TS10/12: Can you rotate a layout 45 degrees? Making a simple Broken Hill tram route?

[Red_Rattler]

I'm trying to make a Broken Hill tram route, but at first, I kept it more simple, such as having Broken Hill in an exact-follow-along-the-board-lines, just to keep it a bit easier to measure, and besides it was really only an experiment.

Broken Hill is set at an approximate 45 degree angle.

Not really needed, but I thought I'd ask anyway, if you can rotate boards in TS10 or TS12?

By the way, I plan to have the steam era but extend the steam era beyond when the tram lines existed, then to have a complete fictional route, of electric trams, then modern electric trams/light rail.

 

[davidbird]

Short answer or long answer?

Short answer = No

Long answer = No. It is possible to rotate by 90 degrees, by copying a single board at a time, and pasting it with the "compass" set to 90 (or 270), and then joining up/replacing all the splines that were split across the join. But until/unless the option is there to paste at 45 degree internals, in short, No.

 

[Robert3a0]

You can construct a route at any angle you desire, but the grid squares will always face North/South and East/West. One of the improvements is TS12 SP1 is that the ruler also acts as a compass. This enables you to transcribe measurements taken from Google Earth to the correct length and angle, as the Google Earth ruler also has a built in compass. For example, in Google Earth if point A to point B is (say) 500 meters at an angle of 270 degrees, it is simply a matter of measuring that same distance using the TS12 SP1 ruler starting at Point A out to a distance of 500 meters and rotate the end point until the ruler shows an angle of 270 degrees. Google Earth also provides point elevation (just hold the cursor over the starting point and you will see the elevation displayed amongst the information at the bottom right corner of the screen). So the height at point A might be displayed at 8 meters and the height at point B might be 10 meters, you can then transcribe those elevations either by setting the spline heights (if laying tracks or road at the appropriate ends) or by setting the height on your elevation tool. That way you will also get your elevations pretty close to the real thing.

Unfortunately, the rulers pre SP1 only measure distance - no bearing is given. I used to get around that problem by using one of the virtual protractors available on the DLS - but that is a cumbersome process until you develop your technique.
Regards
Bob

 

[Red_Rattler]

At the moment, I'm unable to continue until I (make that if) can get the computer fixed.