FRED Units... and a BNSF50 Request

[GP30Fan]

I will apologize in advance for the length of this post.

Over a period of some time, I have noted posts regarding
the placement of FRED units automatically when adding or
dropping train cars from a consist.

There has been different views on how to accomplish this
with little muss or fuss on the part of the engineer.

Well in my fumbling around on the download station,
I have discovered a couple of hidden jewels I have not
seen discussed, nor did I happen to have in my inventory.

I do now! I have been toying for a couple days with these
now and can see a lot of potential. They work great together.

The assets are:

1- Mill Gondola, <kuid2:124017:5013:3>, Maddy25
2- FRED (attachment), <kuid:2:104722:10:3>. Wulf_9

Having fiddled with several train cars and Wulfs’ attachment,
I can tell you it works just fine. It is a dated asset. Based on the kuid,
I would guess its is an early work of Wulfs’, but still is applicable.

bnsf50 has several newer model FRED units in the database.
This look great on the rear end of any consist.
The downside is they are mounted on invisible bogies.

That means they are difficult to handle if you do any amount
of switching along your route.

I have tweaked the configs of one of bnsf50s’ FRED
units and removed the invisible bogey and turned it into a mesh.

Using WULF_9s’ config code, I place the modified bnsf50s’ kuid
into the train car config file . Hope you follow that description.

And the result. Less than good. In fact, unacceptable.

BUT, it can be fixed.

And now the request. bnsf50, I am sure your must have the
mesh files on your hard drive somewhere.

Modifying the mesh by changing the attachment point will do the trick.
The current attachment point is a tad high for this purpose. WAY high!

Having little experience with GMAX doesn’t help my cause much.
I have tried but need more time in grade to attack this project.

bnsf50, would you do the world a favor and dig those puppies up
and do what I THINK is a minor mod to the meshs’ for use as
automatic FRED units.

I’m not sure if there might be a copyright conflict in borrowing
Wulf_9s’ code for this purpose. I might possibly require his
blessing for the project to be released.

Many thanks for the read. I sure hope this idea goes forward.

Here are a couple pics of what I have so far. It illustrates the problem.

The first pic is Maddy25s’ Mill Gondola as downloaded with no mods.

The second pic is the same car with bnsf50s’ FRED. When this FRED
is placed, Wulf_9s’ FRED disappears.

The third pic is my mod. It shows the FRED mounted too high. This is
the mesh that needs the mod.

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr41/Compfuser/Fred_Maddy25.jpg

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr41/Compfuser/Fred_3_mesh_mod.jpg

Thanks... AL

 

[bnsf50]

Sounds like a good idea. I'll drop it down to 0 in gmax and send it to you as a mesh. That way you can pull it into your asset as an attachment. After testing to make sure it is ok I'll upload the mesh/meshs to the dls.
As far as using Wulf9's code I don't think you'll have a problem there.
PM me with your email.

 

[b9k9kiwi]

...
bnsf50, would you do the world a favor and dig those puppies up
and do what I THINK is a minor mod to the meshs’ for use as
automatic FRED units.

...

I see that BNSF50 is helping you out by modifying the original asset mesh for you, which is to be applauded.

You may well know this - but for those 'listening' who do not - you could have fixed the attachment point location issue yourself using PEVs AttachmentMaker utility.

 

[GP30Fan]

Yes, I am aware I could have done that. But having done that,
I would be the only one with that capability. I would much
prefer BNSF50 mod the mesh and release it to all. BNSF50 did
reply in very short period of time. I would say much shorter had
I checked the forum. The project is underway but has a few snags
to be unraveled. Thanks for the reply.