Tips and Tricks-Surveyor

[mezzoprezzo]

~ snip~
Also, if you try to end a spline near another spline point or the edge of the route, your spline will not be inserted

The way to get over that problem is to place your last spline point in a clearer area, then use the Move Spline tool to grab and place it exactly where you want. Use Shift if you don't want it to snap to another spline point.

Casper

 

[escafeld]

Nail a few of these 'gas station small' together and make a gas/petrol filling station.

 

[trainboypat]

layout tips

I have some narrow gauge stuff and a few steam engines in TC? Is there anyway I can make a realistic layout with the origianal engines and cars+the ones that i downloaded? Oh and does anyone know where i can download other cars(not the download station) I AM TIRED OF HAVING USELESS CARS THAT DONT WORK BECAUSE THEIR MISSING SOME OF THEIR DEPENDANCIES

 

[escafeld]

Wrong thread, as discussed before. Try a questions and answers thread, or start your own. We just add tips and tricks. Hope you have some success.

 

[mezzoprezzo]

Changing tracking/fixed camera

This is probably obvious to many, but a new trick which I only discovered last week.

I’ve sometimes spent a while composing nice camera angles in Surveyor with foreground items perfectly placed ready for camera view when in Driver. Occasionally I’ve then wanted to change from fixed to tracking, or vice versa.

Deleting and replacing the camera with the alternative type used to be a real pain! The image view never seemed to line up as I’d previously had it, no matter how I tried to manoeuvre and place the new camera.

The answer is to simply click on the Tools-Move camera button, click on the existing camera which will pull you into the viewfinder, then click on the left or right button on the “Camera type” bar to make the change. Then press Esc, and mouse wheel roll back.

The change of camera type will then have been made, and the focal plane of the camera will be in exactly the same position.

You can make this change as often as you like and the camera position will remain rock solid.

Cheers
Casper

 

[Bill69]

Bridges on a curve

Well I have not read through all the 500 odd posts in this thread but here is a tip I have just discovered. As you know bridges do not curve very well, they tend to kink and have a kink in the oposite direction at the end. I thought of making the bridge a scenery item at first but then found a simpler way. Just change the bridgetrack tag to invisible track, any invisible track will do but I have used kuid 67598 38001 which is invisible in surveyor as well as driver. This will mean the bridge will show up with out track when placed.

The next step is to lay bridge track accross the river or whatever you are bridgeing and set to a nice smooth curve, you will be able to straighten bits too if required. Set your spline heights and incline or decline as required and get the track all nice and smooth. Next place your bridge with invisible track alongside the bridge track, set the spline heights to the same as the bridge track at each spline point then just drag the bridge underneath the track using the shift key so it does not join to the track.

You will still have to ask permission to alter the bridge if you plan to upload the route.

Cheers,
Bill69

 

[Ruben013]

Hi,

i'm trying to build signals with diverge function, i test them and they work great, i save my route. But then when i open surveyor again to continue my work, all the settings of which signal belongs to which junction are gone..

is there anything i must do so that those settings get saved or?..

Thanks

 

[Ruben013]

Hi,

i'm trying to build signals with diverge function, i test them and they work great, i save my route. But then when i open surveyor again to continue my work, all the settings of which signal belongs to which junction are gone..

is there anything i must do so that those settings get saved or?..

Thanks

 

[martinvk]

Hi,

... when i open surveyor again to continue my work, all the settings of which signal belongs to which junction are gone..

is there anything i must do so that those settings get saved or?..

Thanks

Did you save the signals in the session layer and then open the route layer when you opened map again. There is a whole thread on layers that will take some of the mystery out of them.

 

[marcus1777]

track layinmg strainght

Here's one I used today:

What if you are laying the track for a prototypical yard and the track is at an angle to the gridlines, there is large spaces between each set of tracks, making it very hard to get the track straight across the yard (assuming the track splines are not located near each other)?

Solution: Pick a large building from the objects menu that is rectangular and use the edge of the building as a "ruler" to keep each track straight in relation to the others.

or just hold shift when laying track

 

[martinvk]

or just hold shift when laying track

or use the handy dandy angle guide that can be placed at any horizontal angle to help place two parallel tracks. Available on the DLS

 

[big_b]

or use the handy dandy angle guide that can be placed at any horizontal angle to help place two parallel tracks. Available on the DLS

I've found that they don't run Parallel.
Place 2 angle guides on a board & set to Zero & align 1 side with the grid lines then align the other angle guide parallel to the first so they are just touching.
After about 1-2klms they are moving to the left & the gap between them is increasing the further you go out from the pivot point.

This is in TS2010

Dave

 

[martinvk]

I've found that they don't run Parallel.
Place 2 angle guides on a board & set to Zero & align 1 side with the grid lines then align the other angle guide parallel to the first so they are just touching.
After about 1-2klms they are moving to the left & the gap between them is increasing the further you go out from the pivot point.

This is in TS2010

Dave

Oh dear. Just had a look in case and this is what I saw.

Even at 4km the two parallel guides are still touching and in the distance they still touch at 5km.

When rotating them, be sure to set the same angle including the tenth degree, nn.n by holding down the ctrl key as you spin them around.

Tested in Version 3.4 (build 45467)

 

[Markus98]

Nice tips

Thanks for wonderful tips and trick

 

[misquetofarmer]

I don't know how to get the train to not load every car but I did put in a rule that once a particular car had it fill (or half full what every I want) It will Kill the current running schedule and replace it. so it stops loading and goes on to the next process. I believe it is Check commodity Rule...then place a driver schedule as a child process. It can also be configured to check the que in the industries as well. So when a particular industry it empty or full it will execute the child commands I put under it. With portals this and CPC rules you can emit trains to restock your industries.

 

[Retro00064]

When laying spline track turnouts, try to get each branch of the turnout to have about the same distance between the spline points close to the junction, so that you can get the sleepers at the junction to line up and look more like one long sleeper, such as I have done with good old MP track in the below screenshot.

Regards.

Image hosted by hostthenpost.org.

 

[dght64]

Don't know if it's been said before because I haven't looked through all 36 pages, but here's a tip I just learned the hard way: Make sure the locos you plan on using have the power to do what you plan on using them for. I just spent nearly a week building a long, winding rail line up a valley to a logging site, and then found out that the "Mountain Type" steam engines I wanted to use only have the power to get up the grade with about 8 log clinches. Now I have to either redesign the whole thing or use a different loco. :'(

 

[gisa]

Don't know if it's been said before because I haven't looked through all 36 pages, but here's a tip I just learned the hard way: Make sure the locos you plan on using have the power to do what you plan on using them for. I just spent nearly a week building a long, winding rail line up a valley to a logging site, and then found out that the "Mountain Type" steam engines I wanted to use only have the power to get up the grade with about 8 log clinches. Now I have to either redesign the whole thing or use a different loco. :'(

You could alter some of the specs in the engine config.txt file for that locomotive, or swap in another config.txt from a stronger engine. Depending on how accurate it is though, you might be fixing or worsening it. It's up to you if you really want that kind of loco to do the work you want in trainz. You could always just clone it and make a *super mountain* for your route. All up to you!

I'll add another tip while I am here. When starting a brand new route and are building in 2009? 2010, be sure to start building by selecting routes and create new route. After that (and for any other route you want to work on) select route, then the session for it. Once the route loads, make sure you have your route layer selected, otherwise it will save certain things to the session which confuses things later on (I had objects in my route that I knew I was using but couldn't find them in the route dependencies in CMP). Unless of course, you know what you are doing.

Building this way means you can add in triggers and session specific stuff and never have to worry about overwriting what you are doing while you route build (as compared to earlier versions of trainz).

Hopefully, what I wrote made sense...

:wave:

Gisa ^^

 

[bassist118]

Oh dear. Just had a look in case and this is what I saw.

Even at 4km the two parallel guides are still touching and in the distance they still touch at 5km.

When rotating them, be sure to set the same angle including the tenth degree, nn.n by holding down the ctrl key as you spin them around.

Tested in Version 3.4 (build 45467)

Good advice but just to add, this isn't quiet true for some straight templates I've downloaded and am using in TS2010. There seems to be a smaller increment than the 10th degree when using the ctrl, I'm not sure if it is set to regular intervals either as some fiddling in surveyor gives different results, for example I laid a straight track using the straight templates with the view to industrialize the full length to load container wagons when I came to lining the multi-industry sections I could never get the industry to line up perfectly.... The best thing I found is to line up any track sections (multi-industry station templates etc) against the templates before laying track.. I've been caught out by this one a number of times now..



Andy

 

[Brandon035]

Since a derailment in quick drive mode of Surveyor,One of my trains doesnt appear in Surveyor so I can't delete it; but it appears 200ft in the air in Driver!! How can I get rid of it? or is the whole route corrupted?

I have also experienced this problem. I have a short piece of track with a small steam engine, 3 heavyweight passenger cars and a caboose (it's a restaurant in Ithaca, NY). The caboose in driver is on end in the air.