I am thinking of giving up on Trainz...

[pware]

I agree its very hard to find good informations about Surveyor 2.

OK, can you tell me what is missing from the Wiki pages at How_to_Use_S20_Tools and How_to_Use_S20_Palettes so I can add the missing information.

Also its impossible to place an object with hight precision with Surveyor 2

There are 4 different ways that you can adjust the height of any object down to centimetre precision. See Set_the_Height_of_a_Scenery_Mesh_Object in the first of the two documents listed above (this also applies to splines and track objects).

yelow outlines are realy a bad idea

What is "bad" about the coloured outline used to indicate which object or multiple objects have been selected?

 

[capitol]

Height is not the problem. Problem are lateral moves. Just try to place a catenery wire under its support and you will see precision is far better on Curveyor Classic. Same way when you need to move an object. I use french AC and DC catenary (only few still exist on DLS).

Talking about yelow outline, i think its a very good idea if you dont need fine adjustment like placing a house in the midle of a field. If you need hight precision, yelow line hide the real outline of object and you dont see what you are doing.
The best solution would be an option to cancel outilne when we want.

Now, as i said, i use Surveyor 2. 90% of the time. I am not saying everything is wrong, it just need improvement.

About the Wiki pages, the two your talking about are those i use many time but i had hard time before i found them. (Thanks to the forum) Finding informations in the wiki is sometime complicated.

Capitol from France

 

[martinvk]

When I look at the compass in S2.0, I see three axis lines and three arcs that can each be moved manually a little or a lot. If I want extra precision, I can type in values in the Info palette for X, Y, Z for horizontal movement and R, P and Y for rotation. That's 0.01 m and 0.1 degree enough precision
I find the yellow highlight quite transparent so it never really bothered me when aligning objects. Perhaps because catenary wire is such a small target, it it harder to align.
I find sometimes lining up two objects in the 3D environment much harder. When two objects look to overlap but don't snap together, it's when I change the point of view that it shows them to be actually far apart.

 

[pware]

Perhaps because catenary wire is such a small target, it it harder to align.

There have always been complaints about adding catenary splines so that they align perfectly with the track. When you think about real life situations, track can form a smooth curve while catenary wires are always straight lines so there will always be alignment problems, hence the need for broad pantograph contact blades.

But some catenary splines work (align) better than others. Personally I avoid creating electrified routes, too much trouble.

 

[johnarran]

Surveyor 2.0 is far better than Classic for manipulation of objects. It can be very precise. The yellow/green outline is useful, however the problem with it is that the border is too big (thick) in my opinion. A thinner border would be better.

 

[JCitron]

My complaint about manipulating splines is I can't see the spline points to align things such as catenary to the poles and stanchions. The bright green outline and the shadows make that an absolutely frustrating ordeal that gave me a migraine type headache and to make matters worse, I had splines sticking up in the air hovering over the insulators instead of on them.

I agree having a thinner and less bright outline would help for starters because that will remove the bright stripe that masks everything.

 

[capitol]

One question, When you move a spline with fine adjustment tool, yelow ouline disaspear and you can adju

When I look at the compass in S2.0, I see three axis lines and three arcs that can each be moved manually a little or a lot. If I want extra precision, I can type in values in the Info palette for X, Y, Z for horizontal movement and R, P and Y for rotation. That's 0.01 m and 0.1 degree enough precision
I find the yellow highlight quite transparent so it never really bothered me when aligning objects. Perhaps because catenary wire is such a small target, it it harder to align.
I find sometimes lining up two objects in the 3D environment much harder. When two objects look to overlap but don't snap together, it's when I change the point of view that it shows them to be actually far apart.

Yes i agree with this but when you lay 100km of catenary it take too much time. Try to do it with surveyor Classic and yo will see its faster.
st position more easely. But its not the case with object. Why?

 

[martinvk]

when you lay 100km of catenary

I admit that I cheated. Back (TRS2004) when I was placing some electrified routes, I made some track with built-in catenary for the long boring sections. Then I only had to worry about junctions and tensioners. Perhaps not the most elegant solution and no zig-zag in the line either but it worked, more or less, and not being a rivet counter, I wasn't too bothered.

 

[rwk]

Yes. If I want to build SEPTA or Amtrak NEC routes then I have to lay catenary which is a pain to align correctly. I started SEPTA routes like Doylestown-Lansdale with DEM and never finished them. I merged farejoint's and a Philly-Wilmington route together using blank baseboards to fill in the missing gap from Perryville, MD to Wilmington, DE. Only Amtrak currently runs on that section. MARC ends at Perryville and SEPTA ends at Newark, DE. There are shuttle buses between Perryville and Newark for those that don't want to take Amtrak which is more expensive than commuter railroads.