Positioning a FreightAnim?

[Railfan727]

How do you adjust the position of a FreightAnim object in relation to the car or locomotive that it's attached to? I was thinking that there was a parameter in the .eng or .wag file that did that, but all of the ones I have looked at just have "1 1" after the .s filename in the FreightAnim tag.

[RSD 12]

You can use the utility Shape File Manager to change the position of the FreightAnim object so it will be higher from the track or also to move it forward or to the rear from the center position of the car or engine, or also to move it left or right from the centerline of the car or engine. You can use Shape Viewer to open the FreightAnim object as a second shape and then position it relative to the first shape car or locomotive. By reading the Position panel on the Shape Viewer tool you can see that to put this police car into the boxcar so that the wheels touch the boxcar floor the police car model would need to be adusted in Shape File Manager to raise it +1.14m. To move it to the front of the boxcar it would be adjusted by 4m. I believe the x-axis is distance from the rail centerline, y-axis is distance from the rail head (up, in this instance) and z-axis is distance from the center of the (boxcar) model. With some experimentation you should be able to figure it out. I've put vehicles onto flatcars in the past using this method. Good luck with your project.

[Railfan727]

Got it! Now my SD40-2s have ditch lights...