Tracks, Switches and Slips

[Norbert]

Hi everybody,

since the posts of january are up in e-nirvana apparently, I could not follow up the threads about design of track, switches and slips.

I did mess around with TSM for quite some time now to design some items of my own. Geometry and views are okay but I could not make the switches work in the sim. To my understanding some reference to MOVINGTRACK is needed and ANIMATION must be defined, but I could not bring my system to do this. I posted a request for support at abacus but I have the feeling, that TSM might not be the optrimum software for designing trackelements.

My question:

There are some of you out there, that had successfully designed track items (aurelis, okrasaghia ...). Which software did you use to do this ? Could any of you give me a hint of something cheaper than AUTOCAD ?

Any advise would be appreciated

' ... I can feel it coming back again. I have fought against it but my power to resist is deminishing. Its grabbing my soul and personality. Nothing of my old self will be left Soon I will be lost for ever to the search of the utmost perfection in switches and slips in MSTS ... ' (R.L.Stephenson, Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hide, citation from memory)


Dr. Norbert Aust, Mulburg, Germany

[LawrenceKellie]

All past posts have been restored.

.
Lawrence
Tapiola now here at Train-Sim.com
http://www.trainsim.com/login.htm

[Aurelis]

I have been doing my work by manually creating the geometry and importing it into 3D Canvas Pro (using the raw triangle format) and then using 3D Canvas Pro to do the texturing, animation, geometry clean-up, etc.

John

[Norbert]

Thanks for your information

Norbert

[OkrasaGhia]

I'm using TSM, works fine once you learn how the animation works. For a switch I make two parts; the track ('TRACK') and the moving points ('MOVINGTRACK'). 'TRACK' is the top object and 'MOVINGTRACK' has 'TRACK' as parent. In the project properties you must specify it as a complex shape with two frames. Animate the moving track object with the 'Ani' tool or the part properties dialog.
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//Okrasa
Chief Engineer
okrasaghia @ yahoo.com
http://www.geocities.com/okrasaghia
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[Norbert]

Thanks Okrasa,

your answer saves money ...


Norbert