A Little Advice Please!

Im thinking of writing( or attempting to write ) a routing program for delivery trucks. I was wondering what the best way to go about this would be? I would like to use zipcodes, but I would also need that lattitude and longitude to be able route them in some kind of ascending or descending order. I was also thinking that maybe I could somehow come up with a DLL ( if that's what I needed...not sure ) to maybe hook into the CDROM that comes with the thomas brother map books( you know the one in the back that you get when you buy the map book ) That could possibly read the map and or grids to route them the most effeciently.( Is that legal ? )

Any thought on how to procede would be appreciated. Aslo do you know where one might get lattitude and longitude for zipcodes for free?

i reckon u could do it, but its prety difficult to write a prog that can read a map, u would have to premark all the routes urself. Im not sayin it cant be done, but it would be difficult and c++ probably istnt the best language to do it in, i would reccomend you ask sum1 hu can program for windows. sorry i couldn't help u much

If you want to work on an interesting problems, lookup Graph Theory and the Traveling Salesman Problem.

gg

Thanks for the reply's, I think that the TSP theory is a little out of my realm codeplug....:) but thank for the info... Im thinking that also maybe I could just load a database of things we aready know such as distance from one point to another and just sort them in ascending order. I would probably never need more than 30 addresse's at one time. Then just have the program find the next close point based on distance.

Hmmm I'll keep chewing on this and see what I can come up with..

thanks guys!

Don't forget that the "cost" of each segment of the journey may vary (each arc has a weight in graph theory).
For example, a particular road may be traversed in 30 minutes at 3am, but in rush hour it could take 2 hours.
Likewise, individual roads are likely to be assymetrical (going one way is faster than the other), especially at peak times.
Some routes may have tolls (eg bridges), and others not.

And don 't forget about one way streets. ;)

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come up with a DLL ( if that's what I needed...not sure ) to maybe hook into the CDROM that comes with the thomas brother map books( you know the one in the back that you get when you buy the map book ) That could possibly read the map and or grids to route them the most effeciently.

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You don't need a DLL to read from the CD-ROM. A DLL just holds functions that you can load at run-time from your main program. In fact, I don't think it matters at all what drive you're loading from, just specify the drive letter in the path when you open the file and don't try writing to it. The real problem would be reading and parsing the map, you'd need to get the file format and then implement a loading procedure (or dynamic lookup, whatever you call it), and then find some way to work with the specific data provided in the map.

>>Is that legal ?
It might not be, if you're planning on selling your program or using it for commercial purposes.

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Im not sayin it cant be done, but it would be difficult and c++ probably istnt the best language to do it in, i would reccomend you ask sum1 hu can program for windows.

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I wonder what language would be "better" for the job. "Windows" language is better you say? Yes of course, silly of me; I should have thought of it myself. Oh wait, it's not a language and you can do it in C++ anyways.

Anyway Big146, good luck with your project. Sorry I had nothing constructive to contribute :)

I think that all the info I need is on the cd-rom...But that would probably mean that I would have to reverse engineer it to figure out what functions to hook...So that I could use the data already present then load my functions via DLL to just route the addresses. Even then I dont know for sure how well that would work. Just a thought..

Other than that I would probably have to buy a database of zipcodes with latitude and longitude to be able to do it. I have searched google but either it comes up with just the major cities of calif or you have to buy it. I need all the cities in southern calif.

It would be just for personal use...it was something I thought about working on as im learning C++...kinda of tired of just reading the exercises in the books( gets a little boring sometimes )

>>I would have to reverse engineer it to figure out what functions to hook...
If that's what you mean, it does sound illegal ;)

>>I would probably have to buy a database of zipcodes with latitude and longitude to be able to do it.
Couldn't you fake the data, if this isn't for real use? I mean, put random names of cities and random latitude/longitude for each into a file - as long as they don't contradict each other - call it 'map.dat' or something, and then pretend that it's filled with real data.

**And if you really want a huge list, get your friends to help make up city names ;)

>>Couldn't you fake the data, if this isn't for real use?
I gues i could,but i was trying to get the real deal going. I would use the program, but I would be the only one using it.

But I guess I could try and write it using fake coordinates for now.. thx for the tip.

>>thx for the tip.
:) It's a trick I use all the time. It's also really useful for testing, so you can make sure all the extreme cases work properly.

well one way to ease your trouble would be start by going to mapquest. Think about it from there.