12. Favorites

Figure 68: Favorites

Garmin calls the address book "Favorites". The list of saved addresses, or favorites, is accessed by tapping on Where to? > Favorites.

Figure 69: Viewing Favorites

Favorites are listed in order of closeness to your current location. Tapping the Spell button lets you search for a saved favorite address.

There's no way to sort favorites alphabetically, unfortunately.

13. Where Am I? (Viewing or Saving Your Current Location)

Figure 70: Main Menu

Garmin's Where Am I? feature is a helpful feature that can be used to view and save your current location, as well as tell emergency personnel your location, or locate nearby services such as gas stations, hospitals, and police stations.

The Where Am I? feature is accessed via the Tools menu.

Tip: A handy shortcut to viewing the Where Am I? page is to tap the vehicle icon on the map.

Figure 71: Tools Menu

To view your current location, and proximity to nearby emergency services, touch Where Am I? from the Tools menu.

Figure 72: Where Am I?

The Where Am I? screen displays the nearest valid street address, closest intersection, and longitude/latitude coordinates as well as elevation. Nearby hospitals, police stations, and gas stations can be viewed by touching the respective icon on the right side of the screen.

You can also save your current position to the address book by touching Save Location.

14. Creating And Using Routes

The nüvi 500 can create and store up to 10 custom routes. A route is a saved trip that has more than one stop along the way. The nüvi 500 also supports "Route Optimization", a feature that can sort multiple destinations by distance.

Figure 73: Accessing the Routes Feature

Creating, editing, and activating routes are all performed via the Custom Routes menu. To access the Custom Routes feature, tap on Where to? > Scroll down to page 3 > Custom Routes.

Figure 74: Adding Stops to the Route

The first step in creating a Custom Route, or multi-stop trip, is adding a starting point. Tap Add New Start Point.

Adding addresses to a route is identical to the process for entering any other type of destination; you can use street addresses, POIs, recently found addresses, saved favorites, intersections, or coordinates as entries in a Custom Route.

Figure 75: Creating the Route

Tapping on the green plus icon inserts another location to the route. Tapping on the red minus icon removes that location from the route.

Figure 76: Calculating the Route

Once all the desired locations have been added to the Route, tapping Next causes the nüvi to calculate the route. Route calculation is quick, taking no more than a few seconds.

Figure 77: Viewing the Route on the Map

Once the route has been calculated, the planned route is displayed on the map. Note that the last location in the Route is marked with a checkered flag. The nüvi 500 also displays the distance and time for the planned Route.

Tap Save to store the Route and make it available for use and/or optimization.

Figure 78: Viewing a Saved Route

By default, the nüvi saves Routes using the starting and ending location names. You can rename the Route to something more significant, like "Family Trip To Disney Land", as well as re-order the stops by tapping Edit...

Tap the green Go! button when you're ready to start navigating to the first location in the Route.

Figure 79: Reordering Stops Along A Route

Tapping Optimally Reorder Points sorts order of the stops by distance. This feature is especially helpful for drivers who regularly visit multiple locations in one trip, such as realtors, delivery drivers, and contractors.

You can also manually reorder the locations in a Route by tapping Manually Reorder Points, or use a combination of both by optimally re-ordering the stops, then manually changing the order if needed.

Recalculate allows you to change the route preference to calculate by faster time, shorter distance, or off road.

Tapping Delete erases the Route.

Figure 80: Navigating To A Destination

Once the Custom Route is saved and ordered to your liking, tap the green Go! button to start navigating to the first stop along the route.