reducing the baseboard count

[martinvk]

While TransDEM is wonderful for creating topological correct baseboards over a large area, it does create a lot of extra baseboard, especially when the main axis of the map is on a diagonal.
With S2.0, it is easy to delete multiple baseboards at once. However, once gone, all of their topology information is also gone. So while I don't worry about deleting baseboards that are just open water, I often hesitate about any land based baseboards. If they are far from any possible tracks, not so much worry but there is always that little niggle that I might want to expand my tracks into that area.

So how do you decide when baseboards are really superfluous and can be deleted without any qualms?
Too bad that deleted base boards can't be put into a holding bin and brought back if it turns out some are really needed.

 

[JCitron]

That's the quandary we get with TransDem. What to keep and what not to. What I do is get on the ground and look into the distance to see what can be removed without causing inadvertent holes in the terrain where they shouldn't be.

Remember, with TransDem if the landscape is chopped but not altered along the baseboard edges, the route can still be added to due to the UTM coordinates that the route was created from.

What would work would be to make two copies of the original base route prior to any modifying. One copy is the one with the cuts to trim down the route while the other is the opposite with the big section cut. When you want to expand the route in the fictional branch line, you can then merge in the part or parts you removed at a later time.

Using this method, I've replaced a portion I ruined. This was back in TS12 which required a ton of manual chopping and clipping and a lot of time left alone to determine which pieces to keep while deleting the rest. Since everything keeps its UTM coordinates, I took my little puzzle piece and fit it back into the spot I whiffed and deleted then redid what I had done before without whiffing this time around.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

I took my little puzzle piece and fit it back into the spot I whiffed and deleted then redid what I had done before without whiffing this time around.

Strange use of “whiffing”, but I’m imagining you pronouncing it just like Stewie Griffin pronounces “Will Wheaton” in Family Guy.

 

[martinvk]

T...

What would work would be to make two copies of the original base route prior to any modifying. One copy is the one with the cuts to trim down the route while the other is the opposite with the big section cut. When you want to expand the route in the fictional branch line, you can then merge in the part or parts you removed at a later time.

...

For smallish maps, this would work but when the original map has some 20,000 baseboards or more, saving small chunks by deleting the majority in case they are needed later would be a real Sisyphean task. Too bad there is no save function - select a small section and save it under a new name.

 

[JCitron]

For smallish maps, this would work but when the original map has some 20,000 baseboards or more, saving small chunks by deleting the majority in case they are needed later would be a real Sisyphean task. Too bad there is no save function - select a small section and save it under a new name.

That's quite a big chunk to chew on. I agree, being able to save chunks of routes off would be a good idea, maybe even as scrapbook type assets. This would work for DLS and user-created routes only and not for DLC.

Instead of guessing how big the area is to paste like it is now, the whole baseboard or many baseboards in the chunk are pasted down as is. Seeing a partial ghosted view of the chunk route would allow us to line the area up easily.

 

[PGibbons]

You could also use TransDEM to create various sections of a route at the start and then merge them as required later.
PG

 

[martinvk]

That is one strategy but it also requires a lot of planning. It's not so much that the overall size of the map is too big (that is one issue) but that some parts might not be useful once all the details have been seen in Trainz.

 

[J3M]

Bonsoir MartinVK.

Je travaille déjà sur TransDem.
L'inconvénient de ce programme réside sur le fait qu'il mange beaucoup de carrés de surface (720m sur 720m).

I work in american. TransDem east a lot of squares with same dimensions.

Donc, sur Tz-2009, j'ai ôté des carré de manière à ne pas aller au-delà de 1000m ou moins à 300 mètres. Je vous précise que rien n'est parti.

I have took off several of these squares in order to reduce the number of squares.
In fact, there's no problem to use the map and the memory is better and better.

Vous souhaitant une bonne soirée.

Alex du VALAIS.

 

[rwk]

Why did you comment in French-Francais? This is the English language section. Anglais.

 

[martinvk]

Why ...

Perhaps because he is in Europe where het is heel normaal mehrere Sprachen verstehen. Now that I think about it, that's how we spoke at home, often switching languages within the same sentence when the mot juste just happened to be in another language.

 

[Forester1]

I had a college roommate whose parents were Hungarian. I used to love it when we had girls over and he would be on the phone with his parents. Constantly switching from English to Hungarian and back, pretty soon the girls were looking very confused at what was going on!

 

[J3M]

Hye Forester,

Several of us may use a lot of languages.

Translate the text context requires only Google Translate.

Have a good night.

Alex du VALAIS.

Nota : I often worked with foreign studiants.
Too many of them were unable to speak or to use another language than American. Foreign languages seem to be a good investment for future.
The choice of English or American may provide from lazy studients : d'où le terme "avoir un poil dans la main".

 

[Forester1]

I recently went on a trip to Germany. I had two years of German in High School, and I spent most of a year brushing up with Duo Lingo, reaching a fairly high level. I got to Germany and realized I knew enough German to ask a question, but not enough to understand the answer. Same thing with Chinese. I had a set of tapes I listened to in the car over and over and over, until I thought I had at least that much. Got to China and it all sounded familiar, but I was hopeless. I ran into the same thing with American Sign Language (ASL). In all cases I build up a pretty fair vocabulary, but I am never up to conversational speed. That takes conversational experience with others speaking the language, and without that it is very hard to be competent.

I agree that the more languages that can be learned at younger ages, the quicker people are to come up to speed. When you get older like me, my brain is just not that fast anymore. I remain interested in languages, and would like to learn some French and Italian, as well as some Mideast languages and maybe Japanese. But I don't know if I'll ever be any good at it.

As you say, Google Translate is my friend!

J'ai récemment voyagé en Allemagne. J'avais deux ans d'allemand au lycée et j'ai passé la majeure partie de l'année à me perfectionner avec Duo Lingo, atteignant un niveau assez élevé. Je suis arrivé en Allemagne et j'ai réalisé que je connaissais suffisamment l'allemand pour poser une question, mais pas assez pour comprendre la réponse. Même chose avec le chinois. J'avais un jeu de cassettes que j'écoutais dans la voiture, encore et encore, jusqu'à ce que je pense en avoir au moins autant. Je suis arrivé en Chine et tout me semblait familier, mais je n'avais aucun espoir. J'ai rencontré le même problème avec la langue des signes américaine (ASL). Dans tous les cas, j'accumule un vocabulaire assez correct, mais je ne suis jamais à la vitesse de conversation. Cela nécessite de l'expérience de conversation avec d'autres personnes parlant la langue, et sans cela, il est très difficile d'être compétent.

Je suis d'accord que plus on peut apprendre de langues à un jeune âge, plus vite les gens sont à la hauteur. Quand on vieillit comme moi, mon cerveau n'est plus aussi rapide. Je reste intéressé par les langues et j'aimerais apprendre un peu de français et d'italien, ainsi que quelques langues du Moyen-Orient et peut-être du japonais. Mais je ne sais pas si j'y parviendrai un jour.

Comme tu le dis, Google Translate est mon ami !

 

[JCitron]

I had a college roommate whose parents were Hungarian. I used to love it when we had girls over and he would be on the phone with his parents. Constantly switching from English to Hungarian and back, pretty soon the girls were looking very confused at what was going on!

I worked with someone from Lebanon. When he spoke with his brother or cousin on the phone, he would switch between English, French and Arabic fluently as if he was speaking a single language. His cousin turns out to be the guy I bring my car to for repairs.

In high school, I studied French for three years and German for one. While I don't use either language often now, I still use it for music directions when those are not in Italian. I found understanding French and German gave me a better appreciation of the complexities of English which is a combination of many languages including these two.