“Get spline” problem

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I have noticed a (very) few spline assets where the Get spline tool won’t work.

It’s irritating because there is no way, in Surveyor, to grab and identify those assets in order to lay them elsewhere in the route.

Some are by a creator who has made several exceptionally great bridge splines, but not all of them cause this problem. I’ve looked at the config.txt files of one that does, and one that doesn't “pick up”, but can’t see any differences in the commands, so have no clue as to what might enable/disable this function.

Any offers on what might be causing this and how to get it fixed please?

Try selecting the Track tab, and try grabbing the spline as a track.
Some objects, especially bridges, appear to have been built around an "Invisible Track" spline and can be grabbed as track, even though they don't have any track on them.

davidbird said:

Try selecting the Track tab, and try grabbing the spline as a track.
Some objects, especially bridges, appear to have been built around an "Invisible Track" spline and can be grabbed as track, even though they don't have any track on them.

Click to expand...

Thanks. I've just tried that.

The spline circles don't show, so the bridges aren't "active" as track items. I did try Alt-O, to make the spline circles appear, but that doesn't allow them to be grabbed either (I think that it's just cosmetic, though useful for other purposes).

I did vaguely remember the name of one of the bridges after a lot of head scratching and eventually located it in Spline objects. I'm am now writing them down as I find them. Tedious though!

Any other thoughts?

I have the same problem quite often in TS12 It's always been there as far back as I can remember.
if you leave Surveyor & then come back in it usually corrects itself.
The same thing happens in paint as well.

Dave

☼ Progress! ☼

Thank you to both Dave's.

Well I've partially solved the problem.

It seems to occur when the "difficult" spline assets have been raised. When they are at ground level, as long as the spline circles remain white, the spline can be grabbed. Once the bridge is elevated and the spline circles go yellow they don't play ball.

With assets that have already been laid and raised, I have found that by using the Remove gradient button they re-set to ground level. The spline circles go back to white, and they can be Get spline'd.

It's a bit of a workaround, but they can now at least be identified when I can't remember what they're called. All I now need to do is remember to get the spline heights before dropping them to ground level so that I can re-elevate them to the correct height.

Surely there must be a fix for this?

Cheers
Casper

I have been playing with a route through the Canadian Rockies with lots of tall bridges and invisible tracks for helicopters and planes. I found the same problem. In order to grab the spline to either move it or adjust the height you have to get the mouse pointing at where the spline point actually is located at "ground" level. By trial and error I discovered that if you move the cursor towards the bottom of the screen from where the spline circle shows up on the asset and just keep clicking you will eventually find where you need to be. In some cases this can be a long way from where you think you should be clicking.

I think this is caused by the angle at which you are viewing the object so with a little geometry you realize that the actual spline point on the ground is displaced.

Hope this works in your version.

From the left coast of Canada
Glenn

Thanks for your response PharmboyNorth

I don't have a problem with grabbing the vertices to move them laterally (Move spline 'M') or vertically (Spline height 'H'). I always go in close and directly overhead to do either.

It's the asset's refusal to recognise the Get spline 'G' button which is the problem.

I tried going out of Surveyor, as suggested by Dave (big_b), but that didn't work. Neither did quitting and restarting the game, or re-booting the PC.

So far the only thing that works is flattening the spline with the Remove gradient button, which gets those white spline circles back. The Get spline tool then works so that you can see the asset description and thumbnail image in the Objects flyout (and the asset kuid number on screen if you have that option enabled).

It would be nice not to have to do the temporary flattening though.

mezzoprezzo said:

...
I don't have a problem with grabbing the vertices to move them laterally (Move spline 'M') or vertically (Spline height 'H'). I always go in close and directly overhead to do either.

It's the asset's refusal to recognise the Get spline 'G' button which is the problem.

...

Click to expand...

I initially had the problem that I couldn't do anything with them, but recently found I could move them as "track" even if the spline circles were showing in Objects. Maybe that is simply because I went round and used the "remove gradient" on them...

Apologies if this has been mentioned, but I don't think the get spline tool works on anything over 10m high. I don't think it'll automatically connect two bridges, tracks, splines, whatever over 10m either. That's been my experience at least. I also don't know if it's 10m relative or actual, if that makes sense. Use your get height tool to see what they're at. When it doesn't work for me, I just lower them, grab 'em, and CTL-Z to put it back.

Hope that helps.

@davidbird

I haven’t been able to move any of the object splines referred to in this thread by using the Track tools, although I am aware of the ability to straighten Object splines using the Straighten track tool. I have also used a few non-track assets which are only found in the Track flyout.


@Eboy87

Yes it does help. Thank you!

A spline vertex of 10 metres (or more) does seem to be the magic number where the Get spline 'G' button becomes disabled. The Move spline ‘M’ and Spline height ‘H’ tools still work at these higher values though.

Reducing the values to 9.9m, or lower, re-enables Get spline. It clearly doesn’t need to be completely flattened to get it to work as I thought earlier.

It does seem to be a strangely arbitrary value though. Many of the bridge piers are taller than 10m.