushpin object which can be used as an achor for a waypoint object that I want to add to my route.

Basically any help you can offer or information to boost my understanding would be very welcome.

Thanks

- Paul

Oh and my second question is this,

Granted the above code is Visual Basic, however my company writes all its software in Borland Delphi, so I am wondering if there is going to be any issues there?

I mean in theroy, because it works using COM, and Delphi supports COM and can create a Delphi object wrapper for the MapPoint Object Library so Delphi can work with it, it shouldn't be a problem.. but will it ?

Just to give you some background, the reason we want to use MapPoint is because we have a peice of software that is used in meal deliveries. We want to build in the ability for a customer to see an actual map with their delivery routes on that.

- Paul

Here's the code I use in Delphi to add waypoints to a route:

var
ONE : OleVariant;
FR : FindResults;
Pin : PushPin;

While not MemMappingData.EOF do
begin

FR := mpMap.FindAddressResults( MemMappingData.FieldByName('Address1').AsString, MemMappingData.FieldByName('City').AsString,'',Mem MappingData.FieldByName('State').AsString, MemMappingData.FieldByName('ZIP').AsString,geoCoun tryUnitedStates)

Pin := mpMap.AddPushPin( Location(FR.Item[ONE]), MemMappingData.FieldByName('Name').AsString );

Route.Waypoints.Add( Pin );

MemMappingData.Next;

end;

// Check to make sure there's more than 1 waypoint before Calculating the Route...
if Route.Waypoints.Count > 1 then Route.Calculate;


That should get you started. I don't want to help you too much... my software is for a meal delivery service as well!

Phil Frank

Hi there,

you first search for the address with .Findresult() and then add the first address found to the route?

What if the address is not the first item of the result list? you'll get a wrong route then. It should be the first, but you can't know exactly if the adress is right in the recordset or in mappoint itself.

I do it that way that I'm searching for the postal code to have the right area (ok I'm in Germany and it's perhaps not the way in the United states with the adresses ? ) and then for the whole adress.

greetings,
Syd

btw. if anybody has a better idea, contact me or poste it

The FindResults collection has a property called ResultsQuality that is set to geoFindResultGood, geoAmbiguousResults, etc.

This can give you some idea as to how good MapPoint things the returned list of addresses is.


Richard

__________________
Winwaed Software Technology LLC
http://www.winwaed.com
See http://www.mapping-tools.com for MapPoint Tools
See the Geoweb Guru for online mapping

Yes, in the code example above I was simply illustrating how to add an address to a pushpin and then add the pushpin to a route. I do have code to check the results returned from an address that's been submitted. If there's more than one result returned I ask for user intervention.

Phil

This worked for me:

On Error Resume Next
Do Until mpRecordset .EOF
myRoute.Waypoints.Add mpRecordset .Pushpin
mpRecordset.MoveNext
Loop
On Error Goto 0

The error part is because not all pushpins will have valid locations, there is probably a better way to exclude them but I'm new to MapPoint.

Hi,

I have developped a solution for creating a route based on MapPoint. I could send you the program.

Cheers
Rainer