# iDrive route download



## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

while waiting for my car to show up I'm thinking about route management.

It appears that the new iDrive can download and upload via USB.

Anyone out there with a new system that can make a simple multi-point route, download it and send it to me?

The goal would be to understand the format and figure out how to use gmaps, garmin, etc to create a route file for uploading.


----------



## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

*Route file format*

I'd like a copy of that simple route too! Anything will do. I think a simple start, mid-way stop and a destination would suffice, and they could be anywhere.

It would be useful to post it here. To do that manually rename the filetype extension to *.pdf (eg foo.bmw renamed to foo.pdf) and attach it to the forum post with an indication of what the original filetype extension was. (*.bmw was just my guess). We'll know to rename it back to *.bmw or whatever before playing with it, and to create files with suitable extensions. If we crack this route creation nut we'd petition the forum to allow posting of route files.

Of course, of anyone anywhere has information of the file format already I/we would like to know too. It may save a lot of head scratching.

I have dreams of a suite of applications or scripts which could:

** allow the creation of routes while away from the car so that they could be easily transferred into the nav system without all the furious iDrive spinning.

** allow post-vehicle analysis such as when on a fun drive (Europe!) we could poke the iDrive knob at interesting waypoints, recover the resultant route, do some magic, and import it into a nav application, or post it to My Maps on google.

My immediate (well, by June) need/desire though is more simple: I just want to create a route file or files which describe my European Delivery itinerary so that when I collect the car in Munich I can educate the car about my whole trip in a moment and not have to annoy my family by whirling the iDrive knob off its bearings.

Frank.


----------



## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

We are on the exact same page!

I'm going to try and visit my dealer (they have an '09 M3) and see if they'll let me sit in the car for a bit and tinker. I'll share if I can get something out of the system.


----------



## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

The new bmw-routes site allows for multi-destination route creation, complete with pictures, notes, etc. Then there are instructions for downloading the route.

I spent 30 minutes in a 2009 iDrive today and could not find an option for exporting my simple 3 point trip. Import function was there, albeit a little hidden.

Downloading a Munich-Berchtesgaden-Fussen route right now to see what the file looks like. However, the BMW site has so much promise that it might not be necessary to tinker around too much


----------



## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

So far, no luck on getting the BMW-routes site to download anything.

The site seems very immature ... strange that they would publish it when it doesn't work. Issues noted so far:

-- switching to miles doesn't work
-- error messages are in part German part English
-- download to USB button does nothing on Safari or Firefox. Haven't been able to try IE, yet
-- attempts to log in result in a server error


----------



## Snareman (Nov 24, 2006)

What is the BMW site?


----------



## JohnnyRoaster (Oct 28, 2008)

http://www.bmw-routes.com/de/en/index.jsp

It is still under development it seems. I tried on IE and didn't get any further trying to download a route file. It just seems to hang when you try to download to USB.


----------



## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

I don't think it's hung ... appears to be doing nothing. Click on it and notice that your browser activity indicators are not in motion.

What an incredible system it will be, though, once they iron out the wrinkles.


----------



## JohnnyRoaster (Oct 28, 2008)

Sorry, hung was not really what I meant. It seems like it just doesn't connect to anything. Hopefully they will get in working before April. My pick up is 4/17 for M3 sedan.:bigpimp:

When you said the import from USB was hidden, where did you have to go in iDrive to find it?


----------



## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Let me start by professing my complete love for iDrive after toying with it for 1/2 hour. The nav in my infiniti just sucks, the nav in my old pilot was pretty good, the nav in my wife's '07 Acura is decent but confusing ... this thing is like the best of all of them.

However, the only way I could find import is AFTER I'd made a short trip and then in the list trips screen, select that trip and press the knob right to get to some trip options like delete, etc. For some reason, this also has import. With no trip in the system, I couldn't find it.


----------



## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

*BMW-Routes reverts to development teaser*

From today's bmw-routes pages (which are revised and without the experimental 'build a route' part we were playing with over the weekend):

*Individual route planning with BMW Routes.*

Innovation. At the Automobilsalon Genf 2009 and parallel at the CeBIT 2009 BMW ConnectedDrive presents an innovative function upgrade for BMW routes: the planning of one's own routes in the internet with subsequent transmission into the car. As of this spring everyone who is interested can with this application here at BMW routes plan one's very own routes. Your creativity aren't set boundaries. Decide on the course of the journey and interesting places to see. Add pictures as well as useful facts to your route or individual point of interests. Transmit your final route into the car and print it as your road book. BMW ConnectedDrive offers as an innovation the transmission and the import of complete routes onto the navigation system: This is possible in all BMW models models with the new generation iDrive system and the extra equipment navigation system Professional via USB stick. BMW ConnectedDrive customers can easily lodge their own routes in the BMW online portal to transmit them comfortably into the car.

It all still sounds very promising, and I like the indication that it will be launching this spring. Technically, my ED date of June 2nd is before summer though so according to my track record it is most likely to be launched just AFTER I collect my car.

I wonder if the weekend teaser version of the website was a deliberate act to forstall any amateur developers from investing time to create a competitor service/application. In which case a hearty thank you to the folks at BMW who saved me the wasted effort. I certainly won't be lifting a finger now I know that this is coming.

Frank


----------



## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Haha,

they should encourage open source development. Some of the most successful projects have been the ones that get the army of creative users building apps they didn't imagine or want to invest in. I wish they had a development pack, etc ... time to port Bejeweled to the nav system 

But seriously, I'm still going to take it apart and put it back together if I can get hold of a downloaded route. I'm thinking of taking the output of a garmin, etc, or the output of gEarth or gMaps for import.


----------



## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

*BMW-Routes website is up and LIVE!!!*

www.bmw-routes.com is now working.

I was able to create a new route (BMW Welt - Fussen - Friedrichshafen) and download it for a USB Stick. The format is a ZIP of a gzipped tar-ball containing a png image and an XML file very recognizable as something similar or possibly identical to other XML formatted route files I've seen elsewhere. In other words - it is a perfect system. The website for creating routes, or it is easy to adapt routes from other sources to the BMW format.

Attaching my test route. Rename the file from Test.pdf to Test.zip. It is NOT a real pdf. I am just using that extension since it is supported by the forum.

I have yet to experiment with routes outside Germany, but looking good!

Frank.


----------



## JohnnyRoaster (Oct 28, 2008)

What great news! :beerchug:

Now we just need to confirm that our US bound cars can download the route into the nav. Thanks for the update and I am going to check it out right now.


----------



## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

I'm headed to my local dealership today to finalize my paperwork. I'll take this simple route with me and import it on a 2009 and report back.


----------



## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

*Try out a US Route*

You'd better build a US route of your own. The web tool allows you to. The US map equipped nav system in a local car may barf if it tries to digest a route with out-of-map European locations.

Per other threads a bug/feature may require you to create a route on the car before the car activates the capability to import routes.

Frank.


----------



## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Good point! I'll go create one now.


----------



## gclabbe (Feb 20, 2009)

Mixed results.

I had two routes on the USB ... the one attached by FrankAZ and one that I created showing waypoints in Colorado.

The system imported the Germany tour, even showed me the stops of Fussen and Friederichshafen, but of course could not map these places.

It did not import the Colorado trip, though.

So, I whipped out my mac and cleared the Germany trip from the memory stick, cleared out the existing trip and re-imported. It showed import progress, but did not load up a trip. I'll take a look at the XML files and see if I can figure out the difference.

Ran out of time at this point.

My previous observation of having to create a trip before finding import is wrong. Once your in the trips list screen, a simple press of the options button (or joystick right) gets you to the correct screen.

However, there didn't seem to be an option to delete a specific trip, only "Delete All Trips". Seems a little awkward.

But, at least we know that the main point of this exercise will work. We can create a trip on that site, save it and take it, and travel around Europe until contented  My wife will be a lot happier not having me sit in the car for hours programming the Nav.


----------



## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

gclabbe said:


> Mixed results.
> 
> But, at least we know that the main point of this exercise will work. We can create a trip on that site, save it and take it, and travel around Europe until contented  My wife will be a lot happier not having me sit in the car for hours programming the Nav.


Cracking stuff! Thanks for the immediate mano-a-auto feedback. At least it works for my routes  . Puzzling why it hiccoughed on your local route.

I have to go to the dealer again in the next few days to hand over my ED PO and notarized docs. I'll take a few local routes with me to experiment with if I get a chance. I'll include a monster one with all the images and detail to represent the kind of over-the-top creation I'll take to Germany with me in June.


----------



## dandanio (Jun 20, 2008)

gclabbe said:


> Mixed results.
> 
> I had two routes on the USB ... the one attached by FrankAZ and one that I created showing waypoints in Colorado.
> 
> ...


I checked the .xml files and Frank's XML file is browseable and has contents. When I create an .xml for a trip in the US, I get an empty .xml file. Can you confirm that?



gclabbe said:


> But, at least we know that the main point of this exercise will work. We can create a trip on that site, save it and take it, and travel around Europe until contented  My wife will be a lot happier not having me sit in the car for hours programming the Nav.


Yeah, it would be really easy to create an .xml file based on Frank's. It is basically an XML file with coordinates... I wonder why the creator doesn't work...


----------



## yce (Jun 11, 2009)

Ok- I'm new to this forum, so please forgive me if this question was already answered. I did poke around for a couple of days first though.

How does one upload the route to the nav system? I plug in the USB drive, but I can't figure out how to get the route to the nav system. I can brows the USB drive via the audio system and I can see the directories where the route is stored, but I can't figure out how to transfer that route to the nav system.

I have an 09 135i and am in USA.

TIA


----------



## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

*A little off-topic...*



yce said:


> Ok- I'm new to this forum, so please forgive me if this question was already answered. I did poke around for a couple of days first though.
> 
> How does one upload the route to the nav system? I plug in the USB drive, but I can't figure out how to get the route to the nav system. I can brows the USB drive via the audio system and I can see the directories where the route is stored, but I can't figure out how to transfer that route to the nav system.
> 
> ...


It is extremely counter-intuitive. I am presently on my ED trip near Salzburg and it has been nothing but a royal pain in the butt every time I use it. A huge disappointment over the pre-trip hopes I had. So far I have been trying to import routes for Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. None, except the first day route to/from Neuschwanstein has imported, and that required some off-manual incantation from a Welt guru which was interesting from an easter-egg perspective but does nothing now that I am on my own. The rest have just hung. OK - it did warn me that the former eastern bloc countries were outside the bmw-routes planning area but since the website generated files and the nav system had maps I figured 'why not?'. Stalling the nav system is a no-no in anyone's book.

Now I am in Austria I find the import of a simple Vienna - Salzburg route would not import either. I have tried just about every combo of files and structures including the BMWNav folder that worked with the Neuschwanstein one. No dice.

I am beginning to suspect that it is something to do with my nav maps. The version supplied on my system includes the word 'Test' and is from 2008. I already know from my time 'on the ground' that they are incomplete and desperately out of date. On the two occasions I have been diverted on a detour (while in Germany) the nav system has me driving across open fields even though my wheels and eyes tell me I am driving on a nice bit of 6-lane road which is clearly several years old at least.

I'm presently in Annaberg (south of Salzburg) and my apartment is again in fresh space even though the road and apartment are at least 10 years old and significantly sized.

Another whine: addresses with multiple possibilities (roads which occur several times, towns ditto) are all listed, but the discriminator 'zip code', postleitzahl if I remember correctly, are scolled off to the right so to find the correct one one must try each in turn, re-'typing' it each time. Grrrr!

Apart from that everything and particularly the car is just spectacular.

Frank


----------



## yce (Jun 11, 2009)

FrankAZ said:


> It is extremely counter-intuitive. I am presently on my ED trip near Salzburg and it has been nothing but a royal pain in the butt every time I use it. A huge disappointment over the pre-trip hopes I had. So far I have been trying to import routes for Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. None, except the first day route to/from Neuschwanstein has imported, and that required some off-manual incantation from a Welt guru which was interesting from an easter-egg perspective but does nothing now that I am on my own. The rest have just hung. OK - it did warn me that the former eastern bloc countries were outside the bmw-routes planning area but since the website generated files and the nav system had maps I figured 'why not?'. Stalling the nav system is a no-no in anyone's book.
> 
> Now I am in Austria I find the import of a simple Vienna - Salzburg route would not import either. I have tried just about every combo of files and structures including the BMWNav folder that worked with the Neuschwanstein one. No dice.
> 
> ...


thanks for the quick reply Frank. I took a look at your map- wow! nice trip! maybe I should have done an ED too... oh well.

But, uh.. you started to write the procedure, but you kinda got side tracked by the frustration you've been having... do you remember the easter-egg incantation of the Welt guru? Is it something you can share or were you sworn to secrecy?

Thanks again.
-yce


----------



## wolfgang0524 (Sep 5, 2008)

yce said:


> thanks for the quick reply Frank. I took a look at your map- wow! nice trip! maybe I should have done an ED too... oh well.
> 
> But, uh.. you started to write the procedure, but you kinda got side tracked by the frustration you've been having... do you remember the easter-egg incantation of the Welt guru? Is it something you can share or were you sworn to secrecy?
> 
> ...


I'm going on memory since my 535i is still on a ship, but here goes.

You have to create your route on www.bmw-routes.com and download it to your computer. This will create a zip file which needs to be extracted. Once extracted, you should see a directory structure like BMWData/Nav/<route_name>.tar.gz. Copy the whole directory structure to a USB memory stick.

In the car:
Insert the memory stick into the USB port in the glove compartment, not the center console. I made that mistake a couple to times. The center console does not work for trip imports.
Select Nav
You need to find the "trip with multiple destinations" and select it
You then will need to find the trip list option.
There is a trick somewhere in this process where the only way to find the correct option to select is by hitting the "option" button, but I can't remember where exactly in the process that in required.
You should then see "Import from USB". Once selected and you may have to hit OK and then your route should be downloaded. 
You may have to go back to trip list and select the imported trip.
You should then see all of your destinations show up.

Good luck.

You could also try searching bimmerfest for "bmw-routes". There is also some info on the ED Wiki under Counting down and Preparing for pick-up. It hasn't been updated in a while. Hopefully someone will update it soon. If not, I'll update late July or early August when I get my car back.


----------



## smithtravel (Nov 11, 2006)

Wolfgang0524 basically has the in-car routine down. I didn't find it that complicated if I just followed the instructions on the BMW Routes website. More problematic was getting the route I created from the website to my USB and on to the car. For Frank AZ, one thing to keep in mind, you can only have one trip on the USB at a time or it confuses the system and it won't download any of the routes. 

Anyway, after creating and naming a route on the website, click on "Transfer Route to Vehicle" and do the following:

1. On the page that comes up next, click on "Saving the route to USB memory stick" on the bottom right of that page.

2. On the next page that comes up, click on "Route herunterladen" (in the middle of the page). That will send the route to your computer's desktop. You will see a zip file with your route's name.

3. Move the file to your USB (right click on the file and use "Move to" to send it to the USB).

4. Once on the USB, extract the file there (right click on the file and click on "Extract Here").

You should now have a folder on your USB named "BMW Data". That folder will have in it a folder named "Nav" and in that folder will be the routes file with the extensions .tar.gz. Don't do anything with all of that, just leave it all in the BMW Data folder. Put your USB in the car (glove box USB, not 6FL) and follow the directions on the website to download into your vehicle (basically the directions Wolfgang0524 gave above).

One more important step, put the USB in the glovebox slot before starting the car, then turn on the ignition.

Good luck.


----------



## csg1600 (Aug 25, 2008)

*USB import*

I have been using the USB import function here in Europe for a couple of months (US-spec car) since BMW does not have a way to activate the US telematics systems in Europe.

By and large I found the USB trips works well. As I noted in another thread, you can't have more than one trip in the same directory. When I travel, if I don't want to bring multiple USB sticks, I have a small adapter for the Micro SD card for my Blackberry and I save the trips on the microSD card before I leave. As I need a new trip, I use a file utility to move the new trip into the directory and load it from the microSD card. Has worked fine.

One major caveat is with setting up your waypoints manually (by dragging the route around). Drill down to the highest level of magnification to make sure you are placing your waypoint where you want to go...because otherwise you will find it taking you to some odd places.

Also, when you miss a waypoint, it is best to manually select the go on to the next waypoint option on the navigation system. Although the nav is usually able to figure out that you are doing that, it sometimes doesn't and send you through a tortured trip back to the same point. Helps to keep an eye on the big picture map too.


----------



## yce (Jun 11, 2009)

smithtravel said:


> Wolfgang0524 basically has the in-car routine down. I didn't find it that complicated if I just followed the instructions on the BMW Routes website. More problematic was getting the route I created from the website to my USB and on to the car. For Frank AZ, one thing to keep in mind, you can only have one trip on the USB at a time or it confuses the system and it won't download any of the routes.
> 
> Anyway, after creating and naming a route on the website, click on "Transfer Route to Vehicle" and do the following:
> 
> ...


OK. I tried Wolfgang0524's procedure, but ran into a few hurdles. 
1- I don't seem to have a USB port in my glove box. Am I just missing it?! I have a 135i, btw.
2- When in NAV I do not have a "trip w/multi destination" option. I'm wondering if the USB key has to be plugged in before you get that option.

Maybe my firmware is out of date? I'll check the version and post that later.

Thanks.
-yce


----------



## smithtravel (Nov 11, 2006)

If you have NAV you have the USB in the glove box, but it is hard to find. While sitting in the driver's seat, open the glove box. Then, put your head into the foot well of the passenger seat. (No, I'm not joking or being crude.) The USB slot is up high in the glove box. Once you find it and get the feel of it, it is not big deal to put the USB in. By the way, that is the same slot you can use to upload music files to your car if you do not have the 6FL option.

Put the USB in, start the car, an then wait a minute. I find that sometimes if I go to NAV too soon, the USB does not show up.

As far as trip with multiple destinations goes, that should be there. That is not just used for importing trips, but also for creating multiple destination trips from within the vehicle.


----------



## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

Thanks to all those that have submitted tips and suggestions. Along the way I have tried all of those. Starting with the simple Windows drag-drop method to place the BMW Data folder on my USB, all the way to using WinZip, and then in increasing frustration assorted Linux things on a Linux partition I brought out with me. Basically zilch. Car on; car off; car toggling; curse word incantaions.

Going back to absolute basics and turning off everything I presume and following BMW's directions precisely.... still zilch. I am very much of the opinion that my car has a problem of some sort in the nav department. Even at the Welt when I tried to install the simple in-Germany trip to Neuschwanstein it wouldn't work as advertised nor as gclabbe and others experienced. It took a visit of an iDrive guru to the turntable and something he did with the USB port in the glove compartment before anything happened and without whatever gadget he used I cannot reproduce that success.

I would have thought the system software, the language pack and the maps would be independant but perhaps they do interact in bad ways. I am concerned about my maps because my 'Test' denominated maps have blank spaces. Most recently yesterday, on the approach to Venice on an ancient autostrada, suddenly we dropped off the edge of the world and were driving across grey-space and had to navigate by the sun and (gasp) printed maps to find Mestre, when normal service was resumed.

Since no one else has commented I am also presuming some GPS issues unique to my car too since when I was in the south Tyrol Alps my track was parallel to a road and not on the road so 'Gretel' (my nav voice) was perpetually enticing me to turn left or right to join the track she wanted. I would guess this might have something to do with loss of precision because some satellites were obscured by great chunks of Austria, but even so any other GPS I have used has been able to track up to 12 satellites were they in view and not barf if half the sky is covered. With a constellation of 24 -26 sats I shouldn't be down to only 3 sats with less than half the sky obscured, at least according to my GPS knowledge. Good luck to the military if that is the case, anyway.

Intermittent altitude information also indicates to me a loss of satellite triangulation, which also manifests on other GPS as a horizontal displacement as a GPS can presume sea level if it loses enough satellites to work in 3D.


Also on iDrive does anyone else have their iPod (mine is a gen 1 Touch 16GB) keep dropping off the system? Every hundred miles or so I have to unplug and replug it and then everything it just fine, including position in a play list which was playing when it stopped.

I really dislike being the whining Minnie on this forum so I'll end by saying that iDrive aside the car is magnificent. Is it just me or is there an actual engine/transmission remap after 1200 miles? I fancy my car was more lively the morning after I passed that threshold, but it may just have been sunshine, knowledge I could use the car more, and the vacation spirit.


----------



## yce (Jun 11, 2009)

smithtravel said:


> If you have NAV you have the USB in the glove box, but it is hard to find. While sitting in the driver's seat, open the glove box. Then, put your head into the foot well of the passenger seat. (No, I'm not joking or being crude.) The USB slot is up high in the glove box. Once you find it and get the feel of it, it is not big deal to put the USB in. By the way, that is the same slot you can use to upload music files to your car if you do not have the 6FL option.
> 
> Put the USB in, start the car, an then wait a minute. I find that sometimes if I go to NAV too soon, the USB does not show up.
> 
> As far as trip with multiple destinations goes, that should be there. That is not just used for importing trips, but also for creating multiple destination trips from within the vehicle.


While I don't think you are joking or being crude, you *are* making some rather wild assumptions on my degree of flexibility! ;-)

I found the USB port in my glove box (upper right hand corner) and was able to download a route from my USB drive to the NAV system! w00t!

Thanks everyone for your help.

Part 2 of my query (you didn't know there was going to be a part two, did you?) is how do we get bmw-routes to beam the route to the car like you can with destinations and google maps?

It says you need a bmw-connect account, which I believe I have (I've asked my dealer to verify this) but when I try to log in, I can't. Nor does it offer any advice on what to do if you don't have an account. There is no "Sign Up" button or anything...

Anyone have any success with this method?

Thanks again everyone for all your help!


----------



## smithtravel (Nov 11, 2006)

No beaming up of Routes in the U.S. That is only a European feature, at least for now.


----------



## Aussie40d (Sep 20, 2012)

*Convert GoogleEarth or DiscoverAus files to BMW GPS*

I picked up my latest X5 earlier in the year - the first one I'd ordered with an inbuilt GPS.
I was used to using DiscoverAus (maybe called MapSend in America?) mapping software with a Magellan GPS to create routes so I could get from a to b via a route of my choice! With the new one I was frustrated by not being able do this, as I live in Australia am therefore just a little out-of-zone for BMW-routes.
I searched BMW forums to find out how I might create a file, but couldn't find anything.
I then created and downloaded a BMW-routes file for London to Bath (or somewhere), and used it as a proforma to edit and replace the coordinates with ones appropriate to my planned trips. It imported to my car via USB and worked pretty well.
Manually editing files for each trip was a fairly cumbersome process though. I then wrote a programme in Excel VBA which imported a DiscoverAus route file, and converted it to the BMW xml format. I've since also written a programme to import GoogleEarth (*.kml) files and again converting them to the BMW xml format. So now I can easily create my trip on GoogleEarth, import it to my computer, then with one click create the BMW file.
Anyway as far as I can tell, the only reason why the BMW-routes files don't work outside Europe/GB is that the site doesn't have that capability. Otherwise I find it all works beautifully.
I'm not a VBA programmer, so the code's probably not that pretty, but it does the job for me. The purpose of me joining and putting up this post was to make this Excel spreadsheet available to other people who currently share my earlier frustration.
Let me know if I can email it to anyone who's interested.
Simon


----------



## FrankAZ (Feb 19, 2009)

That KML -> BMW utility sounds useful/interesting. Thank you. Why not post it here? Just rename the extension to add .PDF, post it using the Attachments button, and make sure to tell folks to rename it back to the correct (identified) extension once they have it.

E.g. Post "MyUtility.exe.pdf".

Frank.


----------



## Aussie40d (Sep 20, 2012)

*Excel conversion file*

Here 'tis.
Once downloaded, change the name of the file and remove the ".pdf" extension.
This makes it a macro-enabled Excel file (hence the "m" after the ".xls").
Ensure your computer allows macros to run. Depending on your Excel version, you can have a look at your "Trust Centre Settings" in your Trust Centre in Excel and make changes if necessary. Some versions just have a pop-up message when you open the spreadsheet, asking if you want to enable macros.
Go to Google Earth, and use the directions options to create a route. There's a button there which allows you to save this as a .kml file. By default it will probably put this in your "Downloads" folder, which sits in your "My Documents" folder.
Now click on the right-hand blue button in the "Master" sheet of the spreadsheet. It should open up your "Desktop" folder, and you can find your .kml file from there. This then automatically converts the .kml file, and creates the BMW .xml file. It puts it in the same folder as where the spreadsheet is. On your USB drive you need to create a folder called "BMWData", and within that a folder called "Nav". The new file goes into this "Nav" folder. That is, the path on the USB drive will be "BMWData\Nav\1234567890.xml". Stick that in your BM and smoke it 
As aforementioned, I'm not a programmer by trade, and I take no responsibility for any outcomes as a result of your using this spreadsheet. If you want to look at, or play with the code, right-click on the "Master" tab sheet, and go up to "View Code". The top half is the code for converting DiscoverAus routes, and the Google Earth converter starts about half way down.
Hopefully this assists anyone interested in this stuff.

Simon


----------

