Raise height of everything

[rwk]

I wanted to raise the height of a small route to be at the same height as another route so I used the tool to raise the height of part of the land then used the paste tool to make a bigger area of raised land, but not all the objects and track raised with it. Do I have to raise them manually or with the height adjust tool for splines or is there a way to mass raise them at once?

 

[rick1958]

I wanted to raise the height of a small route to be at the same height as another route so I used the tool to raise the height of part of the land then used the paste tool to make a bigger area of raised land, but not all the objects and track raised with it. Do I have to raise them manually or with the height adjust tool for splines or is there a way to mass raise them at once?

I can tell you it can be done. A friend did the same thing for me, but not a clue how. I just said I needed a track to be at a certain height, and it was sent back done.

 

[pware]

Splines can be set to a fixed height and will not move with the ground. In Surveyor Classic they will be shown with yellow spline circles.

You will have to either:-

• raise each spline segment individually - this could be a long job in Surveyor Classic but much easier and quicker in Surveyor 2.0, or
• cancel the gradient of each spline segment so that they will sit on the new ground surface - ditto issue as above - in Surveyor 2.0 select all the segments and then use the Context Tool option Settle on Ground

Objects can be individually raised to a new height - in Surveyor 2.0 you can select multiple objects and use the Settle on Ground Context Tool option

 

[rwk]

Well, I discovered that trying to raise the ground manually with the paste tool messes up things, and the route is over 200 meters in height, but the route I want to join it with and have about 100-106 miles in between with baseboards is 424.89 meters at the end I want to join with the other route with 100-106 miles in between. So, I'm going to keep the one route at the height it is at and have the track go up a grade every so often until it reaches 424.86 meters elevation from 200 some meters.

 

[JCitron]

Well, I discovered that trying to raise the ground manually with the paste tool messes up things, and the route is over 200 meters in height, but the route I want to join it with and have about 100-106 miles in between with baseboards is 424.89 meters at the end I want to join with the other route with 100-106 miles in between. So, I'm going to keep the one route at the height it is at and have the track go up a grade every so often until it reaches 424.86 meters elevation from 200 some meters.

That's a huge number of baseboards! For that kind of difference, i-Portals work better to connect the routes together instead of putting in a lot of 'tween boards to connect the routes.

It really is too bad that we can't rotate or lower routes prior to merging them into place. In the olden days, prior to T:ANE SP3 or SP4, routes could be lowered using TransDEM. After the file format changed, that no longer works as does a lot of things.

 

[pware]

I wanted to raise the height of a small route to be at the same height as another route so I used the tool to raise the height of part of the land then used the paste tool to make a bigger area of raised land, but not all the objects and track raised with it. Do I have to raise them manually or with the height adjust tool for splines or is there a way to mass raise them at once?

There is a simple solution - The World Origin.

To explain: I had an old prototypical main line route (127km in length) that I created years ago and I wanted to add a prototypical branch line (88km in length - so it is not a small branch). I created the branch line as a separate route with the intention of merging it with the main line route when finished. After completing all the terraforming (at the correct heights) and adding the track work to the branch line I did a test merge to discover that the original mainline was hundreds of metres below the correct height resulting in a huge cliff at the merge point.

Panic set it. How to fix this? After a few glasses of a good red wine (at my age it helps reboot the brain cells) I came up with a possible solution - using the World Origin.

I added a World Origin marker (Edit Menu, Edit Environment..., Location tab) to the main line route at the main station and set its altitude according to the calculation:-

• actual map altitude at that spot is 538m
• Trainz ground height at the same spot was 55m
• the difference (538-55) was 483m

The World Origin altitude setting was entered as 483. This set the Trainz height at that point to 538m. Mainline route was saved.

Test merge was attempted again and the difference in the heights at the merge point was a few metres only, easily fixed by some height adjustments and smoothing.

EDIT: After testing in Trainz Plus I have discovered that this method no longer works. The height adjustment applied by the World Origin to the first route will also be applied to the second route.

 

[PGibbons]

Genius !!! I always thought the World Origin was fairly useless. Pity is cant be used to help merge prototypical routes.

PG

 

[JCitron]

There is a simple solution - The World Origin.

To explain: I had an old prototypical main line route (127km in length) that I created years ago and I wanted to add a prototypical branch line (88km in length - so it is not a small branch). I created the branch line as a separate route with the intention of merging it with the main line route when finished. After completing all the terraforming (at the correct heights) and adding the track work to the branch line I did a test merge to discover that the original mainline was hundreds of metres below the correct height resulting in a huge cliff at the merge point.

Panic set it. How to fix this? After a few glasses of a good red wine (at my age it helps reboot the brain cells) I came up with a possible solution - using the World Origin.

I added a World Origin marker (Edit Menu, Edit Environment..., Location tab) to the main line route at the main station and set its altitude according to the calculation:-

• actual map altitude at that spot is 538m
• Trainz ground height at the same spot was 55m
• the difference (538-55) was 483m

The World Origin altitude setting was entered as 483. This set the Trainz height at that point to 538m. Mainline route was saved.

Test merge was attempted again and the difference in the heights at the merge point was a few metres only, easily fixed by some height adjustments and smoothing.

That used to work. In TRS22 and Plus it's a bit wonky and inconsistent.

 

[pware]

I last tried it in TRS19 Platinum Edition where it worked as described. I will give it another try in Trainz Plus.

 

[pware]

After some extensive testing I can confirm that the method I described in post #5 above, which worked in TRS19 Platinum Edition, does not work in Trainz Plus build 122411.

 

[JCitron]

After some extensive testing I can confirm that the method I described in post #5 above, which worked in TRS19 Platinum Edition, does not work in Trainz Plus build 122411.

Confirmed, it's now definitely broken in build 122411. Before that, it worked sometimes making me thing I did something wrong.

 

[pware]

Also confirmed as not working in the latest beta build (123315) of Trainz Plus.

My testing has also revealed that when merging two routes the merge process never terminates (i.e. has to be terminated by Task Manager) if the first route has fewer baseboards than the second route. This applies even when the first route is 1 bare baseboard and the second is 4 bare baseboards. Merging the smaller route into the larger works without this problem.

 

[JCitron]

Also confirmed as not working in the latest beta build (123315) of Trainz Plus.

My testing has also revealed that when merging two routes the merge process never terminates (i.e. has to be terminated by Task Manager) if the first route has fewer baseboards than the second route. This applies even when the first route is 1 bare baseboard and the second is 4 bare baseboards. Merging the smaller route into the larger works without this problem.

Report the merging issue. I was asked about that but had no issues, so I assumed the user that that the issues was having the usual low memory or disk space problems. I've merged little into big and big into little with no problems at all. There's something flaky.

 

[pware]

Bug report submitted with two the test routes and screenshots of assertion messages

 

[pware]

Response from N3V QA

This issue has been identified and already resolved. Please retest in the next released build.

 

[rwk]

I'm using Trainz 2019 Platinum. I don't have 22 or Plus or anything newer yet. So, I can do this world origin thing in the route that has a lower elevation than the one I want to merge it to? Will it keep hills and stuff in the route and not make it flat? It's a big difference, maybe 200 meters or something. I'm extending the first route with blank baseboards raised to the height of the first route about 100 miles to meet with the other route. It's the NS line between the former Southern main line at Salisbury, NC and Asheville, NC. It will include a newer version of the Loops between Old Fort, NC and Black Mountain, NC from the Switchback site. The Salisbury end is the payware North Carolina Transportation Museum route by Approach Medium. I'm doing it for my own use only. I want a long route to run 611 on. The Asheville end will have my own DEM that I generated several years ago when I had TransDEM, now I don't have it and I would have to rebuy it to use it with Trainz 19. I lost the original install. I just tried it and it works! It actually changed the elevation of the route. I just discovered though when I merge a route with the world origin changed that the heights are still off. And route merging hangs if I try to merge a smaller route with a bigger one.

 

[rwk]

Pware, I tried the world origin but the routes that I merge together are still at the same height only at a higher elevation. The cliff is still there. I wanted to raise the lower elevation route to meet the higher elevation route. I probably wouldn't have that problem if I would use an actual DEM map since it would have the correct elevations along the route (about 100 miles) but I don't have access to TransDEM right now. Maybe if someone would be willing to make me a map of the Norfolk Southern line between Salisbury and Old Fort, NC in TransDEM and I could trim off the excess baseboards to merge with my routes. Otherwise, I will just make a long gradual slope for several miles by using a 10 track spline to make the ground slope with the smooth spline height tool in order to join the routes together.

 

[pware]

Yes, it is a mystery. I managed to do it using the method I described quite a while ago but it does not work now. Possibly an SP upgrade between then and now may have killed it. I am going to put in a bug report on the matter to see what the devs say about it. It would be very useful to have a method of changing the base elevation of a route so that it can be easily merged with another at a different height.

 

[rwk]

You said it doesn't work in Trainz Plus, well it doesn't seem to work in Trainz 19 either. When you apply the new elevation to the first route, and then merge the other route to it the other route gains more elevation so that the steep cliff is still there. The only solution I found is to have a gradual slope for several miles so that it is not as noticeable, and to do that I have to stretch a 10 track spline over several baseboards and make a long gentle slope and repeat the process several times. I wish there were a way to make a wider slope at once. I don't want the grade of the track to be too steep so the slope has to be a few miles long. It's a difference of over 200 meters which is a big difference. I didn't want the grade to be like the former Saluda grade, but more gentle, this is actually the NS line between Spencer and Asheville and I'm using a payware Spencer route by Approach Medium and an updated freeware Old Fort Loops route by The Switchback as well as my own DEM I made several years ago the rest of the way to Asheville. I'm just using flat baseboards for the 100 so mile segment between Old Fort and near Salisbury, NC.