Rocky Mountain Simulations

TS2017 ROUTE BUILDING #10 - Manipulating Track In this tutorial, I will attempt to address the various aspects of track manipulation. You will learn how to change track gradient, split a track piece, join one track to another, weld track, etc. CHANGING TRACK GRADIENT Let us go to the World Editor now; opened up to your route. You may have laid several track pieces by now and it is probably becoming apparent that you'll need to make some adjustments for the general contour of the route terrain. This is accomplished by the use of the Elevation Tool. To activate the Elevation Tool, click on the Gradient icon in the Main Toolbox. It looks like the ramp we saw in the track characteristics panel. Click on it and you will see yellow, upward pointing arrows appear on your track at the break points. When you hover your cursor very near the track another yellow arrow will appear on the track indicating your cursor position. You can click anywhere on the track to set another brea...

TS2017 ROUTE BUILDING #9 - Laying Track Preparation Check At this stage of  your project you ought to have created your Developer folders within Railworks. You have created a route with your chosen name either by way of the Railworks Route Editor, or RW Tools. Also you have determined the Track Rules that would be most applicable to your route. You know your network speed limits and locations of speed changes. And most importantly, you have a Google Maps overlay so you know where you are going. Let's Start Building! Now it's time to lay your first piece of track. Start by selecting the track piece you wish to place in your route by highlighting it in the list of available track pieces in the World Editor panels. The first thing you'll notice is a panel that opens up on the right side of your Editor. This panel is where speed limits and other track characteristics are defined for only the piece of track about to be laid. This panel has absolutely no effect on a piece o...

 QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, ACCOLADES, AND GRIPES This is the only page upon which I encourage comments, accolades (at-a-boys), and gripes. I do not want the other pages of my Blog to become cluttered. All comments posted here will be given due consideration and will hopefully result in an improvement to my Blog, such that we can all benefit. When you leave a comment here please keep it on a helpful note. Additional comments telling me why you feel the way you do, and a suggestion of how something could be improved, are always welcome. Thanks Kindly, Grant

TS2017 ROUTE BUILDING #8 - Placement of Objects Finally, we can get to placing some objects into the route with the World Editor. Personally, I elected to add elements to my route in the following order: Track Roads Bridges Water Structures and Buildings  Landscaping (manual manipulation of the 'diamond points' that are often created when track and roads are laid and the terrain is 'snapped-to' the track or road) Foliage Clutter Sounds PLACING OBJECTS IN THE WORLD EDITOR There are four main types of objects (or items) that you will be placing into your route. Track, Road, and Scenery items are self-explanatory. The fourth one is called a Loft item. Loft items are typically bridges and other elevated objects. It is a simple process to select and insert objects (ie. anything you would see in the sim) into your route, using the World Editor. It's a point and click process that makes placement of objects quite easy. There are object manipulation tools t...

TS2017 ROUTE BUILDING #7 - World Editor Orientation/Preparing Your World "Are you kidding me? More preparation? When can I start laying track?" Preparation is the key to a good route, much like the foundation is key to supporting a good house. If the foundation gives way, so will the house. So let us take a little while to familiarize yourself with the Railworks World Editor and some of its features that you will absolutely need to know. Many sub-features exist as well for more complicated, creative work by those who are enormously familiar with the World Editor. I will not delve into that in these tuts. Take a look at the World Editor Control Panels on the left-hand side of the editor. There are three individual panels stacked one upon the other. The little push-pin in the upper right-hand corner of these panels allows the panel to be pinned to the Editor window, or slide off to the side when not in use. Find which way works best for you. You're the author, after ...

TS2017 ROUTE BUILDING #6 - Getting Started (The Golf Course) ROUTE MARKERS Unless you wish to "walk" your way throughout the route you are building, you're going to need some route markers for navigating your way around the World Editor. Route markers are nothing more than a geographical locator within the Route Editor to travel from one place in the route to another. It saves you a lot of time in going from A to B. In the case of my own route I created a series of markers (known as landmarks in Google Earth) of key locations within the route. Once the landmarks were created I exported the file as a .kml file to the RouteMarkers folder located in my Product folder, awaiting conversion for use in Railworks. RW Tools comes back into service again for converting the .kml file to a set of two files that Railworks can use. To convert the .kml file to Railworks, proceed as follows: Open RW Tools and select the tab, Route Building Tools and hover your cursor over Ma...