Latest AutoRoute and MapPoint have a far slower “optimise stops” tool

Question

I have AutoRoute 11.0, AutoRoute 2010, MapPoint 2010, MapPoint 2011, MapPoint 2013.

I noticed that when I optimise stops the first takes a reasonable time, while the other 4 (which are newer...) are far slower.

For instance I tried with the same set of 67 stops, spread in Toscana, Lazio and Campania (in Italia). The older AutoRoute takes half a minute, whistl the others take about 20 minutes. Unfortunately such a slow process is useless for our customers.

How can this be explained? A change in the alghorithms? Some setting to set up? Thanks!

Answer 1

I contacted Microsoft and realized this problem can be due to an increased complexity in the maps. Thus the algorithm has much more roads to consider and performance slows down.

As an alternative they suggested me Opti-Time TourSolver, a professional add-in for MapPoint, which has a native algorithm for optimisation which is faster and also allows to stop it when we are satisfied. This software has a lot of features more, even if it is not so cheap.