Surveyor help

Signalman65

New member
I have a problem in TRS 2004 in surveyor. When I open the Topology panel and click on the get Height button, and move my cursor over the land, I get no dashed circle and it will not give me the height of the land. The rest of the functions work, except in the advanced functions with the presets. The valley works, but the others hill, volcano, and slop all go in the ground instead of up.

I use the height function a lot, and find it hard to continue with my map with out it.

In order for you to get a proper picture of my problem I will give you a bit of my history. This is long so please bear with me.


I have been using the Trainz software for some time now, starting with the UTC version. I now have TRS 2004 and 2006,and did have both on my computer at the same time. I have been working on two maps and using surveyor with no problems.

When I originally installed the programs I was using 98se on a 80 gb hd formatted in Fat32 single partition. My computer CPU is a P4 1.6 ghz, and the video card was a 4x Gforce 400, with 64 mb of ram, and I only had 256 mb of system ram. I wanted to upgrade but was limited with the mother board I had, so as soon as I could afford it I bought a new MB, which will take 8x cards. I installed a new Gforce 5200 card with 256 mb of ram, and doubled my system ram to 512 mb. At the same time I installed the XP upgrade home edition. There was no change in the formatting of the HD, it was installed over the 98se. Everything worked fine for some time, including both Trainz programs.

A couple a weeks ago on a Saturday it was raining and we had a voltage drop. It was not enough to turn off the TV or computer, it just caused the computer to re-boot. It booted to the windows screen with the slot with the three blue squares going across. Then the screen went blank and a blue screen flashed for a second, not long enough to read, and it started to re-boot. That is all it would do, over and over again. I thought my HD was fried, but tried everything I could to get it to boot, and finally I tried to run windows set-up. I got a message that there was no OS on this partition, and I should re-format the drive and install an OS.

I had been inform (after I had already installed XP), by someone on Trainz forum, that I could install the upgrade version on a reformatted HD with out any other OS on the drive. So I told the set-up program to format, then I got another message that for drives over 32 gb I should not use Fat 32, but to use NTFS. I have never heard of this, and didn't get any message like this when I installed over 98se. Anyway I went ahead and formatted in NTFS, and installed XP with no trouble. I installed all my programs, data, and downloaded all the updates from MS.

I had trouble with my mouse only in IE7, but I had forgot to update my drivers. So I downloaded the new drivers for the MB, video card, mouse etc.

I only installed TRS 2004 and when I had the problem I un-installed and reinstall it. That did no good. I then Installed UTC, and tried it. I had the same problem with surveyor in it. I un-install UTC and TRS 2004 made sure I had every one of the files removed, before re-installing 2004. I tried the program before installing service pak 4, and surveyor still did the same, and after installing service pak4 it still did not work. I have not tried installing TRS 2006 to see if it has the same problem.

I would assume that since both UTC and TRS2004 showed the same problem it was not the fault of the Trainz programs. Especially since all three worked fine before I reformatted and re installed the OS, but I have no idea why it wont now. Unless it has to do with changing from Fat 32 to NTFS, or not having 98se on the drive before installing XP.

I do not want to have to go back and start all over again with all this installing. Can the filing system be changed to Fat 32 with out reformatting, or can I un-install XP, install 98se and then install XP with out having to redo all my other programs and files?

I heard some where that you could re-partition a drive with out causing any problems with the files. I though of creating a second partition and putting everything in it, since I am using less then half of the drive space.

Then reformat the first partition and install 98se with Xp over it. Would that work?

Thanks for any help, Gordon
 
Hi I use XP on a NTFS drive I have two partitions and I also have a third Drive NTSF with just 04 and 06 on it.
The main program Files are on my C drive except the Auran program files which are on the 3rd drive.
Running on drives NTFS formatted is no problem

Re When I open the Topology panel and click on the get Height button, and move my cursor over the land, I get no dashed circle and it will not give me the height of the land.
I have just gone into Surveyor and if I just click on the get height button on a blank square (no buildings etc on it) I get no height read out that is because all the height is the same and you also get no circle.
To get a circle to show you have to click on the height up, height down or adjust height.
I clicked on height up and got the circle I then made a small hill and then clicked on get height it showed the height of the hill but there was no circle to see,as I said you only get the circle with the above values
You can also try use height which is the next button to the right of get height. in the middle you will see a value of the existing height you can click in here and put in you own height values then use that height
 
Last edited:
Get Partition Magic. It lets you partition your hard drive without losing any program or data files. But read the instructions closely. NTFS is not picky about where it will go and still function, FAT32 is a bit but if you need a FAT(16) partition that has to be early and small.

I seem to remember (I am away from my Trainz computer at the moment) that the Get Height button gets the height wherever that little Eiffel Tower thingy is but, as RobinHoods says, you get the circle when you want to apply a height and you can move the circle with the arrow keys.
 
Thank you for your help, but have I got egg on my face. :o

As much as I have used these programs I forgot you don't use the right mouse button. After clicking the "get height" button you then move your cursor over the land using the left mouse button, which moves the compass and reads the height of the land it is passing over. Stop on the height you want and choose the "use this height" button and then you can set the surrounding area at the same height. There is no dashed circle until I use the "use this height" button. So you were right, and there is nothing wrong with the program.

I still don't understand what I am doing wrong with the presets. But I have not used them much in the past to see how they really work.
 
Once you've gone NTFS... That's it...

No going back...

Not easily at any rate...

NTFS is a much better file system. It's more efficient at storing stuff than FAT and thus wastes less disk space with small (<32kb) files.

regards

Harry
 
Back
Top