Courses

Courses

A course is a GPX route prepared once into a single .tqc file with its terrain and map data. After that it rides fully offline, on any computer.

The sample course

Your library starts with one course, Twann – Chasseral: 20.4 km and 1,190 m of climbing from Twann on Lake Biel up to the Chasseral in the Swiss Jura. It comes with ORQWA, ready to ride offline, so you can try a ride before importing your own routes.

It is a course like any other: rename or delete it on its page. ORQWA adds it only when there is no library folder yet, as on its first start, so a deleted sample stays gone and updating ORQWA leaves an existing library as it is.

Import a course

1. On the Courses tab, press Import, ideally online (why).
2. Choose a GPX file, or a .tqc file someone sent you.
3. Name the course. ORQWA downloads terrain and map data and adds it to your library.

While a course is prepared — on import, and when you press Ride on a course whose 3D world is not built yet — the page lists each step as a build log: the step under way with its count (143 / 412 tiles) and how long it has taken, the finished ones ticked with their time, and at the end how long the whole took. A long course takes minutes; the log shows it moving.

ORQWA snaps the track onto the real roads (OpenStreetMap) and takes heights from a terrain model, so GPS noise and shortcuts through tunnels disappear. Cancel stops a slow import; importing again later resumes where it stopped.

For videos, see Video courses.

Find a course

The row beside Your courses helps in a large library:

• Search by course name or country.
• Filters opens a panel of chips for type (3D or video), terrain, length and country; country chips appear once your courses span two or more. Chips of one kind add up, different kinds narrow down. The chips that are on are listed under the row, and the button is highlighted: click a listed chip to turn it off. Clear filters turns them all off. Click outside the panel to close it.
• Sort by name, length, climbing, estimated time, date added or last ridden. The arrow reverses the order.
• Group by type, terrain, length or country.

Terrain	Climbing per km
Flat	under 5 m
Rolling	5–10 m
Hilly	10–20 m
Mountainous	20 m and more

Each card shows the route on a map, its length, climbing, estimated time at 75 % of your FTP and the countries it passes (hover for their names).

Share a course

Course files are ordinary files: send them by mail, cloud or USB stick. The recipient opens the .tqc with Import. You can also copy files straight into the library folder:

System	Library folder
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/ORQWA/courses
Windows	%APPDATA%\ORQWA\courses
Linux	~/.local/share/orqwa/courses

Keep a video course and its video file together in the same folder.

Courses carry their map credits (© OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles, data © OpenStreetMap contributors; terrain by Mapterhorn and AWS Terrain Tiles); keep them when sharing. A course saved by a newer ORQWA may not open in an older one.