Ask HN: I very much need a route software for 100+ locations

2 points·klbarry··6 comments

I will be walking 100+ fashion boutiques in NYC and I have a list ready put together. However, most route software only allows input of up to 25. Does anyone know a way to do this without figuring it all out by hand?

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Are you asking for the shortest route that covers all the locations you want to visit? If so, it is computationally very hard to deal with 100+ locations and come up with an exact solution. This is known as the Traveling Salesman (err. Salesperson?) Problem and it is NP complete. There do exist some heuristics-based algorithms that may be faster but don't give the exact solution.

Doesn't necessarily have to be shortest, I can approximate that myself. I just need a map that actually allows for 100+ inputs. I think I found something cool here, though: http://batchgeo.com/. Testing now.

Have you tried Google Earth? You can create a KML file with hundreds of place-markers or routes connecting points. I've had good experience with this on the desktop.

Don't have a suggestion for mobile, I'm afraid.

Thank you! - I think Google earth would have been my next best bet, but the site I mentioned earlier worked out fine.

I don't have any suggestions, but I'm not sure you want to figure it out by hand: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem

It doesn't necessarily have to be fastest, anything that can put all the points on one map is fine.

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