"The currently selected tool is not usable at this zoom distance."

[eidsvolling]

I'm a Trainz newbie. I'm trying to simulate a prototypical railroad, in this case the Alaska Central Railway, the earliest predecessor to the Alaska Railroad. I've found a DEM built by the apparently now absent fishlipsatwork (thanks, wherever you are!)

I can recognize terrain features in the DEM that are familiar to me. My problem is that when I try to lay track over the DEM, the message "The currently selected tool is not usable at this zoom distance." appears in an error warning box. I can actually lay track and I can see the track I've laid, but only at a closer zoom distance that takes the DEM out of the picture. So I can't align the track with the roadbed that is included in the DEM, no matter what I try. And it seems that the baseboard grid is UNDER the DEM, not over it as would be more useful.

I'm running Trainz Simulator 2 on a Mac Mini, OS 10.10.5. I haven't gotten very far into the tutorials yet. I have substantial GIS experience, so DEMs, DRGs, etc. are very familiar to me (as is QGIS, which I saw mentioned in a thread here.)

Where do I need to go to improve my understanding of Trainz for the objective I have?

 

[JCitron]

This has already been reported. Hopefully it has been 'fixed' in SP2.

 

[eidsvolling]

This has already been reported. Hopefully it has been 'fixed' in SP2.

Thanks. But I haven't found any service packs for the Mac version of Trainz Simulator 2? I've submitted a ticket now for some help.

 

[JCitron]

Thanks. But I haven't found any service packs for the Mac version of Trainz Simulator 2? I've submitted a ticket now for some help.

The Mac version falls behind the PC version by a month or so. SP2 on the PC side is in beta right now and hasn't been released.

 

[clam1952]

John Trainz Simulator 2 for Mac is not TANE so there will not be any service packs for it and support ends September this year.

The Zoom out issue has always existed in Trainz, just need to work round it, The TANE problem is a different issue in that when zooming out it changes to map view far too quickly according to some, having said that I use DEMs and haven't ever had an issue with Track laying in TANE or any of the older versions.

If you can't see the track indication when close to the board, I would think you are missing the hog textures which are required for fishlips dems and are all on the DLS.

 

[JCitron]

This issue, however, has cropped up again in T:ANE HF4. The tools become inoperative when zoomed out, however, they worked fine prior to this patch.

Before we could zoom way out, into the stratosphere, and still delete baseboards, lay track, and even texture baseboards if we wanted. If we zoom out now, the tools are locked and we now have to move in close to unfreeze them. This makes laying track on DEM-based routes painful and deleting large numbers of baseboards horrible and no better than it was in TS12.

Even if the OP was talking about TS2 Mac, N3V broke something in T:ANE as well.

 

[scratchy]

I would think you are missing the hog textures which are required for fishlips dems and are all on the DLS.

Welcome! As Malc said I think this is a good place to start, make sure you have the textures, Andy (Dermmy) has kindly hosted here http://checkrail.com/dem_routes.htm see "required textures". If you can see them when zoomed out to the map view and not when you are zoomed in normally this is probably the cause