Notes for Speed

MapPoint's routing algorithm is relatively slow. Although an individual route calculation might take one second or less, a table with thousands of routes can quickly add up to an hour or so of computation. Unfortunately there is little that MileCharter can do to improve the raw processing speed, but this page describes a number of possible approaches.

Hide MapPoint

By default, MapPoint will draw each route as it is computed. This adds a small (but significant) overhead to the processing time. You can reduce this overhead by setting the Hide MapPoint during processing checkbox in the Output Options section of the main panel. Note that this can make it harder to find or manipulate MapPoint during processing, if you are using the same PC for other work.

Restarting MapPoint

Internally, MapPoint uses a dynamic memory allocation system. This works well in normal usage, but MapPoint's memory usage can grow substantially during batch computations (eg. MileCharter). MapPoint's route finding also slows as its memory usage increases.

The best way around this, is to pause MileCharter and to restart MapPoint. Trial and error is required to determine the best time period between restarts. Very long runs should probably be restarted once a day.

Only Report the Closest Locations

Do you only need the shortest routes, or only those within a certain distance or travel time? If so, use the Only report shortest/quickest routes option. This option only calculates the routes that have a chance of meeting the specified criteria. Exact speedups vary and depend on a number of different factors. However reducing the number of required locations will usually result in faster processing. Applying and reducing the distance and/or time restrictions will also result in faster processing.