Google Maps has been around for many years now, yet people are still unaware of a lot of its useful features. Millions of people around the world use the service to discover places, plan their journeys, and find their way through traffic. You can easily draw a route on Google Maps using the directions feature. This allows you to see the quickest route between two or more points.
Drawing a route on a custom map can be useful in remembering the quickest route to your destination. It’s also helpful for sharing a particular route with a colleague, employee, or friend. To draw your route, you’ll first need to create your custom map. You can use Google Maps for this or use a service such as Maptive. Google has fewer features but is free. Maptive allows you to create a free map, but once the trial period runs out, you’ll need to pay to continue to use the service.
In this guide, we’ll be explaining how you can create a custom map and use it to draw your route. Whether you’re using Google Maps or a more advanced mapping tool, this guide will help you create your own route to use and share.
- Set Up Your Custom Map
The first step in drawing your route is to set up your custom map. Go to Google My Maps or to your map-making software and sign in. For My Maps, you’ll need to use your Google account. If you don’t already have one, register first. Once that’s out of the way, you can choose the “create new map” option. After you’ve selected this, you’ll see a large map of the surrounding area. Use the search bar to find your map area. It’s easiest to search for a specific address or town. Alternatively, use the map to zoom in on where you want to be.
- Add your Markers
Once you’ve found your location, add a marker using the option under the search bar. You can drop it wherever you like on the map and then name it and add a short description. Repeat the process until you have as many points as you need on your route. Make sure you name each point, so you know what they are later on. If you’re sharing the map, you’ll also want to make sure that the person or people you’re sharing it with can understand it. You can change the colors of points too, which is useful for color coding different types of locations.
- Create Your Route
You can then select the directions option and add the points to find the best route between them. Google automatically finds the quickest route, so you don’t need to worry about that. The map tool lets you use multiple markers to create a route, and you can also add multiple routes to the same map. To avoid cluttering the map, you can always create separate maps if you have too many points and routes in one small area.
- Share Your Map
Once you’ve finished creating your custom map and drawing your route, you’re ready to save it and share it. Name your map and add a description for more clarity. Then you’ll want to select the “share” option. This lets you enter the email addresses of the people you’re sharing it with. You’ll also need to set the privacy settings to public. If you have a website, you can then copy the HTML code and embed it directly on your page. Find the “embed on my site” option in the menu to share it.
- Customize Further
If you’re using a premium map-making tool, use the extra features available to add more design and details to your map. Adding radius circles, heat maps, and annotations can all help to make your map easier to understand. A lot of different map-making tools provide these options, but you’ll usually have to pay to access them.
