Having problems lowering terrain height while using transdem

[Chris750]

Hi all; So I have purchased transdem and have my raster and UTM in place and all of that is just fine. My route has a major river through it but transdem created the river at level 0 which I guess is what the UTM states it is at. Anyway, I wanted to lower the ground level to -10 to add water (even tried -1) but when I did so a gigantic very deep hole appeared, far deeper than 10 feet. Anyone have any clue how to get the terrain elevation lower so I can add water?

Thanks.

Ha, never mind figured it out. My terrain height at the river was 654ft, so by saying -10 I was dropping the terrain 664ft!! I put in 644 and all is well, now I just have to get the water to show.

 

[Dermmy]

Elevations an Trainz are always metric (even if imperial units are selected) so your '-10' is about 33 feet, not 10 feet. Try -3 or thereabouts....

 

[Chris750]

Ahh, those sneaky SOBs, thanks for the heads up!!

 

[JCitron]

Hi Chris,

You may have gone through a lot of extra work to adjust your water! In TS12 its self, there's a water height adjustment tool in the same topology palette where you add your water. Simply click on your water plain, and move your mouse up or down to adjust the height in either direction. What you have done is adjust the height of your whole map and not the water so you are now 10 meters lower in ground height. This may not matter for what you are doing, but it may become an issue should you or someone else wish to merge your route into another DEM created route of the same region. As Andy says everything is in meters even if you are using Imperial settings which only affect the speed settings. As you work in Surveyor, you'll become very proficient in measuring the world in meters.

Regarding no height under flat water areas. This is from the DEM information and not TD which only converts that information into Trainz format so we can use it.

John

 

[Chris750]

Hi John; I only selected the -10 and then used the paint tool to lower the river bed, the rest of the terrain was unaffected. Are you saying that by moving the water up and down it will create a deep river bed, because I have found the water just disappears if you go below ground level when I have played around with it.

Thanks.

 

[JCitron]

Hi John; I only selected the -10 and then used the paint tool to lower the river bed, the rest of the terrain was unaffected. Are you saying that by moving the water up and down it will create a deep river bed, because I have found the water just disappears if you go below ground level when I have played around with it.

Thanks.

No, this won't lower the stream bed! Sorry if I misunderstood you.

Lowering the terrain using the built-in tools will suffice. I usually either lower a tiny bit or raise the water up a meter or two above the ground level. This is particularly helpful when placing boats because they tend to either float many, many meters above the ground level or sink to the bottom. When they sink in really deep terrain, they are sometimes difficult to find.

I was a bit confused, because there is an option in TransDEM to raise or lower the whole route. This is where you'll end up with merging problems. I have done this to adjust the height of a routes I wanted to merge together as that saved a lot of work building in between boards to match up.

John