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jeffmorris (317 posts)
Nov-14-01, 06:13 PM (EST) "New track sections" I used AutoCAD 2000, TurboCAD 7.1 Pro, and 3D Canvas 5.0 Pro to create new track sections: I created 3-track and 4-track 250 meters radius curved sections in 5-degrees, 10-degrees, and 20-degrees, five 200 meters long track sections with station platforms in following configurations: two tracks and one island platform, three tracks and two island platforms, two tracks and two side platforms, three tracks and two side platforms, and four tracks and two side side platforms, 8.25 meters and 28.69 meters straight track sections to create double-crossovers, and 251 meters radius 6 degrees curved track section for making "S" curves at ends of island platforms. Jeffrey. Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Table of Contents

Subject Author Message Date ID RE: New track sections lrperkins Nov-14-01 1 RE: New track sections jeffmorris Nov-15-01 3 RE: New track sections thestewman Nov-15-01 2 RE: New track sections jeffmorris Nov-15-01 4 RE: New track sections thestewman Nov-15-01 5 RE: New track sections Bodgeous Nov-15-01 6 RE: New track sections SilverFox Nov-15-01 7 RE: New track sections Bodgeous Nov-15-01 8 RE: New track sections SilverFox Nov-16-01 10 RE: New track sections Bodgeous Nov-16-01 11 RE: New track sections ExpressMark Nov-17-01 13 RE: New track sections jeffmorris Nov-16-01 9 RE: New track sections ExpressMark Nov-17-01 12 RE: New track sections jeffmorris Nov-17-01 15 RE: New track sections nw_fan Nov-17-01 17 RE: New track sections jeffmorris Nov-17-01 18 RE: New track sections JimStrenk Nov-17-01 14 RE: New track sections jeffmorris Nov-17-01 16 RE: New track sections JimStrenk Nov-18-01 19 RE: New track sections jeffmorris Nov-18-01 20

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lrperkins (107 posts)
Nov-14-01, 07:58 PM (EST) 1. "RE: New track sections" Could you be talked into passing along the information on how you made these curved track sections. Straight sections are ok, but the curved sections have done nothing but cause me bad pains.Lonnie Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jeffmorris (317 posts)
Nov-15-01, 05:21 AM (EST) 3. "RE: New track sections" Lonnie, In 3D CAD program, you draw a line and two rectangles, and issue an command to revolve the 2D objects into 3D objects. Jeffrey. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
thestewman (64 posts)
Nov-15-01, 04:49 AM (EST) 2. "RE: New track sections" Do you have any screenshots? I would like to see what you have done. Maybe you could make a single track 250 radius with a 5,10,20 degree curve.
Stewart M. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jeffmorris (317 posts)
Nov-15-01, 05:24 AM (EST) 4. "RE: New track sections" Steward, The single-track 250 meters radius curved sections came with the program but they "forgot" to put them in the TSECTION.DAT file. Jeffrey. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
thestewman (64 posts)
Nov-15-01, 09:22 AM (EST) 5. "RE: New track sections" They did? So someone needs to write a tsection.dat entry for them. We gota do something about that. So are the nessacery files available?
Stewart M. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Bodgeous (59 posts)
Nov-15-01, 10:48 AM (EST) 6. "RE: New track sections" There was a post on this back in Septeber, I believe. I used it and the track works perfectly. It is a single track, 10 degree.Use the search archives function to find it. It's worth the time.Bill Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
SilverFox (36 posts)
Nov-15-01, 05:33 PM (EST) 7. "RE: New track sections" >There was a post on this
>back in Septeber, I believe.
>I used it and the
>track works perfectly. It is
>a single track, 10 degree.
>
>
>Use the search archives function to
>find it. It's worth the
>time.
>
>Bill Hi Bill,
I tried search archives as suggested and the search engine doesn't find anything older than a couple of weeks.Is their any chance you reproduce the instructions for modifying the track data file?
Cheers,
John Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
Bodgeous (59 posts)
Nov-15-01, 06:03 PM (EST) 8. "RE: New track sections" John,Here, try this: http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID6/1924.htmlBill Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
SilverFox (36 posts)
Nov-16-01, 02:39 PM (EST) 10. "RE: New track sections" Hi Bill,
Thanks for the link.
Did he ever get round to uploading the other track files for the 250m radius sections?
-John
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Bodgeous (59 posts)
Nov-16-01, 06:54 PM (EST) 11. "RE: New track sections" John,I don't think so. I thought about doing them myself but never really had anymore need since the one section suited all my needs.I believe he offered to e-mail them to anyone requesting them. I think there's a link to his e-mail on the post.Bill Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
ExpressMark (57 posts)
Nov-17-01, 02:07 AM (EST) 13. "RE: New track sections" Actually adding them to the tsections.dat isnt that difficult. As soon as I get the Textures problem figured out I will make a tsection.dat with the new sections added, unless someone beats me to it..and thats ok too.
Mark Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jeffmorris (317 posts)
Nov-16-01, 05:51 AM (EST) 9. "RE: New track sections" LAST EDITED ON Nov-16-01 AT 05:56 AM (EST)Here is the screenshot of the curved track section that I created using AutoCAD 2000. I drew a line and two rectangles to represent the trackbed and rails, drew a line at the center of the trackbed, made a copy of the line and placed it about 250 meters away as the center axis, issued REVSURF command to create the curved track section, and erased the lines and rectangles. I still CAN'T apply the default track textures to new track sections. Jeffrey.
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ExpressMark (57 posts)
Nov-17-01, 02:01 AM (EST) 12. "RE: New track sections"
Jefffery perhaps you and I should talk, we might can work the textures problem out. Ok, I am doing track sections myself, making them and figuring out how to go aboout it was the easy part. The Hard part beleive it or not is the textures. Applyingthem is easy, getting them to look right in the sim is another issue all together. I am getting weird effects from the textures once they are applied. Sometimes I get strobing effects, not bad but definately annoying.

The texture is brighter than the Default Track with the saem textures applied. So I ask, if anyone has created new track textures that will work with default track, I would love to test them. Mainly to see what it is you might be doing different. Creating a texture is a breaze, but for the life of me, these strange happenings with track textures is got me puzzled. Any sugestions welcome.Mark
3DTrains.com Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jeffmorris (317 posts)
Nov-17-01, 06:22 AM (EST) 15. "RE: New track sections" Mark, I was able to apply textures to straight track sections in AutoCAD 2000 but after I exported the track sections to 3DS files and imported the 3DS files into 3D Canvas 5 Pro, the textures were "lost". The texture mapping functions in 3D Canvas Pro don't work the same way as the functions in AutoCAD. The curved track sections that I created using AutoCAD don't look good. Jeffrey. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
nw_fan (116 posts)
Nov-17-01, 11:45 AM (EST) 17. "RE: New track sections" If you're a registered 3dCanvas user, go to the www.amabilis.com site and go to discussions. You have to send an email with your username requesting to be set up for the registered user forum. Once you are there you can download version 5.0 of 3dCanvas Pro. It has complete import capabilities with no texture loss now from 3ds.Mike
Norfolk & Western
Precision Transportation Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jeffmorris (317 posts)
Nov-17-01, 12:38 PM (EST) 18. "RE: New track sections" Mike, I have "gold" version of 3D Canvas 5.0 Pro that I downloaded this morning. I didn't test 3DS with textures import with the "gold" version but beta versions of 3D Canvas 5.0 Pro lost textures when I import 3DS models. I think that the program couldn't find the texture files when importing 3DS files. Jeffrey. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
JimStrenk (91 posts)
Nov-17-01, 02:58 AM (EST) 14. "RE: New track sections" Jeff:Just for a tickle, have you tried creating a curved track in the yz axis to that rather than having just flat curved track, you'll have curved track that follows a curved gradient?If possible, could you send me a copy of one of your AutoCAD files to me? I'd like to look it over and see exactly what you've done. I'd like to make my own track, if possible. A2K format will be fine. I'd like to try recreating what you've done using Inventor. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
jeffmorris (317 posts)
Nov-17-01, 06:29 AM (EST) 16. "RE: New track sections" Jim, Here are the AutoCAD 2000 drawings. One drawing is 2D and other drawing is 3D. Jeffrey.http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3bf649a6732d6a2c.zip Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top
JimStrenk (91 posts)
Nov-18-01, 02:00 AM (EST) 19. "RE: New track sections" Jeff:Thanks for the drawings! I opened them up and took a quick look. What scale did you use to make the rails. I got .15 X .125 with a distance between rails of 1.4350. Did you use meters, inches or what? Based on the 1.4350 dimension it looks like you used 4" 8-1/2" or 56.5"/39 or thereabouts to get meters.After making your files, did then import them into 3D Studio MAX?If not, what steps after making the AutoCAD surface models did you do to final place these into MSTS.All this object creation and texturing still seems like Black Magic! I still haven't the faintest idea how to create a bmp file for texturing. What I really don't know is how portions of the bmp file are used for texturing. I know that they have to be square, upto 512 X 512 pixels, but placement of surfaces within the tile I don't have a clue about.It would appear from discussion at this site and along with my personal observations that at the moment, 3D Studio MAX is still required to make a .3ds file acceptable for conversion into a .s file. It would also seem like a good idea to start making somekind of document giving a least a thumbnail sketch of creating MSTS objects using AutoCAD or Inventor. Perhaps a bit of co-colaboration might be in order?Thanks again for the AutoCAD files. I will contact you further by email if that's o.k. with you.JimThanks again for the files!Regards,Jim>Jim, Here are the AutoCAD 2000 drawings. One drawing is 2D and other drawing is 3D.
>Jeffrey.
>
>http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/3bf649a6732d6a2c.zip
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jeffmorris (317 posts)
Nov-18-01, 04:24 AM (EST) 20. "RE: New track sections" I used english measurement system in AutoCAD but I used metric measurement system when drawing objects. For example, the line that represents the trackbed is 4.985 inches long, not 4.985 meters long. I use 3D Canvas Pro to create MSTS files. 3D Canvas Pro automatically converts the measurement systems from inches to meters. MSTS uses metric measurement system, not english measurement system. As far as I know 3D Studio MAX and 3D Canvas Pro are the only programs that can create files for MSTS. Train Sim Modeler from Abacus should be released in a few weeks. Jeffrey. Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Reply With Quote | Top

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