MileCharter supports MapPoint's estimated route costs through the Route Cost option. This functionality is limited, so MileCharter also supports rate tables. These allow costs or rates to be individually specified for different distance ranges.
Select the Costs via Rate Table check box to produce a chart using the rate table. Then press the Rate Table button to display the Rate Table Parameters dialog box:
Press the Select File button to select the file that stores your rate table.
There are three types of rate table. These are Fixed Rate Table, Apply Rate for Full Distance, and Apply Rates over Intervals. These type settings determine how the values in the table are interpreted and used. For example, the Fixed Rate Table will record a fixed cost for all distances within each range. The other two types specify a cost rate on a per distance unit basis. See the Types of Rate Table page for a full discussion of these different types.
Some rate table files may have column headers that must be ignored. Set the Ignore First Line check box, if the first line is a header that must be ignored.
The rate table file is a basic text file, and can be written using a text editor (eg. Notepad) or output from Excel. Here is a simple example:
Distance, Rate
10, 2.00
25, 3.5
30, 4.5
100, 6.0
This example has a header. To use it, the Ignore First Line box must be checked. Each line holds one entry for the table. The first value is a distance. The second value is the corresponding rate. This rate is applied to all distances between the preceding distance and this one. In the above example, a rate of 2 is applied for all distances less than 10, and a rate of 3.5 is applied for all distances between 10 and 25.
All rate tables must be text files. Separators can be commas, spaces, and/or tabs. Multiple separators are ignored. Only the first two values on a line are used. Unix-style newline conventions are not supported.