TransDem Verus TRS19 Equals Vanishing Tiles

A

Alikiwi

Apprentice Creator
Ye gads... Well the title actually says it all and this is a long standing issue that's getting really annoying. I've mentioned this before, but the issue gets worse. I'm constantly finding the tiles vanishing or moving out of place. I've been blaming myself for accidentally doing so when deleting or moving assets. The obvious answer is to lock the TransDEM-UTM layer, but that's not practical most of the time, reason being is that it prevents pasting of assets. Given I have a very large area to cover, I will where possible copy the texture and assets (trees only) then paste blank areas. If you lock the transDEM layer, you then can not paste - period.

Yesterday I had 2 CTD!! The second one was after deleting a baseboard and having pasted over a hill area. On reloading and selecting "use changes " my previous hours work was lost. The UTM tiles were in place, and I re-pasted the landscape. 2 minutes later I notice 2 UTM tiles had vanished. Note I had done no deleting or moving. I had merely pasted textures and trees, so NOT ME!

Add to that, as has happened before, I found 6 copies of the same UTM tile sitting roughly on top of each other, again NOT ME! No way in hayles have I added 5 extra copies of one UTM tile!!!!

What the heck is going on here???
 
Well, you say it's not you. You seem to be the only one with this problem, so, maybe, possibly it IS something that you are doing differently or is unique to your install. I've spent hundreds of hours building in SP3, copying and pasting textures trees splines and other assets on a Transdem map and never encountered this.
Some screenshots of the occurrence or your copy/paste procedure might help to find an answer. You could try a fresh install and test that. It is possible that the Transdem map is corrupt in some way though. Of course if all else fails, there is always the helpdesk.

Graeme
 
Well there's only one procedure for copy/paste that I know of. Copy an existing area (as stated only selecting textures and assets), move to a blank area and select copy, and in my case I would copy the same section repeatedly, sometimes turning the compass heading. That in itself is simple. Not sure if you can get a screenshot of wireframe mode, at least not through the game, but via desktop should be possible. I'll check later, need to finish lunch, then go for my physio appointment so it may be tonight or tomorrow before I get that organised.
 
There are several different options available to set up. Note: copy/paste copies everything (height, textures, objects and splines) but will only paste what you tell it to.
My setup for copying
My-Trainz-Screenshot-Image.jpg


My setup for pasting textures and objects
My-Trainz-Screenshot-Image.jpg

Are you setting up differently?
Why are you using wireframe mode? There is no reason I can think of that you would need it with copy/paste.
How old is the DEM and what version of Trainz was it produced in?
Another option is sending Geophil (Roland Zeigler) a PM and ask if he knows how that problem has occurred.
cheers
Graeme
 
It sounds as if you are copying and pasting on the UTM layer. If so this is a bad idea. Would also explain why you have 6 copies of the same UTM tile. It is far better to leave the UTM layer alone and use it as a reference layer only. Put your assets on another layer, that way when you cppy and paste you would be copying and pasting the things you want.

Regards

John
 
I do not put anything on the UTM layer, however sometimes when the UTM layer has inadvertently been selected, the added assets then finish up there.
They are easy to move back where they were intended to go.
All my construction work is carried out on the Route layer, I have tried creating specific layers, as one does in the Autodesk ACAD product, however I realized that there was too much to remember.

I have never performed copy and paste as could not get the hang of it.
 
Good gad, you'd have to be seriously naive to paste content on the UTM layer, although accidents do happen. Even if you did it wouldn't/shouldn't delete the tile. When I copy, I copy what I want, never terrain or track in this case, as that wouldn't make sense. Forget to deselect terrain and whoops! This would NOT explain (if I pasted on the UTM layer) why there is 6 copies of the same tile. I have my doubts there is any way to copy the tiles but perhaps copying terrain may copy the tiles as well, but then I have never copied the terrain.

Most likely there is some corruption or bug, given this was originally created in Tane, probably SP4. Also I DON'T use wireframe mode when pasting, I only use wireframe mode briefly, to check the locations of roads and buildings and streams etc, give the surface layer is not laid in the correct location. Terrain is 120 metres out of alignment with surface features. How old is the DEM? Just 15 months. I think I'm just going to have to grin and bare it!

Missing-Tile.jpg
 
NEWS FLASH!!!

Having finished breakfast I loaded up the route to continue working on it. Last night I'd prepared a background area to use for copy/paste broad areas. So I went in and copied textures and objects ONLY, and went to paste in an area beside it. It refused to paste as I had the TransDEM-UTM layer locked. As noted earlier, you can't paste with that layer locked, and this seems a serious flaw in the setup. So I unlocked that layer, clicked back to the route layer, then pasted.

Immediately a UTM tile showed up, being partly above ground level (and under the higher ground). Close inspection showed this was the tile under the copied area, and THE TILE THAT BELONGED IN THAT LOCATION HAD BEEN DELETED!!!

Now, having long suspected this was what was going on I had frequently checked for this, but repeated checks had shown no tiles being replaced or deleted. Conclusion is this is an intermittent problem, so I might see if I can find Phils' email and send him a message. As I said before, I'm probably going to have to grin and (bear) it! Weird...

EDIT: If I continue to paste, it pastes that tile repeatedly, hence why on rare occasions I end up with 6 copies of the same tile. Lucky it doesn't happen every time. The only way to stop this, is to ensure the area I copy HAS NO UTM TILE UNDER IT. Again, weird but true.
 
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Ah well, that was short lived. In pasting what I'd copied where there was NO UTM Tile underneath the success didn't last long. It still randomly deletes the underlying UTM tiles. I'd say I managed to paste 12 times without problems, but on 3 other occasions the UTM tile was deleted. I'd be inclined to say it's corrupted by being brought from Tane into TRS19 with the UTM tiles still being needed. Another lesson learnt!
 
I have never used the UTM feature of Transdem, could never get it to work/export - the mapping overlay works fine for me. However when using the equivalent feature of basemaps for model projects, there has been occasional erratic behaviour e.g. the tile will sometimes move up or down if you adjust the terrain, despite being locked in a separate layer. As noted again, despite being locked in a layer, you cannot use copy and paste nor can you use the picker to highlight an item as it just picks the basemap/UTM tile.
 
Hi,

What happens if in addition to lock the UTM layer you also hide it when doing copy/paste operations?

And, UTM tiles are Objects to Trainz, so when you ask Trainz to copy objects in an area where a UTM tile are located, it makes sense that it is included as that is what you asked the program to do. :)

I was unaware that the copy/paste operation did copy things from a locked layer though, I thought it would not, hence the idea of hiding the layer as well.

And, if the UTM Layer is locked but is the layer in use at the time of a Paste Operation, that would not work as Trainz will give a Error message, and you either have to unlock the layer or make another layer the focus, work layer.

I hope some of this is of some help, for someone at least.

Best wishes everyone

Linda
 
The actual thing in question here is why are the UTM tiles affected at all. I've copied and pasted on numerous DEM maps and never encountered this.
At this stage I would try, on a test copy of the route, merging the UTM layer into the route layer. Test with a copy paste and hope the results are positive.

Cheers
Graeme
 
Shortline2 said:
Hi,

What happens if in addition to lock the UTM layer you also hide it when doing copy/paste operations?

And, UTM tiles are Objects to Trainz, so when you ask Trainz to copy objects in an area where a UTM tile are located, it makes sense that it is included as that is what you asked the program to do. :)

I was unaware that the copy/paste operation did copy things from a locked layer though, I thought it would not, hence the idea of hiding the layer as well.

And, if the UTM Layer is locked but is the layer in use at the time of a Paste Operation, that would not work as Trainz will give a Error message, and you either have to unlock the layer or make another layer the focus, work layer.

I hope some of this is of some help, for someone at least.

Best wishes everyone

Linda
Click to expand...

Thats exactly what I do as I have said before. Lock and then go back to the route layer.

Also need to make sure you are on the route or session layer and not on the UTM one when pasting, if its locked you get an unable to paste message which gives you the otion to unlock it, not a good idea! If it's not locked then you can paste on it and mess up any UTM tiles if you move or copy anything.

After once finding I'd moved a tile while pasting I had a look at the layers and worked it out where I'd gone wrong, no moved tiles since.
 
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I agree with Malc but I think it's worse than he implies.

clam1952 said:
Thats exactly what I do as I have said before. Lock and then go back to the route layer.
...
Click to expand...
Yes but if you don't go back to the route layer and click on it - to set it active again - you're in trouble. How many times have I been burned by this, any click on a layer when the tool flyout is open sets that layer as the active one. I often just hit the hidden icon to hide or show something and forget to click back on the layer I want to be active and now the wrong layer is active. Terrible! And I don't realize it until it's too late as there is NO indication of which layer is active while you are actually working in Surveyor.

Also need to make sure you are on the route or session layer and not on the UTM one when pasting, if its locked you get an unable to paste message which gives you the otion to unlock it, not a good idea! If it's not locked then you can paste on it and mess up any UTM tiles if you move or copy anything.
...
Click to expand...
If the layer is active and locked when you try to paste you do get the warning and if you hit ok on that dialog Trainz unlocks the layer and the next left mouse click pastes into that layer. I've done that thinking I'm just closing the dialog but it now leaves the layer unlocked for anything to be done to it while it's the active layer. The undo button (where is it now - ctrl-z I guess) is your only true friend. You have to undo the paste and relock the layer. What's the other option on the dialog - CANCEL. That's the one I should be using in this case.

Layers are a great feature but they can burn you if you don't use them correctly and Trainz has lots of ways to mess it up. I'd like to see a separate icon on the flyout that is used to set the active layer so we'd have 3 options: active, hidden and locked. And maybe someday an indication of what layer is active, shown full time in Surveyor, to help us to stay on the right layer.

Bob Pearson

PS. The UTM tiles are 500x500m or 1000x1000m scenery objects (selected when you create them in TransDem). But you only have to cover the origin at the SW corner to copy or paste over the tile (either "replace: which is essentially a delete existing and add in the copied objects or "add" which just adds in the copied objects). The whole tile doesn't have to be included in the area copied or pasted for it to be part of the copy/paste operation.
 
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Shortline2 said:
Hi,


I was unaware that the copy/paste operation did copy things from a locked layer though, I thought it would not, hence the idea of hiding the layer as well.

And, if the UTM Layer is locked but is the layer in use at the time of a Paste Operation, that would not work as Trainz will give a Error message, and you either have to unlock the layer or make another layer the focus, work layer. ] Unquote.

You've misread what I wrote. As I said, YOU CAN NOT PASTE when the UTM layer is locked, hence the problem. Secondly, you don't paste (build a route) on the UTM layer, you work on the route layer only. I'll have to double check, but I'm pretty sure if I copy trees and textures in an area with no underlying UTM tile, I still won't be able to paste if the UTM layer is locked. I shall have to report back on that one, but the fact remains at least in my mind, that there is some sort of corruption involved. Also, it's crazy you can't paste when the UTM layer is locked, given you are (or you're nuts if not) working on the route layer.

(All that said, I do have special layers for secret operations, but that's classified) :hehe:
Click to expand...
 
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