TrainzDEM question

There should be an established "Transdem for Dummies" thread for those that can not wrap their minds around a thousand pages of reading the overly complicated Transdem manual ... so that even the technically challenged can grasp and understand, without taking a 4 year college course in Transdem mapmaking cartography course

cascaderailroad said:

There should be an established "Transdem for Dummies" thread for those that can not wrap their minds around a thousand pages of reading the overly complicated Transdem manual ...

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The manual is not overly complicated! There are plenty of good tutorials included, one of which shows how to create terrain for Trainz. TransDEM is used for other purposes than just Trainz. Granted, a little bit of intelligence is needed to work with TransDEM, but if you can learn Trainz Surveyor, there is no reason why you can't successfully learn and use TransDEM. With some patience, time and the willingness to learn, you can use TransDEM to create wonderful things!

Andrew

PS - The 2 manuals included with TransDEM only comprise a total of 286 pages, not a thousand!

TransDEM works!

I agree with Sharknose. Anyone who has downloaded the amazing White Pass & Yukon Route Railway created by Jango should know that I created the DEM map for that with TransDEM in about 4-5 hours. I just used the TransDEM manual and tutorials to do that. I even had to use two different sources of DEMs because the railway crosses from the United States into Canada. That included overlapping the US DEMs with the Canadian DEMs at White Pass. It worked.

Want to do prototypical real world railway routes or make a fictitious railway in the Grand Canyon ? Buy TransDEM.

Case closed.

SharkNose said:

Granted, a little bit of intelligence is needed to work with TransDEM, but if you can learn Trainz Surveyor, there is no reason why you can't successfully learn and use TransDEM. With some patience, time and the willingness to learn, you can use TransDEM to create wonderful things!

Andrew

PS - The 2 manuals included with TransDEM only comprise a total of 286 pages, not a thousand!

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Why does it take 286 pages and some intelligence, if:

JackDownUnder said:

Why complicate construction, with TrainzDEM pick an area and bingo you have it. Any where in the world as far as I am aware.

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JackDownUnder said:

It is all generated by the program.

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Can't it be as simple as: BINGO ? Pick an area, and bingo you have it, why does it have to be so complex ?

Why can't it be a simple 5 page, 5 step by step process ... instead of being a complex 286 pages long difficult process, requiring a 4 year college course in cartography map making ?

Can't it be as simple as: BINGO ? Pick an area, and bingo you have it, why does it have to be so complex ?

Why can't it be a simple 5 page, 5 step by step process ... instead of being a complex 286 pages long difficult process, requiring a 4 year college course in cartography map making ?​

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It is. A good part of the manual is tutorials to learn about all aspects of the program. The rest explains all the options available. There is no need to use all the options and in the end you only use what you really need, and for me it's about 5-pages worth if that. This is the same for other people as well as the use the options they need for their own route creation.

I will be buying Transdem this month and put an end to this controversy ... I am hoping for a DEM from Trenton NJ, to Harve de Grace MD, to Harrisburg PA, and Reading PA ... perhaps that would require 2 separate DEM routes, kept unmerged ?

If you've never used TransDEM before, I'd suggest a much smaller route than what you described. A quick glance tells me a single route connecting those 4 cities in that order would be > 200 miles long. That's close to 450 baseboards in Trainz. DEMs are usually downloaded by county (at least the higher resolution ones are) and that 200+ mile route covers 10 separate counties in 4 states.

If I were to attempt something that large (which I wouldn't), I'd break it up into 10 chunks. And then try to merge them together in Trainz. DEM data eats up hard drive space pretty quickly. And that's even before you get it into TransDEM to narrow it down.

Try a 10 mile route first to get your feet wet. I did the "Muengsten" tutorial in the manual first and then repeated the process on a more familiar area in the US.

Andrew

DEMs are usually downloaded by county (at least the higher resolution ones are) and that 200+ mile route covers 10 separate counties in 4 states.​

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DEMS are now 1 arcsecond slices. A good example is mid-eastern New England which covers from just a bit south of Manchester, NH to the coast around Portsmouth south to Rhode Island/MA state line and the western part of Cape Cod and includes the Boston Area. This is a huge area, and impossible to work with.

The files are also huge downloads ranging between 350 to 400 MB compressed. The .img file or other format (I can't remember!) is about twice that if not a bit more than twice that size. There is no way to merge these completely even with 64GB of RAM. The DEMS need to be trimmed down then merged together if a longer route is being created before adding that to the maps.


I download my maps first, place the DEM, and trim out the area in TransDEM to get as much unwanted outside the area removed first before I concentrate on the route area. There is no way around this because of the huge size of the data set to start with. In the earlier days, we could download tiny slices of a larger DEM and that was very helpful, but that's no longer the case since the changes that started in 2007 or 2008. A super huge route, even imported into T:ANE and TRS19, will crash the program. It's just too much data to process. Even if we bring in a base route that big, after we start adding in assets, textures, and stuff, it gets bigger still and a lot slower.

Derekc75 said:

I agree with Sharknose. Anyone who has downloaded the amazing White Pass & Yukon Route Railway created by Jango should know that I created the DEM map for that with TransDEM in about 4-5 hours. I just used the TransDEM manual and tutorials to do that. I even had to use two different sources of DEMs because the railway crosses from the United States into Canada. That included overlapping the US DEMs with the Canadian DEMs at White Pass. It worked.

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I haven't downloaded this, but would like to now! Any ideas how as I can't spot it on the DS?

Thanks,
Paul

Not sure if this is the one or not, but I found a White Pass & Yukon on:

http://www.trainzitalia.com/forum/index.php?/files/file/167-white-pass-and-yukon-railroad/

paulper said:

I haven't downloaded this, but would like to now! Any ideas how as I can't spot it on the DS?

Thanks,
Paul

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SharkNose said:

Not sure if this is the one or not, but I found a White Pass & Yukon on:

http://www.trainzitalia.com/forum/index.php?/files/file/167-white-pass-and-yukon-railroad/

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Yes! This is the correct access point for the White Pass and Yukon on TrainzItalia.

Cheers,

Derek

The real question is- Could someone do a DEM of Middle Earth?

TrainmasterGT -

The real question is- Could someone do a DEM of Middle Earth?

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Sadly, the closest we've been able to get to a digital elevation model for Middle Earth was from ortho-photos taken from a passing dragon...

PC_Ace said:

TrainmasterGT -
Sadly, the closest we've been able to get to a digital elevation model for Middle Earth was from ortho-photos taken from a passing dragon...

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That's really too bad. Maybe on day we'll get a better elevation model.
:hehe:

JCitron said:

It is. A good part of the manual is tutorials to learn about all aspects of the program. The rest explains all the options available. There is no need to use all the options and in the end you only use what you really need, and for me it's about 5-pages worth if that. This is the same for other people as well as the use the options they need for their own route creation.

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I have owned TransDEM for a good while now, but have had little success in actually using it. It would be nice if there were a condensed version of instructions that covered just what we need to know for Surveyor use. I would much prefer tailoring maps for my Garmin than for baseboard development in Trainz for some odd reason...

cressjl said:

I have owned TransDEM for a good while now, but have had little success in actually using it. It would be nice if there were a condensed version of instructions that covered just what we need to know for Surveyor use. I would much prefer tailoring maps for my Garmin than for baseboard development in Trainz for some odd reason...

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I put together a quick guide that I've shared in the past. Sadly it's now terribly out of date due to the constant changes at the National Geologic Survey. If you want it, I'll link to it.

You can import the .gpx files used on GPSs into TransDEM's tracks as well as .kmz from Google Earth. If you look on the NGS website where you download the image files, you can also download transportation information including railroads. These are a .shp file, which is easily imported into TransDEM. I did that once and it worked okay, but not for what I was doing at the time.