Modular Design with TransDEM

[ModelerMJ]

Hello all,

I have been coming to grips with TransDEM over the last few weeks (and what an awesome piece of software it is), and am getting close to the point of generating baseboards. I know that TransDEM provides functions that allow a route to be created in sections, which can be joined later to create the final product, and that makes perfect sense to me as I can readily see many advantages to doing so.

This brings me to the point of this post. I would be interested in hearing from those of you who have built routes with TransDEM in the past, using a modular approach, as far as what techniques you have used to produce the various sections while ensuring that they would join together properly later.

Edit: I'd also be interested to hear how you specify which baseboards are exported -- i.e. do you create a route (or more than one) with the simple route editor, then have TransDEM emit baseboards within a radius along the route(s)? Or do you maybe have another way in which you have it emit only specific baseboards that you want?

Thanks very much in advance.

 

[slabay]

I'm pretty new at it myself, but I've got a pretty large DEM that I've got put together of western Pennsylvania. The route I am working on right now is about a 20 mile stretch of the Monongahela River Valley and I am focusing on the PRR/PC/CR/NS and P&LE/MGA/CSX main lines along the river.

Thanks to Ben Dorsey's awesome bridge work, I have also started working on the N&W high line across the valley and found that I needed an area of about 35 baseboards that I never got ground textures for. I went back into TransDEM and got the maps that I needed for the area and generated a new "route" for the missing area and merged it in to my existing route. The new route matches up perfectly with the existing route, and all I had to do was cut the overlapping baseboards from the old route so that the new one woud drop into place. (The new route was a 5x7 rectangle so I had to cut a few oddball pieces out).

When (IF) I finish this, I'll go ahead and add Ten Mile Creek Branch so I can get to a coal mine, and it should hook right up. It is a piece of cake with TransDEM, and in hindsight, I think I would have worked with smaller pieces to start with and do the route more "modularly" myself (if that is even a real word).

 

[ModelerMJ]

slabay, thanks for the input. Your route sounds like a good one.