Make A Route Read Only on My System??

[boleyd]

I have a particular route that I want to make read only so I do not accidentally loose it. I am assuming the worse case that it is not on the DLS and then becomes unavailable on a private site. Should I accidentally click on it, and mess it up, I have a problem. A "read-only" or locked status would be nice to protect me from myself.

 

[Jaymom]

Don't you save/backup your routes and sessions? I have all mine on a thumbdrive. If my computer crashes for whatever reason i will always have my routes and sessions ready to go. And once a year or so i completely delete everything and reinstall. My routes and sessions plus all my downloads are ready to go back to work. I seperate my favorite items such as stages coach's, horse's, wagon's, etc. even.


Harold

 

[SharkNose]

I make backup copies of my work everywhere - external hard drive, write it to CD every so often, zip it up and copy it to a cloud drive. Do this often and if the unpredictable happens, you don't have too much to recover from.

 

[Robert2d6]

Don't you save/backup your routes and sessions? I have all mine on a thumbdrive. If my computer crashes for whatever reason i will always have my routes and sessions ready to go. And once a year or so i completely delete everything and reinstall. My routes and sessions plus all my downloads are ready to go back to work. I seperate my favorite items such as stages coach's, horse's, wagon's, etc. even.


Harold

Where are the routes and sessions stored, folder wise?

 

[shaneturner12]

Usually in <trainz install folder>/Userdata for user-downloaded/created assets.

Shane

 

[sniper297]

Yeesh. In surveyor you can open the layers tab, click the little padlock icon to lock the route against changes. That's not failsafe tho, consider what happens if your hard drive crashes and all data on it is lost? Find the route in content manager, right click, save to CDP. Any dependencies for that route that are not on the DLS can also be saved to CDP. Copy the CDP files to a CD-R or whatever, stow it in a safe place, then if the worst happens you can reinstall Trainz then import the CDPs to get the route back.

 

[RRSignal]

Actually, I recommend multiple backup methods - one on-site, one off. Make a CDP, burn to a CD or put on a thumbdrive. Upload a second copy to Hotfile. That way, if it turns out your CD was made in China or India and becomes unreadable in six months, you still have a backup.

 

[boleyd]

Yeesh. In surveyor you can open the layers tab, click the little padlock icon to lock the route against changes. That's not failsafe tho, consider what happens if your hard drive crashes and all data on it is lost? Find the route in content manager, right click, save to CDP. Any dependencies for that route that are not on the DLS can also be saved to CDP. Copy the CDP files to a CD-R or whatever, stow it in a safe place, then if the worst happens you can reinstall Trainz then import the CDPs to get the route back.

Ah, that is the answer - almost. The trick here seems to be that if you lock a session and/or a route some change must have been made (adding a tree type) to see the route/session locked the next time you load it. Otherwise, no changes then no save of the locked ststus. I currently do not backup any routes. I have been burned with partial loss of info. Just placed a curse on N3V and added in the changes I thought I might have made.

My changes are "improvements" to a route and personal sessions. So I may change all the tracks, or replace a tree I do not like, alter the height of vegetation and change ground textures. However, I think that I have found a route that really does not require these types of changes to have the highest resolution, textures and vegetation as well as hi-res buildings. So I am going to focus on sessions. A complex session gets wiped out and you can't just add an unload instruction back in if all is lost. So the backup tips that were explained may keep me out of the cardiac ward.