PC*Miler takes into account vehicle dimensions and a fleet's routing preferences to generate safe, legal, and efficient truck routes. There are two ways to set vehicle dimensions and routing preferences:
- Route Options are settings for an individual route. They can be changed each time you open a new route.
- Vehicle Routing Profiles are named, saved collections of settings the can be applied to a route. Profiles are created, edited, and saved in the Vehicle Routing Profiles screen.
Route Options or a Vehicle Routing Profile should be selected before you add stops in the route entry card.
How to set profiles or route options
The same settings are available in Route Options and Vehicle Routing Profiles. Route options are for individual routes. Profiles are saved and used repeatedly to speed up the process of calculating routes, and to be sure your settings are consistent across routes.
Options and profiles work together this way:
- If you select a Vehicle Routing Profile from the drop-down menu, you can view the saved settings for that profile (Vehicle Dimensions, Routing Preferences, and Restrictions) by selecting Route Options. If you change any of those settings under Route Options, they apply to that route only. They are not saved to the profile, but they can be saved as a new profile for future use.
- If you set options for a particular route, the routing profile drop-down displays Custom Options. This lets you know the options you have selected under Route Options are being applied to the route. Otherwise, you would see the name of a Vehicle Routing Profile.
- Separately, you can select Practical (default), Shortest, or Fastest routing in the Routing Type drop-down. That changes the Routing Type setting only. The remaining options are determined by the Vehicle Routing Profile or the Route Options. You can select Route Options to view and confirm any other settings.
Save routing options as a vehicle routing profile
After selecting Routing Options (Vehicle Dimensions, Routing Preferences, and Restrictions) for an individual route, you can save those options as a new routing profile in the Routing Options dialog.
- Check the box next to Save as a New Custom Profile.
- Name the profile so that you can easily identify it and apply it to future routes.
- Select Save to finish.
- The newly created profile can now be selected in the routing profiles drop-down menu in the route card.