Flatten terrain

[rwk]

Is there an easy way to flatten an entire map? I have a map I want to flatten to merge with 0 elevation baseboards. It takes too long to do it by hand with the terrain flatten tool in surveyor. Is there an external program out there that can modify terrains?

 

[RikFish]

You can use the copy and paste functions. Add a couple of baseboards which will be at 0 elevation. Copy these and then paste elevation only at absolute heighth. It's a lot quicker than the terrain tools as you can then do two base boards at a time. You could try pasting an even larger area but that slows my computer down too much.

Rick

 

[rwk]

Why does Trainz crash to the desktop with an error message when I use the adjustable land modify tool where you drag the box and select? If I make a large box and select, it crashes immediately. Isn't there a program than can flatten a map all at once? I thought there was a terrain modify program out there but I can't find it, a program that can build mountains for you, etc. What about HOG? Can that flatten terrain?

 

[RPearson]

HOG can create a constant elevation gnd file as a new one but unless you have the original image files it used to create the map I think it would be very difficult to do the same for an existing one. Track, road or scenery splines (if fixed height) and all other scenery items on the map won't get changed in any case using HOG.

You might check out TransDem a payware program. I believe it can change baseboard elevations - that is relatively by a fixed amount. Changing all elevations to the same value is different though slightly easier to program but I'm not sure it's set up to do that.

I have my own programs for working with gnd and trk files. There're restrictions on the kind of objects in the obs file that I can handle at the present time. I don't make them available to the public except for the tzCad2Trk utility which only creates new trk files. It's possible other people might have utilities available but I'm not aware of any.

Bob Pearson

 

[geophil]

As Bob says, TransDEM can raise or lower existing Trainz terrain by a fixed amount. I have not implemented any other functionality there as you don't normally need it working with DEM-based landscapes.

The raise/lower-function can help you to adapt existing modules built at "sea-level" to proper DEM elevation.

geophil

 

[rwk]

Well, it took me an hour, but I managed to flatten the terrain using the circle tool and swish it over the land to flatten the map. The layout I wanted to merge it with is a self-made layout at 0 elevation, but the DEM map was too high up. It was like if you tried to add baseboards to the DEM map, there was this cliff between the DEM and normal baseboard. Now, with the DEM map flat, it will merge with normal baseboards at the same elevation.

 

[geophil]

The usual approach would be the other way round: To raise the zero-elevation baseboards to DEM level.

geophil