Harry -- AnyRail is a track planner which allows you to experiment with track configurations in a given space, develop a layout plan and a materials list. It is not intended as a 3D design tool. You can, however, set elevations and layers. If you gotta have 3D views, you gotta brave the world of CAD. Me, I can design 3 layouts in the time it would take me to learn a CAD program (yes, I have XtrakCAD and have tried the demo versions of a couple of others).
Tony -- Funny... I don't have any problem with the flex track tools. I think they're simple to use and very intuitive. Radius is the radius of the curve you're easing into, angle is how far around the circle you want the easment to go, keeping in mind that 30 degrees is a twelfth of the way around, and probably as far as you want to go. The beauty of the flex track tool is that you don't really need to determine the mathematical easement, just set your minimum radius the same as the curve you're easing into, position your straight and curved sections, and drag the flex track in and connect it, using the little plusses to make it smooth. You can then disconnect the flex, right click, "adjust llex" and set your angle (radius should be right) to a nice round number, and adjust the rest of your track. Sounds harder than it is. It took me longer to type those sentences than it would to insert and adjust the easement flex.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
CTV, I love everything about the flextrack tools, but maybe I just haven't experimented enough with the easement capability. In comparison, in XtrkCAD you just enable or disable Easements, and then pick whether you want Sharp, Normal, or Broad and then just start connecting track. I found that to be super easy. But your explanation is clear; I'll keep trying it.
Tony -- I think easements in AnyRail is a case of getting your brain around the fact that Angle really means "how far around the circle do you want your easment to go". But you're using flex track.... as long as the flex track radius isn't sharper than your curve (which the program alerts you to), it's hard to screw it up.
Tony, is this line drawing under any of the tools menu in the program? Where would I find it in the program?
Cheers mate
Right click on any blank spot in the layout area and you'll see a pop up box where you can select a line. Once you draw out the lines defininng the periphery of the layout area you can Close this space. The AnyRail Help file is pretty good; you can get all the details there.
You can also right click to add a ruler. Right click on that to set its length, and draw your surface to the correct size for your layout area.
Ok, I did what you suggested and a default number of 50 appeared. What unit of measurement would that be?
Stets Ok, I did what you suggested and a default number of 50 appeared. What unit of measurement would that be?
Depends on what you have set. Click on the "Tools" menu item. The only selection under that is "Options". In the box that opens up, select the "Behavior" tab. You have 4 choices: Metric (cm); Metric (mm), English (Fractional Inches), English (Decimal Inches). I believe the default is Metric (cm), so that's what you'd be looking at.
There are a lot of excellent possibilities to get the program to do exactly what you want it to do in that options box. I'd recommend you look at them all and decide which ones you want to change (but set the default units first, so if you set anything else there you set it in the right units.