After a few more or less disastrous attempts, I have finally got myself a route that seemed to be ok. So I polished up few bits and pieces and went into Quickdrive to start doing some testing. There were of course a few things that needed to be sorted (signal positioning, missing levers etc.), so I exited and made the necessary changes by editing the session, and then again did some testing with Quickdrive. Success!! (mostly).
Now here's the rub. I exited the session, and in the save process checked the "overwrite route" and "overwrite sesion" options. However, on returning to the route a couple of days later I find that the route has not been overwritten, and that a new session has been created rather than the original being overwritten - and that this new session was not editable. Where am I getting this wrong?
Also - are AI instructions supposed to automatically save with a session, or is there another process whereby these instructions are retained?
If you are editing anything that effects the route, then you must merge the session with the route layer before saving, if you are repeatedly clicking edit the route you will get a new session every time.
If you don't merge the session with the route before saving first, nothing will be added to the route and you will get an ever increasing collection of sessions. AI instructions are saved with the session, unless you merge it with the route, in which case they will be saved to the route. Not sure why your session wasn't editable though, probably a different problem.
What I do.
Start a new route, save it which will give you the option of naming the session, call this session say Route Editing Session, I just call it 001 as I'm used to doing it that way. When you then want to build or edit your route, open this session every time, do not click edit route. When finished editing at this point you have the route as it originally was, plus the session containing your editing additions deletions etc. Saving at this point will give you your original route unchanged and the updated session so don't save.
Now merge the session layer with the route layer, you can then then save, as you have been doing by overwriting route and session. At this point you now have the route and the session which if you load one or the other appear identical and no extra sessions have been created. I never click edit route at all, just use my edit session merge it before saving and have had zero problems.
You may now have twigged that so long as you use the Editing session every time it's not hypercritical to merge every single time so long as you continue to do your route editing in that same session and remember that the route will not be in synch until you do.
For those who like to hack files if you examine the configs for both the route and an unmerged session you will see kuid's listed in both, after you have merged, all bar the actual routes kuid will have gone from the sessions config and have been added to the the route config.
It would of course be easier if it was clearer that the route doesn't actually get updated fully unless you merge first. I spent a week trying to fathom out what I was doing wrong, may still be even, however the above works for me and reduced my blood pressure.
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