Notes for Speed

MapPoint's routing algorithm is relatively slow. Although an individual route calculation typically takes less than a second to compute, a table with thousands of routes can quickly add up to an hour or so of computation. Unfortunately there is little that MPMileCharter 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.

If you have selected Microsoft Excel for output, setting the Hide Excel during processing can also result in a small increase in speed. This is less significant and is probably only noticeable on single-core computers.

Restarting MapPoint

Internally, MapPoint uses a dynamic memory allocation system. This is optimized for normal operations, but MapPoint's memory usage can grow substantially during batch computations (eg. MPMileCharter). MapPoint's route finding also slows as its memory usage increases.

The best way around this, is to pause MPMileCharter 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 speed-ups vary and depend on a number of different factors, however, reducing the number of required locations will typically result in significant speed increases. Applying and reducing the distance and/or time restrictions will also result in faster processing.