Is there anything better than Canal planner?

[GUMPY]

Can't remember when I first saw that map must be 30years ago, it's a work of genius.

It sort of fell out of favour for me when I got a copy of Syd Arkless's canal planner for the PC

Edited June 12, 2021 by Loddon

[StephenA]

On 11/06/2021 at 06:06, blackrose said:

I know it's free so perhaps I shouldn't slag it off, but I really think canal planner ac is a waste of time.

 

I was trying to get an estimate of my journey times and I'm a lot slower than their default settings. But even using those settings as a test, if I break the journey up and get timings to/from a halfway point they don't add up to the overall journey time canal planner is suggesting. If I break the journey in two and add the times together it's several hours longer than the full journey using the same default settings.

 

If it can't even agree with itself then what's the point? You may as well just look at your Imray or Nicholson's guide and estimate journey times yourself.

 

If you think you've found a bug or an issue then please raise it in the bug tracker and Nick will look into it for you.

[StephenA]

22 hours ago, Captain Pegg said:

ut good depth Delph to Leys Jn which CanalPlan thinks is over 3 miles but in reality is only 2 miles so I ‘gained’ 40 minutes there.
 

 

That sounds a bit odd.....

 

Does anyone know where the distances go wrong in this section? Or is it that it thinks the entire canal is too long?

 

 

Actually it looks like we have the canal as a mile and bit too long (according to Wikipedia). So I've started a discussion on it in CPs own forums.

 

https://canalplan.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?id=129

Edited June 12, 2021 by StephenA

[StephenA]

22 hours ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

The "inaccuracy" of CanalPlan doesn't matter, because the margin of uncertainty is wider than the amount by which the calculation is wrong.

 

 

Precisely - Canalplan is an estimating tool, its not a sat nav, or an itinerary planner. It's designed to give you some idea of what you can do in a specified time window or give you an idea of how long it will take you do to a journey.

 

The defaults are just defaults but Canalplan can't know know if a section of canal is shallower, or deeper, than the sections either side of it, nor can it know how well your boat handles in different conditions.

 

 

[Arthur Marshall]

I still use the old Canal Planner PC software as I don't need to be online for it. It's about as accurate as Canalplan.

[GUMPY]

18 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

I still use the old Canal Planner PC software as I don't need to be online for it. It's about as accurate as Canalplan.

It won't run on my machine ?

 

[Arthur Marshall]

2 hours ago, Loddon said:

It won't run on my machine ?

 

Version 6 (the last but one version) runs on Windows 10, and doesn't need the lookup authorisation.

Edited June 12, 2021 by Arthur Marshall

[GUMPY]

30 minutes ago, Arthur Marshall said:

Version 6 (the last but one version) runs on Windows 10, and doesn't need the lookup authorisation.

I will have to look and see if I still have the install cd.

[blackrose]

On 11/06/2021 at 08:48, john6767 said:

Are you saying that if you plan a route from A to C via B, that you get a different time from planning A to B and the B to C and summing the two?  I just tried that on an example and got exactly the same overall time, but you can see the rounding may put it off by a bit, but you would not expect it to be a significant amount.  Do you have a specific example where it goes wrong?

 

Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. Cogenhoe to Irthlingborough and Irthlingborough to Lilford on the Nene was a couple of hours longer than Cogenhoe to Lilford in one go using the default settings. I don't have the details saved but I wasn't double counting locks.

 

 

 

 

Edited June 12, 2021 by blackrose

[blackrose]

On 11/06/2021 at 07:59, Idle Days said:

I find it to be an excellent program and very useful; for me.  Given the vagaries of canal journeys I think any prediction of travel times are a bit hit and miss at best. 

 

Yes, I'm much slower than the default settings. Cogenhoe to Lilford just took me 17.5 hours. On Canalplan it's 10.4. 

 

I'm single handed on a widebeam so I'd expect to be slower, but I think you'd need a speedboat to do that journey in 10.4 hours. Even the most experienced skipper and crew would never do it faster than about 13 hours on a narrowboat.

[StephenA]

26 minutes ago, blackrose said:

 

Yes that's exactly what I'm saying. Cogenhoe to Irthlingborough and Irthlingborough to Lilford on the Nene was a couple of hours longer than Cogenhoe to Lilford in one go using the default settings. I don't have the details saved but I wasn't double counting locks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So distance is spot on, locks is out by 1 because of how CP handles locks at the start or the end of a trip.  Time is different by 16 minutes (2.5%).

 

The River Nene is classed as a small river with a time per lock of 15 minutes and a speed of 3.5 mph (with a 0.5 mph flow adjustment)

 

 

Edited June 12, 2021 by StephenA

[blackrose]

I accept what you're saying when you try it, but it certainly wasn't spot on when I tried it.

[ditchcrawler]

11 hours ago, Loddon said:

Chris Clegg's map used to be available from ACS, don't know where my laminated one is, lost in the moves I suspect?

I have a copy I think from IWA shop

[PhilR]

On 12/06/2021 at 10:07, Loddon said:

Can't remember when I first saw that map must be 30years ago, it's a work of genius.

It sort of fell out of favour for me when I got a copy of Syd Arkless's canal planner for the PC

 

I am still using a 20+ year old version of Syd's Canal Planner For Windows. Syd coded it for Windows 3.1, but it still works great for any version of Windows, including 10.

[DHutch]

We use canalplan and find it's estimates very good. I suspect we're slightly quicker on locks, but slower overland than the defaults, but it averages well over a day/week. 

 

 

[Arthur Marshall]

On 12/06/2021 at 15:53, Loddon said:

I will have to look and see if I still have the install cd.

The disk images are on my website if you want them. arthurmarshall.co.uk/canalplanner.html . I thought I might as well make them available as they weren't being supported any more. No guarantee they'll work, but I know some people have got them going.

[StephenA]

On 12/06/2021 at 17:03, blackrose said:

I accept what you're saying when you try it, but it certainly wasn't spot on when I tried it.

 

You didn't do one the sections the wrong way round did you (i.e.  Planned A-C then did A-B, and then C-B)? we apply flow corrections to the calculations.

[GUMPY]

6 hours ago, Arthur Marshall said:

The disk images are on my website if you want them. arthurmarshall.co.uk/canalplanner.html . I thought I might as well make them available as they weren't being supported any more. No guarantee they'll work, but I know some people have got them going.

Thank you I will look into that when I return from boating. I still have a licence for it ? There are also a large number of my photos within the software as well.

Edited June 14, 2021 by Loddon

[ditchcrawler]

54 minutes ago, Loddon said:

Thank you I will look into that when I return from boating. I still have a licence for it ? There are also a large number of my photos within the software as well.

Hopefully it will be several years before you have to make your case to poor old Syd

[Chagall]

On 14/06/2021 at 01:14, DHutch said:

We use canalplan and find it's estimates very good. I suspect we're slightly quicker on locks, but slower overland than the defaults, but it averages well over a day/week. 

 

 

Sorry to drag this off topic but Dan, would you read your messages please?  Thanks.