I plot my routes on a thumb drive on my Windows laptop, then plug it in my Windows tablet for navigation.
Once en route, do I need to keep the drive in the tablet?
Thanks.
Daniel Desmedt
s/v Spray Cat
daniel@desmedt.net
That depends on whether you want to be able to save any changes that you make.
Once a voyage plan document has been loaded from your thumb drive, its file is not used again unless any changes are made and a save option is used (either a manual save, or the auto-save feature).
“Changes” include things like making adjustments to any positions or other properties, deleting things, or creating new things (including tracks and events)
If any changes are made and the auto-save feature is enabled, then removing the thumb drive will likely cause error messages to appear each time Coastal Explorer tries to save the file.
In addition, if you need to restart Coastal Explorer, it will not be able to re-read the voyage plan document until you reattach the thumb drive.
You could avoid any problems that might be caused by using a thumb drive this way by always copying the file to your tablet’s desktop and opening that copy with Coastal Explorer. That way Coastal Explorer will automatically reload the file if it’s restarted and have a place to save changes (however, those changes would be lost if you dragged the file from the thumb drive again).
Thanks,
I do plan to keep the drive plugged in, just wanted to be sure I could remove it for a short time to modify upcoming routes.
I wont do any saves during that time. I assume AUTOSAVE is off by default, right?
Thanks again for a wonderful navigating aid. 
Daniel Desmedt
s/v Spray Cat
845-527-5381
Autosave is ON by default, every minute.