Newbie route developer query about the first track
Started by CharlieB4 posts4 min read
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OK...so I've got a nice DEMed piece of land set up and I laid my first short stretch of track, but it didn't come out where I want it. Could delete everything but the first track...drag it to where I wanted it and rebuild, BUT >>> the first track is dual track and I really need it to be single track now. What happens if I delete that first piece of dual track and start over? Does that screw anything up or can I just go ahead and replace that first segment without worrying? Any tricks I need to know?Charlie
RE: Newbie route developer query about the first track.
A long time ago there were threads about how you should not delete ALL of your track to start over. I think it had something to do with creating a track database by laying track, saving the route, then deleting the track to start over and saving the new configuration. I don't know from my own experience if this is really true or not. I created a couple one-tile routes for test purposes, and I can remember deleting all the track once to start over and everything was fine. I know though that I did this without saving anything for the first time, which meant that there was not a track database created yet when I deleted everything.I believe the issue here is that RE may crash if you delete all your track then save an empty map to start over. Once there is a track database, RE will look for track but if it doesn't exist at all, then it may crash.It appears from the way that you worded your question that you may have heard of this bug, so my advice would be to play it safe and not take any chances. There wouldn't be any problem with leaving that stretch of track there, start building it in the right spot and go back and delete the bad sections after you get some other track down.Jeff Leslie
RE: Newbie route developer query about the first track.
The reason I asked is because of the way all the guidance I've read talks about that first section of track. They seem to place special emphasis on getting the first section of track right, so I thought maybe there was some special significance attached to it and it couldn't be deleted. As background, I am the developer of a software package used by some water supply systems to manage multiple surface water reservoirs. The way my software describes a river basin watershed, it needs to know where the "mouth" of the river is and it has special logic built in to handle "loops", for example, when a river flows around an island (apparently a problem for MSTS). MSTS clearly has similar logic, the way it assembles the track segments into a branched ("dendritic") system, but they didn't implement the loop fix. The "mouth" segment in my program must be specifically flagged as such, so it occurred to me MSTS might have the same kind of requirement. If you delete the "mouth" segment in my program, all hell breaks loose, so I wanted to avoid a bad situation before it happened. Maybe the solution is to delete all the track, place the new "first" section, then save and rebuild the database all in one continuous action. In other words, avoid the step in which RE tries to rebuild an empty database. Think I'll just backup the route as it is and give it a whirl. Thanks...Charlie
