Autocad Import

[Edward9cf]

After playing with 2010 for the last week or so, I'm liking what I see a lot. I've begun to develop my own route, and am using it to model my future "real world" garden railroad. (I'm sure doing so has it's own quirks which I'll discover along the way, lol). Anyway, on to the meat of the post....

I have my layout well planned in Autocad. I'd like to import somehow the trackplan into surveyor to save a lot of time. I've stumbled (searched) across some posts mentioning importing dxf's into surveyor, but nothing stating how to go about doing this. The closest I've seen is that a 3rd party translator is needed. Does anyone have any leads or links to point me in the right direction?
Edit: Even being able to superimpose a bmp or pdf of the trackplan into surveyor would help...just not sure how to do that yet either!

 

[leeferr]

As far as I know, a dxf can't be loaded into surveyor. It can be imported into Gmax to create content as that's how I create content for the game. I believe that there is a way to import image files into surveyor, but I'm not sure how that's done. Someone should be along that can help though.

Mike

 

[Boobless_ed]

The only way you can import the trackplan made in Autocad is by using TransDEM, a fantastic payware tool to help create routes, albeit based on real terrain from satelite height data.

Unfortunately, I don't think that this is what you're after, considering it's a fictional trackplan.

What you can do though is dig around the forums for blank tile objects which you can put a BMP of the trackplan you've made onto as a texture for this object, and you can then just trace the track from that.

I can't remember off the top of my head what you should search for though to find these objects, so hopefully the next person to reply can point you in the right direction. I've just woken up, so my memory is a bit hazy

 

[bchester]

Base Maps are the way to go

Trainz is designed with 720m by 720m base boards. Perform a screen capture of sections of your route plan that will equate to an area roughly equal to those dimensions and save the design as an uncompressed TGA file (possibly a bmp but I do not remember and my development machine is still down and out). Search the DLS and forum for "base map", download it and replace the map TGA file with your file, (keep the name the same as the original so you will not have to modify the config.txt), close and commit. Start surveyor, create a new route, click on the scenery (buildings) tab, find and select the base map and add it the new blank route. Now you have a template to lay the trackage over.

Hope this helps.

Bricey

 

[Capt_Haddock]

Search For "Basemaps", these come in two flavours, 1 km for use with Ordnance Survey (UK) grids and 720m to fit with the base Trainz map sections.
In either case you will need to divide your AutoCad design into 720 or 1000m tiles and export them as TGAs or jpgs.

Incidentally, if you use AutoCad to made 3D objects and the program can export in STRM format these can be imported into Blenderm rendered and exported to Trainz.

 

[Willem2]

kuid 2:97008:7201:1 through to :7205:1

These are 720x720 basemaps and available from the DLS.

If due to server problems you are unable to get them send me a PM

with your email and I'll forward them to you.

Cheers,

Bill.

 

[RPearson]

Many years ago (a couple years before TransDem came out) I wrote a program called Cad2Trk that does what you want. It won't work with dems like TransDem but it can convert dxf files with vector data of lines and arcs to .trk files. The append function won't work with file formats newer than those used in TRS6. But as long as you're making a complete new trk file to start a route with it will work with all versions of Trainz from UTC on.

I don't provide much support for it and not much in the way of documentation but it's available for download. The web page below has the latest public version. I have newer versions that I'm working on that also read height data from the gnd files but these won't be distributed any time soon. Eventually I hope to have a version that you can use to grade routes in. But I'm not there yet. Development has been very slow the last 2 years because Auran has decided not to publicize the latest mapfile formats. But I'll get them eventually.

If you have 3d vector data it can use the z coordinate data to set the track spline heights or if you ony have 2d data it will set the track to float on the terrain. The vector data from the dxf file can be scaled, rotated and translated to position anywhere you want on the map. Track kuids are asigned to the entities by drawing layer.

Link here: http://pages.prodigy.net/rpearson/_wsn/page7.html

Bob Pearson

 

[Edward9cf]

Thanks all for your responses. The basemap method might be my best option, after some thinking, as I can also add in the contours of the raised garden areas, show the benches, etc, etc, etc. I would rather spend the time building it in Surveyor and seeing if I like the look, than spend lots of time building it up only to NOT like a certain area, water feature location, etc.

Bob - I'll see if I can download and use your converter tonight, I'll post what my results are and successful I was!