HUB Web Planner

Your First Route in Five Steps

Everything below is explained in full further down. This is the short way through: from an empty map to a file DMD² can ride, in five steps.

1Start a section

Press the button in the bottom-left corner (or the Start here card beside it on an empty plan) and pick New Section. The planner asks Route or Track: a route follows the roads and gives turn-by-turn navigation, a track is the exact line you draw. For a road ride, press Start New Route.

2Click where you want to go

Every click on the map is a route point and the planner routes to it along the roads. The bar above the map counts the points, the distance and the time as you go; the left panel lists the points. Drag a point or the line to change the way, click a point to remove or name it. Done in the bar at the bottom keeps the route.

3Choose how it finds its way

The profile chip in the bar (Road Fast at first) opens Routing Options: fast, scenic or match-any-road on the tarmac, easy, medium or hard off-road, or Advanced Adventure, plus no tolls, no motorways and how much to lean on the Community Ways. Each section keeps its own profile, so one plan can mix a fast link with a hard trail.

4Check it

Open Route Info under the map for the elevation profile, the climb and descent, the road types and the surfaces. Hover the line for its card (length, paved and unpaved, the distance and time at the point under the mouse). Warnings at the top right lists gates, permits, private roads, tolls and rider reports on the line, and Preview flies you along it.

5Save it where DMD² will find it

Open the project menu (top left) → Save as… and pick GPX Manager: a real .gpx goes into your GPX Manager, and with Load to DMD2 Map on it is on the bike’s map the next time it syncs. Pick Project instead to carry on planning later with every setting kept.

The Planner Screen

The planner is the map with your plan around it. The numbers in the picture are the parts described below.

• The project menu (1) — top left, the name of what you are working on (Unsaved Project until you save). Click it for Save, Save as…, Open…, Import GPX…, Export GPX… and Clear project. Beside it a chip says whether your work is saved.
• Favorites (2) — your library of saved tracks, routes and waypoints, to drop into any plan.
• The left panel (3) — Routes & Tracks above, Waypoints below, each with a count, select / select multiple / map select, show-hide, delete and sort. Routes & Tracks also has Merge and an opacity slider for every line. Double-click a row to centre the map on it (a waypoint row also has Show on map, which flies there even when it is off screen and opens its popup); Shift+click selects several. Remove duplicates in each header finds the copies: a waypoint with the same name as another within 10 m, or a track that follows another one end to end. It lists them and asks first; the first of each is kept, and Ctrl+Z brings the removed ones back. A file with thousands of waypoints: press Select Multiple, then for Invert selection, Name contains and By symbol (each symbol with its count; Ctrl+click adds another). To keep only a few, select them, invert and delete. Hide selected becomes Show selected once all of them are hidden; hide, show and delete are each one Ctrl+Z.
• The stats bar (4) — top centre: total time, number of sections and total distance.
• The action bar (5) — along the bottom of the map: Undo and Redo, the routing profile chip, and the tools (Pointer, Select, Cut, Delete). While you draw a section it turns into the drawing controls.
• The button (6) — bottom left: New Section, New Waypoint or Auto Plan. On an empty plan the Start here card sits beside it; clicking the card opens the same menu.
• The top-right chips (7) — Lines, HUB and Map (how your lines are drawn, what the HUB adds, the map itself), Sat (the quick map switch), and under them Auto POI, Warnings and Instructions when there is something to show.
• The left edge of the map (9) — my location, Location Search, the Tools wrench and Preview.
• Route Info (8) — a panel under the map with the elevation profile, road types, surfaces and distances of all sections or only the selected ones. Move Map on Hover follows the point under your mouse. When a section has no surface data (paved / unpaved %), the Road Type and Surface tabs say so and Recalculate detects it again. Click Min Elev, Max Elev or Max Slope (the steepest stretch of 50 m or more) to put the chart cursor and the map marker on that point; click the Max Slope title to show it in % or degrees.

Hover a line and a card shows its name, size, how much is paved and unpaved, any permit or private stretches, and the distance, time and elevation at the point under the mouse. Right-click a section, a waypoint or any place on the map for its menu — on a place: Add Waypoint Here, Search POIs nearby, Save To My Locations, Copy Coordinates, Location Info, and open it in Google Maps, Google Earth, Street View or OpenStreetMap.

Location Search (the button) finds addresses, places and coordinates, and nearby fuel, food, beds and more by category. Each result shows on the map with its category icon and its name. Point at a result in the list and it is ringed in yellow on the map, so several places with the same name can be told apart; point at one on the map and its card lights up. Drag the panel by its title to move it, and its bottom-right corner to resize it (double-click the corner for the default size). makes the panel see-through so the map shows behind the results. The planner remembers the panel's place, size and see-through setting in your browser.

Its My Locations list follows the folders you made on the HUB's Locations page: open a folder to see the places in it, step back with .. or the path above the list, or pick Unfiled for the places in no folder. Typing in a folder searches it and its subfolders; All locations also lists your favorites.

Settings (the gear, top right) picks the units (Metric, Imperial or Auto) and Click a line to edit (see below). Help opens a short guide inside the planner.

Routes, Tracks & Waypoints

A plan is any number of sections, each a route or a track, plus waypoints. They all go into one GPX file.

Click a section’s line or row to select it: it is highlighted, and Route Info shows it. Click it again (or right-click → Edit on Map) to edit its points on the map. If you would rather edit with one click, switch on Click a line to edit in Settings.

The button on its row (or right-click → Edit Details) opens Edit Section: name, colour, description, its route points (name them for a better GPX), distance, climb, descent, estimated time and the elevation profile, the routing profile, and Duplicate, Reduce Points, Convert to Track / Convert to Route and Favorite. Name and description travel with the GPX — DMD² shows both.

Drawing a Section

→ New Section asks Route or Track, then you click on the map.

• A route — each click is a route point and the planner routes to it. Drag a point or the line to change it, click a point to remove or name it. Snap puts each click on the nearest road.
• A track — pick how points join under Mode: Snap & Connect (each click goes on the road and the road between is filled in), Snap to Road Only (on the road, straight lines between) or Disabled (straight lines). Draw lets you draw freehand, and Select draws an area round points: New track moves them out into a track of their own, Duplicate copies them to one, Delete removes them (the track splits if they were in the middle).
• Follow — with Community Ways on, follow a stretch of them: click where it starts and ends on the highlighted ways and it joins the section.
• A waypoint, a HUB location, a search result or an Auto POI pin — while you draw, its popup offers Add route point (or track point): As the new start, Between the nearest points or As the new end, each with the distance it adds, the cheapest marked BEST FIT.
• From the Waypoints list — while you draw, each waypoint row (and its right-click menu) has Add to route (or Add to track): the waypoint becomes the section’s new end. Click them one after another to build a long route without looking for the pins on the map. To start one from scratch, put the waypoints in riding order (drag the rows), press Select Multiple, tick them and press Create route from selected: a new route through them in list order, with your last routing profile, opens for editing; adjust it and press Done.

Best order of stops

• A route you are drawing or editing — press Optimize in the bar under the map (or right-click a route → Optimize Stop Order). Click the stops that may change places, or drag a box round them (none picked = every stop). Choose how the ride ends (At the last stop, Wherever is best, Back at the start) and Shortest or Quickest, then Find the best order. The new order shows dashed in orange with the km and time saved; Apply puts the stops in it, and Undo puts them back. The start always stays first.
• Loose waypoints, before there is a route — right-click the map → Plan a route through waypoints, right-click a waypoint → Plan a route from here, or tick waypoints in the Waypoints list and press Plan the best route. Click the waypoints for the ride or drag a box round them, press Start on stop #1 (and End on the last one, with At the one I choose), pick Shortest or Quickest and press Plan the route. The planner routes the legs between them with your last routing profile, draws the route and shows the best order; Apply it, adjust the route and press Done.
• Shortest or Quickest — often the same order, above all on country roads. The Offroad and Adventure profiles work riding time out from distance at a set speed, so with them the quickest order is always the shortest one; the panel says so.

While you draw or edit, the bar above the map shows the section’s point count, distance and estimated time, for a track as for a route.

• Hand — while it is on (or while you hold Space), clicks on the map add nothing: drag to move the map, then let go of Space or switch Hand off to carry on placing points.
• Prev / Next — step through the points one by one ([ and ] do the same). The map moves to each point at the same zoom, and the point stays ringed on the map and highlighted in the route point list until you pick another. Clicking a row in the list picks that point too.

Done keeps the section; Discard drops what you changed (it asks first).

Auto Plan (under ) plans a loop or an A→B for you: up to three options, each with its time, distance and how much is paved, with fuel and lunch stops placed. Pick one and it is added as a route.

Routing Profiles & Options

The profile chip in the action bar picks how a route finds its way: Road Fast, Road Fun (Scenic), Match any road, Offroad Easy, Offroad Medium, Offroad Hard and Advanced Adventure. Each section keeps its own profile and options, so one plan can mix fast road links and hard trails. Clicking the chip opens Routing Options for that profile:

Not sure which profile suits a section? Right-click it → Compare Profiles: the planner routes the same points with Road Fast, Road Fun, Offroad Easy and Adventure, draws the four lines on the map in their colours and lists each one’s distance, time, unpaved and motorway share and tolls; Use this profile switches the section to it.

Editing Tools

• Cut — click anywhere on a section’s line and it splits in two there. On a long straight stretch a new point is put in at the spot and shared by both parts; close to an existing point it cuts on that point. Yellow scissors show where it will cut and how far that is from the start. Both parts keep the section’s routing settings, its line opacity and the gate and toll pins on their own stretch; a route’s parts keep their line without re-routing. Only the very first and last point cannot be cut.
• Delete — click a section to delete it. The button on a row and the right-click Delete ask first.
• Select — pick sections or waypoints, then draw an area on the map to select the ones inside it; hide, delete or merge them from the list.
• Merge — join the selected sections into one. Auto-order puts them in order by which ends are closest.
• The section’s right-click menu (also the … button on its row) — Edit Details, Edit on Map, Optimize Stop Order, Set Color, Routing Options, Hide, Invert Direction, Check One-Way Roads (finds any stretch the route rides against a one-way street), Compare Profiles, Add Waypoint Here, Extract Part as New Route (between two of its points), Reduce Points (tracks), Convert to Track / Convert to Route, Duplicate, Re-download Elevation, Save to Favorites, Opacity and Delete.
• Reduce Points — simplifies a track (Douglas-Peucker) and tells you how many points it saved.
• Re-download Elevation (signed in) — gives a track or route its heights from the HUB's terrain data, which works off-road too: Only points with no elevation fills the gaps in an imported file, Replace every point downloads them all again. The elevation profile redraws at once; save to keep the heights in the file, or Undo to put the old ones back.
• Undo / Redo — every change, including cuts and merges, is one step (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y).

Cut, Select, Delete

The three tools sit in the action bar beside Pointer. Each stays on until you pick Pointer again or press Esc, so you can cut a long track in several places in a row.

With Cut on, move along a line: yellow scissors follow the mouse and show the distance from the start, so you cut exactly where you mean to.

iPad, Apple Pencil & the Magnifier

The planner works by touch on an iPad, in Safari and in the DMD HUB app.

• Move a track point — put a finger or the Apple Pencil on it and drag. A magnifier above your finger shows what is under the point. Tap a point for its menu (Delete); hold it for the map’s menu.
• Add a point on a track — tap the track’s line: the new point goes on the line where you tapped.
• Route points — drag them with a finger or the Pencil, with the magnifier showing the road under them.
• Draw with the Apple Pencil — with a route or track open, drag the Pencil across the map and that stroke is drawn as with Draw: on roads for a route, as you drew it for a track. A Pencil tap places a point as usual. Fingers pan and zoom, and a hand resting on the screen while you draw is ignored. With Draw on, the Pencil always draws; switch on the Draw button at the bottom of the map to draw with a finger.
• Pencil hover (iPad models that support it) — the magnifier follows the Pencil tip while it hovers, so you see where the point will land before you touch.
• Turning the iPad — work you have not saved is kept on the device as you go. If the page reloads (a turn, the tab closed, the device running out of memory), the planner offers it back: Restore puts it back on the map, still marked as not saved.

The magnifier with a mouse — hold Z with the pointer on the map. A circle shows the map two zoom levels closer, and the pointer slows to a quarter of its speed, so a click lands exactly on the cross — the right side of a dual carriageway, the right junction. Let go of Z and the pointer is back to normal.

The Map, HUB & Lines Panels and Map Tools

Three buttons at the top right of the map each open a panel; a fourth is the quick map switch. On a phone they show only their icons.

Map holds the map itself: 3D terrain, the base map and its style (DMD² Map light or dark, Road Sharp, label font and language, globe view, satellite under the roads, land and road contrast), hillshading, contour lines, wildfires, and:

• Custom Layers, under More Layers — the online maps in your HUB account (topo maps, aerial photos, trail and land-access overlays), each with its own tick and opacity for this browser. Add a layer adds one right here; for a service with many layers, tick the ones you want (Select all, none or invert) and add them together. See Map Layers.

Quick switch — the button beside Map (or F2) flips between the plain map and Satellite in one go, and back. Pick another map under More Layers (Terrain, IGN, N50…) and the button flips to that one instead; it names the map it will switch to, and this browser remembers your choice.

Map legend — the button in the bottom-right corner, beside the i, opens the key to the map’s road types, track grades and surface smoothness in a window you can drag anywhere; the map works under it, and it opens where you left it. The Legend button in Advanced Adventure Mode opens the same window.

When was the satellite image taken? — while satellite imagery shows (the Satellite map, or satellite under the roads), a small label in the bottom-right corner, beside the legend button, gives the date the image at the centre of the map was captured, so you can tell an old winter picture from today’s ground. Click it for the source and resolution too. Zoomed far out the picture is a low-resolution mosaic with no single date: zoom in for one.

HUB holds what the HUB adds to the map:

• Community Ways — Open shows the roads and tracks ridden by 3 or more riders (Show Community Ways), coloured and filtered the way you like, in a window you can move. Click a line for what riders say about it, or Follow this way to make a track of it. See Community Ways.
• My ridden roads — signed in, every road you have ridden, in teal under your own tracks and routes: your files in My Recordings and My Trips, and any file you switch to Counts as ridden in the GPX Manager on the HUB website. Only you see it. Point at the row for how many rides and kilometres are in view. Zoomed far out over a lot of rides it shows a dashed box round each one until you zoom in. A new recording shows a few minutes after it reaches the HUB; the rides already in your library are drawn in the background over the first hours.
• Rider Reports — closures and hazards riders reported from the bike, from zoom 8. See Rider Reports.
• Community Photos — the photos riders took along their public GPX files, from zoom 8 (never a private or group file’s). Blue circles count the photos in an area: click one to zoom in. A photo on its own shows as a small picture; hover it to see it bigger, click it for the full photo, its caption and Open the GPX. Off until you switch it on.
• ETA pace — which of your speed profiles the ride times are worked out with.
• My Avoids — signed in, Open shows the areas, circles and stretches of road your routes keep away from, and draws new ones. They are kept in your HUB account and used by DMD² too.
• My Locations, Public Locations and Group Members — your Locations, the ones other riders made public, and where your riding group’s members are; pick the group under Group Members while it is on. Locations & groups settings sets the icon size, which locations show and the group options.

Lines sets how your tracks and routes are drawn:

• Section Line Options — Slope Coloring (blue downhill, green flat, red uphill, where the line has elevation), Elevation Coloring (teal lowest, through green, yellow and brown, to white highest of the lines shown), Speed Coloring (tracks with times, such as a recorded ride: blue slow, green, yellow at 55 mph or 90 km/h, to red at 85 mph or 140 km/h and over; a key in your units shows on the map while it is on), one of the three at a time, and Add dashes for unpaved (stretches of 250 m or more).
• View, for now (nothing is saved): See through lines (B) fades every track and route so the road under them shows; Hide everything (V) lifts tracks, routes, waypoints, overlays and labels off, so only the satellite image (or the bare map) shows — tap to toggle, hold to peek, Esc brings it back; All labels off hides the map’s place and road labels without changing your Setup Map choices.

The Tools button, under the search button, opens:

• Measure (M) — click points for each leg and the total. A leg along one of your sections is measured along it, with the straight distance beside it; the elevation along the line works off-road too. While you move the mouse, the label by the pointer also shows the heading from the last point to it, in degrees and compass points (for example 312° NW), from true north, so it reads the same on a turned map. Make track adds the line as a track.
• Range ring — a circle of so many km or miles around a point, for your fuel range.
• What’s here — coordinates, elevation, the nearest section and where along it you are.

The Preview button, under the Tools button, runs along your tracks and routes: Fast check follows the line from above with a dot, about 15 seconds for 150 km at 1×, so a point on the wrong side of a motorway shows as the detour it makes; 3D preview flies along it over the terrain, behind the dot. A bar at the bottom of the map controls it:

• Play / pause (Space).
• Position — drag it to any point of the route; ← → step back and forward. Beside it, how far along you are and the time left.
• Speed — from ¼× to 8×. Each preview remembers its own speed in this browser.
• Heading up / North up — turn the map with the route, or keep north at the top. Fast check starts north up, 3D heading up.
• Zoom with the mouse wheel while it plays. Drag or turn the map to look around: the preview keeps playing and Follow brings the camera back to the dot.
• or Esc leaves the preview and puts the map back.

Web addresses in waypoint, track and location descriptions are links: click one to open it in a new tab.

Warnings, Instructions & Auto POI

Switch Auto POI on, tick up to five categories and set how far from the route to look. The pins show along the line; click one for its name and distance, and add it as a waypoint, or as a route point while you are drawing.

Open & Import

Open… (Ctrl+O) picks where from:

• Projects — planning in progress. Every section, route point, routing profile and map setting comes back as you left it. You can keep up to 10 projects; the dialog shows how many you have. beside a project lists its earlier versions: one is kept each time you save, and every 15 minutes while it saves by itself, the last 10. Restore puts one back and opens it; what the project held until then is kept as a version too, so you can go back to it.
• GPX Manager — a finished .gpx, the files DMD² uses. Browse the folders and click a file to open it. The file in your GPX Manager is not changed until you save back to it.

If the plan on screen has unsaved changes, Open warns you first and offers Save first.

Plan a ride together: share a project with your group

beside one of your projects shares it with a HUB group you are in:

• Can edit — the group’s members open it and add waypoints, sections and route ideas to the same plan. Their changes save to the shared project, by hand and by themselves as yours do.
• View only — members can open it and look, and Save As keeps a copy of their own.

Members find it in Open… under Shared with me, with the group and who made it. It stays yours: only you can rename, share, stop sharing or delete it, and it counts in your 10 (not in theirs). Someone who leaves the group can no longer open it. Its earlier versions show who saved each one, and anyone who can edit can restore one.

Two riders working on it at the same time: the planner checks before each save. If someone saved after you opened it, nothing is overwritten: a window says who changed it and when, and you choose Load their version (your unsaved changes are dropped) or Save mine over it (theirs is kept in earlier versions, so it can be restored). Decide later pauses saving until you choose. Changes do not appear live on the other rider’s screen: open the project again to see the newest version.

A GPX Manager file with photos placed on it shows them as round pins while it is open here (opened, imported or edited from the GPX Manager); click one for the photo, its caption and when it was taken. The pins only show the photos: they are not part of the plan and are not exported. Clearing the plan removes them.

Import GPX… adds files to the plan you have open, from your GPX Manager or from this computer (drop them in or browse; a .kml or .kmz from Google Earth or My Maps comes in as a GPX file). Queue as many as you like, then Import:

• Everything in the files comes in as it is — every track, route and waypoint — with no questions asked.
• The one exception is a route planned with a routing profile that is not one of DMD's (or with none): it has to be recalculated, so the planner asks which DMD profile to use for those routes. Its roads can differ from the ones the original planner chose.

The From Project tab adds parts of another of your projects instead: pick the project, tick its tracks and routes (and its waypoints), then Add to Plan. They come in exactly as saved there — routes keep their roads, nothing is recalculated — and the other project is not changed.

When a file holds a route and the track it should follow, the planner compares them after the import. A navigator re-plans a route between its route points, so it can take another road than the track. Where they part, both are highlighted on the map (orange where the track goes, pink where the route goes) and a panel lists each place: Show zooms to it, and Add route point here puts a route point on the track there and re-plans the route, which stays open for editing. Check again compares them once more.

Opened from DMD² or a riding group (Edit with Planner, editing the group’s active route), the planner works on that one file: a coloured bar says what you are editing, and its save button writes straight back there. When the group’s track is several files, Edit Current opens the first one and saving replaces only that file; a new route started after choosing Add to the group track is added to it.

Save, Save as… & Export GPX

Save (Ctrl+S) writes back to wherever the work already lives — its project, or the GPX Manager file it came from — and asks nothing more. Work that has never been saved opens Save as….

Save as… (Ctrl+Shift+S) asks where it should go:

The GPX Manager choice has its own Export Settings; their summary shows on the folded header, and your browser remembers them for next time:

• Apply Point Reduction — simplifies the lines (Douglas-Peucker) for a smaller file.
• Ignore Hidden Items — leaves out the sections and waypoints you hid. On by default here, so the file holds what you see on the map. When something is hidden, the planner first asks you to confirm and says how many tracks, routes and waypoints will be left out; the save message repeats the count.
• Convert Routes to Tracks — every route goes into the file as a track, for apps and devices that handle tracks better.

A save straight back with no dialog — from Edit with Planner, for example — uses the settings you last chose here.

Export GPX… downloads the plan as a .gpx to this computer. Fill in the file name and, if you like, keywords, a description and the author’s name, email and link. It has the same three settings, set apart from the GPX Manager ones; here Ignore Hidden Items starts off, so hidden sections and waypoints are kept unless you turn it on; turned on with something hidden, it asks you to confirm first.

Keyboard Shortcuts

On a Mac, Cmd works in place of Ctrl.