An itn (itinerary) file is a way of getting from A to B. But instead of simply assuming A is where you are now, B is a postcode or town, etc., you enter, as your final destination, with the route in between being chosen by your Tomtom, an itn file allows you more control over your journey and the way you get from A to B.
Your itinerary must contain at least one destination, and if you only have one, it must be where your journey ends – but you can have more than one. Useful if you want to break your journey (i.e. for lunch, to pick up someone en route, etc.). You can also have a number of waypoints. These are points on the road network that your TomTom will be forced to include in the route it plans, in the order they appear in the itn file. That last point is important.
How can you tell the difference between the two in an itn file loaded on your TomTom? They have different graphics.
Waypoints are double white down arrows on an orange background
Destinations are chequered flags
Waypoints and Destinations result in different behaviour on you TomTom when it is calculating journey times. A waypoint will force your route to pass through a set location, but you will get no indication of how long it will take to get there, or when you will reach that waypoint. A Destination will also force your route to go to it’s location, but it will also calculate and display the time it believes you will get there, and count down how long you have to go until your reach that point.
If you are creating an itn file with multiple waypoints/destinations, use a Waypoint where you just want to pass through a particular point and probably aren’t going to stop, and use a Destination if you are likely to break your journey and want to know when you are likely to get to that point.
Can you tell on your TomTom when you have reached a Waypoint? If you happen to be looking at your TomTom screen when you are approaching a Waypoint, you will see a marker on the screen. On my TomTom, it looks like this.
Your Waypoint marker may be different if you have a different version of the TomTom software on your model . If you are on the same version, take no notice of the number “1”, this does not indicate that it is the first waypoint in the file – all Waypoint markers display “1”. As you can see, the time/distance countdown is not related to the Waypoint.
What happens if there is more than one Destination in your itn file?
Load your itn file as described in “How To … Load an itn file on your TomTom To Start Driving It”. At the point where your TomTom asks if you want to navigate to Destination “XYZ”, it will be the first Destination in the itn file that it shows.
And, as mentioned, your time/distance count down will relate to that first Destination.
When you reach that first Destination, your TomTom will not automatically navigate to the next Destination via further Waypoints. You will need to prompt it to do this. To do this, go to the Itinerary Planning menu option. You will see your itn file still loaded, and the Waypoints/Destination visited so far will be greyed out.
Press Done. Your TomTom will ignore the greyed out Waypoints/Destinations. It will ask you if you want to navigate to the next Destination in the file, and taking you via the remaining Waypoints listed in the file, prior to the Destination, which have not already been visited/greyed out. The time/distance count down will related to that next Destination.
Repeat this cycle for as many times as there are Destinations in your itn file.
