Surveyor doesn't like to multitask.

JonMyrlennBailey

Active member
Anybody here who has built layouts long enough knows there is sometimes a good reason to have two instances of Surveyor open at the same time.

This is to have a newer increment of a damaged route open that needs repair by hand (replace content, spline points, etc.) while having a good older version also open to make visual comparisons and measurements with the ruler. It is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle by looking closely at the picture on the box.

The trouble is, one or both instances are prone to crash: either shut down involuntarily or become hoplessly Not Responding where it has to be forced to to be closed.

Sometimes edit work is lost because of this. One instance often hangs up during an Autosave or a manual save attempt in my case. When it is opened back up following forced shutdown, everything was lost since it was last opened up along side another instance.

Is there any way to keep two instances of Surveyor open reliably and save work in the process?


It almost seems like one needs two separate PC's running side by side to have two separate instances of Surveyor open to make repairs by comparing the two open instances.
 
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Any Trainz program CM, or Surveyor should be operated one at a time, with the other shut down

You build in surveyor ... save ... and then run the route

You shut down Trainz, and use the CM ... you can not do both at once

You can not have 2 instances of surveyor open
 
You can not compare 2 routes at once ... You should take handwritten notes, and use your memory to remember what needs to be changed, or edited

It's not that complicated of a process ... its just lines on a screen

Do you need two instances of MSWord running to edit a word document ? NO ... You don't
 
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Jon,

It is not a recommended practice to run two instances of Trainz, any version for that matter. You may run Content Manager at the same time, but not two copies of Trainz, and then even then that can cause problems. Remember all your assets are tracked in a large database. When two clients are attached to the database, meaning two concurrent Trainz program sessions, it causes a conflict and file locking as one of the clients has the files open so the other one cannot write to the database.

This is not unique, by the way, to Trainz and its assets.tdx database. In the big corporate world, big databases, such as those used by banks, insurance companies and so on, by Oracle, SAP, and even Microsoft have the same issue. Sure they use MSSQL and Oracle DB, or IBM DB2, but the file recording locking is still a problem. Way back in my MIS days, I worked in a computer room. We had to run reports and monitor the servers as part of our job. At any one time, one of our responsibilities was to not stay too long on any one record as this could lock the database and prevent processing. We were diligent about that, but there were times when we would get calls from people complaining they couldn't access the database. It turned out that some people down in Client Services would sometimes go to lunch and forget to exit out of a client screen. This would effectively lock records until the data was released.

Now this was a database that kept track of 250,000 annuity clients, and not one that keeps track of game content yet the situation is similar. I saw this again much later when I was involved in an MSSQL-based business package. People would go to lunch and forget to exit from screens, which caused the database to lock until they were logged out. It was my job to go around the building and find the culprit user, though I got the knack of knowing who it usually was, and I then had to log their PC out of the session.

The point is, Jon. It's still the same with Trainz today.

John
 
John:

Luckily, I figured out how to have two instances of Surveyor open at the same time with minimum risk of trouble.

Here is my work-around if I only have one PC to work with:

First, I reboot my PC if incessant crashing seems apparent while trying to work with two instances of Trainz open.

Second, I turned OFF Autosave. The program hang-up trouble usually happens while trying to do saves with two routes open.

Third, I did about a half hour of route-comparison repair edits at once with two different route increment saves of the same route project open at once. Measuring, ID'ing and noting the content, spline heights, points on the good route (earlier saved increment) so as to know what and where to place the missing content on the route under repair. For example, Vulcan's airport runway modules and taxiway spline did not get auto-magically replaced after reinstalling Trainz, importing back my route with the airport in it, running XDR and re-downloading Vulcan's content so I had to replace all those runway components by hand. Most route content, thankfully, does come back on its own, however following a game reinstall. Some of dinorius redundicus' static vehicles had to have their heights re-adjusted though they came back on their own. Some modified train vehicles had to be replaced by hand. I had to keep the older save of the route with the airport open to measure each component to determine its exact position on the map, ID each piece, and note its rotation in degrees and its height. The runway had a chain link fence surrounding it that did come back after the reinstall, since it is an ordinary spline, so I used it as a reference point to measure from it to the runway to determine its exact position on the air field.

Then I closed the instance of Trainz used as a visual reference and then manually saved the repair work I got accomplished up to that point
without a hitch.

Then I opened back up the reference route and repeated the above steps to do continued repair work save for rebooting the PC again.




Some programs like your Web browsers and Microsoft Office Suite seem to do great while opened up in multiple instances.
 
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This is ridiculous. You're stuffing Trainz - itself a buggy, poorly written software - into all kinds of difficult situations, and am surprised when it farts out and causes problems for you. The size, complexity and sensitivity of the Trainz database cannot be understated. Web browsers and Office (seriously??) are not even in the same league, Microsoft Access with hundreds of modules and thousands of object then maybe you're getting close.

We've been through this before; if you want two instances of Surveyor then install 2 copies of Trainz accessing 2 separate databases and run them concurrently, not 2 instances Trainz trying to access the same database, otherwise no sympathy for the self-created distress.
 
I agree that you have mastered all types of means, and a multitude of ways, so as to make many problems crop up in Trainz ... by meddeling with things ... if it ain't busted, don't try to fix it !

Trainz works perfectly well, the way it was designed, and is a total joy, and an extremely enjoyable experience ... it is not meant to be a perfectionist, mad science experiment, where you mess with things, pushing the envelope, until it breaks.
 
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I guess one could also install one copy of Trainz in something called a 'virtual machine'. Therefore the VM would have the reference route to open up and solely to view to compare content wile the real machine would have the route under repair open. The VM would also have its own separate TS database.
 
I guess one could also install one copy of Trainz in something called a 'virtual machine'. Therefore the VM would have the reference route to open up and solely to view to compare content wile the real machine would have the route under repair open. The VM would also have its own separate TS database.

Why would you do that??? I have presented to you a perfectly normal solution. But as usual you've completely ignored it in favor of a silly, convoluted nonsense undertaking that - in this case - gives you much poorer performance at higher resource usage levels that will also affect your regular Trainz install if you're running both off the same drive. I'm done here.
 
I guess one could also install one copy of Trainz in something called a 'virtual machine'. Therefore the VM would have the reference route to open up and solely to view to compare content wile the real machine would have the route under repair open. The VM would also have its own separate TS database.

This isn't necessary and will only waste your disk space, besides the graphics may not be handled in the VM because not all VMs support Open/GL which is needed for Content Manager. Just install a second copy of Trainz, call the installation something else and use that for reference. You can even replicate your current database and open up that in the new copy.

Nicky is right, you're getting a bit complex with an easily broken program. The Trainz database is very fragile and will crash easily, and database repairs are no fun. Microsoft Access is no better, and that used to crash terribly until pretty recently. Their jet database engine would crash if you looked at it the wrong way and then there were file locking issues which are similar to what you are seeing now. In case you are wondering, the Trainz Assets.tdx database is based on SQL-Lite, though being SQL-Lite it has been customized for use within Trainz and the data is not accessible outside of this environment. In the past, not with Trainz but with other databases, I've done data downloads to MS Access and Excel for reporting purposes. At Oracle, I used to access MyDesktop which was their data repository for user's machine configs, so I could build upgrade and inventory lists. While at a former Polaroid company, I built an asset tracking database in Access, and much later on used to do data downloads from their CRM package. I then used that data to produce inventory and backorder reports as well as shipping reports for management.

John
 
Well, I have never tried that virtual machine stuff with TS and don't find it really necessary myself after all. Rebooting my PC and turning off Autosave during a route mending as I had highlighted in the special steps above gave me great results yesterday. I was finally able to get my airport runway and taxiway squared away and saved without a hitch by approaching Trainz very cautiously, not trusting it fully and outfoxing it!

outfox_zps2bjkebhw.png



I finally figured out how to BEAT Trainz after it had been beating me up for so long!!
 
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Everyone is trying to work with the software and keep things humming along not "BEAT" it. The only thing that took a beating here was our sensibilities.

Picard_Facepalm_small.png
 
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As amigacookie recently pointed out to me, the Ignore List is your friend. Add the OP to your ignore list, as I have done, and none of his messages will be shown to you - making life much easier and far less stressful.:)
 
What I did was quite sensible. It sure beat spending hours cutting away squares from a copy of the old route work in progress increment and merging them with the newer increment under repair just for fixing the lousy airfield. I would have also had to tie up cut splines across the merged train board edges.
 
What I did was quite sensible.

You are doing things that you have been advised not to do and the result is a damaged route. So then to repair that damaged route you are doing more things that you have been advised not to do.

And you call that sensible?

What would be sensible would be to adjust your workflow according to the advice that has been provided so that you do not have damaged routes in the first place.
 
"Tried that but it dint' werk', as I kept wondering: "Whats he building in there" ? And I kept clicking: "View Post"

Same here. Thought it was quiet for a while back then it reappeared. Just have to open them up to read what it is that gets the replies. If you know what I mean .:hehe:
Helian 43
 
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