Meratyn

Manual/Tutorials

Field Operations Planning with Network Routing

This tutorial plans a day of field work on a road network: service areas per depot, vehicle routes for the fleet, and a live field rollout. It uses the Network tools and the Directions and Field Sync plugins.

1. Load the network and the stops

Add the road network as a line layer plus your depots and customer stops as point layers (see Adding Data).

2. Build the topology

  1. Run Processing → Whitebox Toolbox → Network → Build Network Topology so the tools understand connectivity.
  2. Run Processing → Whitebox Toolbox → Network → Snap Points To Network to pull depots and stops onto the nearest edge — unsnapped points are invisible to routing.

3. Check coverage with service areas

Run Processing → Whitebox Toolbox → Network → Network Service Area for each depot. The output shows everything reachable within a drive-time or distance break, which is the fastest way to spot coverage gaps before assigning work.

4. Route the fleet

  • Run Processing → Whitebox Toolbox → Network → Vehicle Routing CVRP with the depots and stops to partition the stops into balanced vehicle routes under a capacity limit.
  • Use Vehicle Routing VRPTW instead when stops carry time windows.
  • For single origin–destination questions, Shortest Path Network and K Shortest Paths Network answer them directly.

Each route comes back as a line layer you can style per vehicle.

5. Roll out to the field

  • The Directions plugin gives a crew turn-by-turn directions for any route on the map.
  • Field Sync keeps field observations portable: export the project snapshot from the field device and open it at the desk so a completed stop is visible there immediately.

6. Monitor the day

Keep the attribute table of the stops open with a status column, or assemble the routes, service areas, and live status into a dashboard.

Next steps

  • Travelling Salesman Problem for single-vehicle days.
  • Multimodal Routes From OD when crews mix driving and walking.
  • Close the loop with Network Accessibility Metrics to compare coverage before and after adding a depot.