This example demonstrates how to use MileCharter to find the distances from a group of depots to a customer. This could be used to find the closest depot for delivery purposes, or for charging transport costs to the customer. The demonstration map can be found in the MileCharter examples file:
http://www.milecharter.com/downloads/examples.zip
The source data file is called yorkshire_depots.xls and requires MapPoint Europe. The file contains the following data:
Load it into MapPoint using the Import Data Wizard. Remember to select "United Kingdom" in the wizard. Set the name column to "Other Data", and the street address column to "Name 2". Change the postcode column to "Postcode District". Create a new pushpin set for the customers, and manually add the customer's location to it. Here, we add a customer pushpin called "Wetherby" in the town of Wetherby. The result should look like this:
The roads have been switched off on the above image for clarity. The UK_depots.ptm map contains this data in a MapPoint Europe 2002 file.
Let's try to find the distance from these depots to a customer in Wetherby. Select Wetherby on the map (you may need to zoom in to find it). Then start MileCharter from the Tools... menu in MapPoint. This will give the following MileCharter panel:
Note that the start and finish options include the pushpins (depots) and the selected location (Wetherby). Select the depot pushpins for the start locations, and Wetherby for the finish location. Press Compute to start the calculations. MileCharter will produce the following table of distances from your depots to the customer in Wetherby:
The final example demonstrates how to automatically select only the closest locations to a series of customers.