Smooth Curves
Hi eerbagh and Bob,
Here goes, hope I can get the screenshot links to work.
1. Start from a straight peice of rail, i.e. use the straighten track tool on it.
![](http://img309.imageshack.us/img309/3986/oneik1.th.jpg)
.
2. Next lay a ruler at 90 degrees from the straightened track on the side it is going to curve too. Then lay annother ruler at 90 degrees to the first ruler and a ruler at 45 degrees. I have used 200M radius in my example.
3. Lay annother peice of track at 90 degrees from the end of the second ruler and use the straighten track tool on it.
4. Now join the two peices of track by adding a third peice, all should be laid in the same direction. Do not put any joins in the third peice of track, go from the end of the first peice to the beginning of the second peice all in one movement.
5. Now go to the centre of the curve and insert one spline point where the track crosses the ruler.
6. Drag the new spline point outwards till it lines up with the end of the ruler.
That's all there is to it. you get a nice smooth curve at a predetermined radius.
Note the third ruler is always at half the total angle angle of the curve.
For smaller angle curves i.e. say ten or fifteen degrees you would want to use a much larger radius say about 5 or 6 hundred metres.
Hope this helps,
Bill69