As well as the start and end points, MileCharter has a number of options that can be set:
The main options are divided into two sections: Route Calculation Options and Output Options. The Shortest/Quickest Route Options are only available in the Professional version, and are discussed in the Reporting only the Quickest or Closest Destinations section.
Your option settings will be saved and used as defaults for the next time that you use MileCharter.
Route Calculation Options
The Output check boxes define what kind of data will be created. The default is Distances, and this will create a traditional mileage chart. You may also output Travel Times, Route Costs and/or Costs via Rate Table. Each output type will be saved to an individual worksheet in the same Excel workbook. Travel Times and Route Costs use the current MapPoint settings for these values. Costs via Rate Table is a more sophisticated form of calculating costs, that uses a Rate Table. Rate Tables are discussed on their own page. At least one of these four check boxes must be selected - ie. you must tell MileCharter to calculate at least one table.
The chart Distance Units can be set to Miles or Kilometers. The Time Units can be set to Hours:Minutes, Hours, or Minutes. The Hours:Minutes option will format the travel times in the form of "hours:minutes:seconds" (hh:mm:ss), whilst the remaining options will report decimal time (eg. 1hr 30mins is 1.5 decimal hours).
The Find option lets you choose the type of route to find. The most common route options are the Fastest and the Shortest route options. Preferred Routes tells MapPoint to use the road types that you have already specified as preferred. Press the Preferences button to set your Road Preferences. Straight Line finds the "as the crow flies" straight line distance between two points. Technically, this is defined as the Great Circle distance. Note that the Straight Line option can not be used to calculate travel times or cost estimates.
You may use any of the other MapPoint route finding options, such as road speeds and 'Avoid Area' polygons. To use these options, set them in MapPoint before starting MileCharter. MileCharter will use the existing settings and not change them. This also applies for the MapPoint fuel economy information that is used to compute estimate route costs.
The remaining route calculation option concerns Duplicate Routes and is covered on its own page.
Output Options
By default, the start and end points are written to the output in the order that MapPoint reports them to MileCharter. They can be sorted alphabetically by checking the Sort Names checkbox.
Usually, the start points are listed on the left side of the chart and the end points are listed along the top of the chart. These may be swapped by checking the Reverse Axes checkbox.
MileCharter can also find the longitude,latitude coordinates of the source and destination locations. Check the Output Coordinates checkbox if you wish to have these coordinates saved to the spreadsheet table(s).
Processing can be slow if your chart requires the calculation of lots of routes (65000 routes have been timed to take about 24hrs processing). Processing runs slightly faster if MapPoint is not displayed during the processing. This is because it takes time for MapPoint to display each and every route. Check the Hide MapPoint checkbox to hide MapPoint during processing. MileCharter's dialog box will continue to be displayed during processing. Speed issues are discussed in more detail in the Notes for Speed section.