Building help

[ckawahara]

Myself, I've got four projects I'm involved in, and a dabble in number five and six.

Sketchup is easy to learn and quite intuitive and free). Heck, I did it. You can be up and creating in hours. Over at ET there are several forums that have a lot of hints and tips as well as the latest exported needed to create the .s and .sd components. I had the most difficultly getting textures for the projects. In addition to few model makers, there are few or fewer sources of textures. If your goal is other than generic shapes, there is a wealth of info in the form of Sanborn maps, Google images and technical resources. It becomes an adventure in itself doing research.

[eolesen]

Yep, I'll third the suggestion to learn Sketchup or even Blender, especially if you want detail.

The days of team projects are long past, and while laying track is fairly quick and easy, it's the detail that will make or break a project.

You seem to have an idea of what you want your route to look like, and someone who's never experienced that line or region can never fully understand what it is you have in your head. So take that step.

Like Craig, I've got four route projects that are more or less in various states of done-ness, and after three years on a work assignment that made it pretty much impossible to devote time to route-building, they are all crying out for attention right now.

[cnwfan]

Well Ive tried to learn both but , modding isn't my skill set at all. So Im still leaving it up to whoever wants to help. Ive said this for years, route modeling is my thing but buildings nope.

[drelyea]

Pity, with all those Sanborn Maps waiting to be Sketchup-ed

WeidmannSilkDyeing1.jpgWeidmannSilkDyeing2.jpgWeidmannSilkDyeing3.jpgWeidmannSilkDyeing4.jpg

It's not as fast as laying track. This took 10 hours so far, what with the custom window and door textures, and is only half done.

With several Thousand Sanborn map pages to work thru, I am spoken for most likely for all my time.

If you want suggestions, advice, and screen-grab walk-thrus I could likely do that. Devote that kind of time to an area much lower on my interest list, not happening, sorry.

Doug Relyea

[cnwfan]

If you want suggestions, advice, and screen-grab walk-thrus I could likely do that.

This might work, I think the trouble is the getting started myself, but with walk thus etc I could probably get something started.

[ckawahara]

No walk through will make up for 'down-and-dirty-hands-on'. Visit ET and checkout the Sketchup forum for additional advise. If you use Sanborn maps, there is also a good forum on that topic. I found a good book titled "Google Sketchup Cookbook. Lots of step-by-step stuff on creating shapes. Be advised that Sketchup creates is poly-heavy objects....you will need to learn to do some trimming/removal of unnecessary poly's. Get the latest exporter at ET also.

[slipperman]

Hi cnwfan,
I don't think you've read ALL of Doug's post!!

It's a very old program, but you can get Train Sim Modeler for free from : http://www.rundiomusic.com/SimDownloads
The reason I recommend this is because it contains several step-by-step exercises, including building a house and a boxvan. Depending on which Operating System you're running, you may need to download a utility which can read the 'old-style' Windows Help files (.chm). There are several available, and I understand that the Firefox and Chrome browsers can open them.

Cheers,
Ged

[cnwfan]

Hi cnwfan,
I don't think you've read ALL of Doug's post!!

I did read his last post!! He did offer to help. Ill probably use a mixture of Sandborn and county assessors sites.Because of modern era , they do not have cement elevators. on Sandborn maps I have used SKU before so will use that I like the ease of it because of Automatically measuring what you draw. TSM is a bit difficult in that department. As Ive said need help in getting started such as the modern elevator.

[drelyea]

Hi,

Interesting, the elevators weren't concrete out there, on the Sanborn maps. The ones on the Jersey Shore were wood in 1920, and the NYC's lingered into the 1950's

eriejcyard1927.JPGWeehawkenGrainElevator.jpg

Good news is there were concrete silos in use, in one of those quirks that make up the human experience, at Cement Plants.

Alpha Cement AerialMartinsCreek.jpg

The photo is of the surviving abandoned Alpha Cement plant, at Martin's Creek, Pa. portions of which have been re-purposed. The two silo sets at the right existed on the 1919 DL&W and L&NE Valuation maps. The two smaller sets were part of a post 1920 rebuild of the plant.

Back to the subject. As Craig suggested, Elvas Tower has a number of Sketchup threads, the site owner Dave Nelson uses it exclusively. Slightly deep in the file library there are some tutorials he put together. He also expanded the plugin available here to allow the use of components.

Also, since Sketchup 2015, the MSTS exporter has to be placed in the User's Plugins folder inside SU, not the Plugins Folder. 2017 Free is still available at Trimble, you just have to root around their pages a bit.

Craig is correct, If you let it, Sketchup will leave endpoints, well everywhere. IIRC most set-ups had a rectangular foundation, and a rectangular slab for the roof over the circular bins. Make both a bit bigger than the foot print of the tubes, and push-pull/extrude the face that in reality intersects the tubes a bit past (1/2 inch is good) This keeps the endpoints of the tube faces out of the horizontal faces, reducing poly count (and letting you use those polys elsewhere).

If you haven't found them yet, "find" the right click context menus. Each tool has a different menu. The "circle" tool
has one that allows you to change the number of segments. The default is 24 segments, which is good for a diameter of 12 feet to about 40 feet. Somewhere I needed a circular tank about 60 foot in diameter, and it's in my mind I changed the sides to 36 segments because the smoothing on 24 did not look right.

Doug Relyea

[cnwfan]

I think I got my work cut out for me as a example here is Ogden Iowa's west elevator complex
https://vintageaerial.com/photos/iow...1995/ZBO/38/14
I noted on the assessor site they no longer have drawings for the buildings to the south of the tracks. Maybe might show up on Sandborn ? Im doing research first trying to gather as much as I can. Would be nice If I could do a whole downtown building without breaks, Im assuming not possible with real world detail.