Beginner Track Editor Questions

[lightrail]

First, excellent sim - very in depth, real and fun.

I'm playing with the track editor and seem to have the hang of laying the track. It seems best to draw out the route first with the track elements on paper before attempting to build in the editor. Roads and rivers seem easiest to make by creating a dummy track and then using it to create a road or river.

I'm having trouble creating the trailing points. If I want to make a crossover, how do I do it? I make a set of points as the turn out, then do I add an element to cross over the parallel track and then use the connect elements feature to make the join? Does this automatically make a trailing point or do I need to do something else. I'm not clear on this.

I'll have lots of questions as I go and I'm still playing on practive layouts for now.

Is there a tutorial in English I can follow?

Thanks

Thanks

[Roland Ziegler]

I'm not sure - there is the "building a tutorial route" doc. Has the translation already been completed?

There are basically two approaches, one is the "forward building" approach, where you take the route editor and some imagination whre you are heading for. This is fine and easy enough if you are building a fictitious route. If you are trying to re-create a real route, it is recommended to first create a "raw route", a sketch of the route taken/redrawn from a scanned or digital map, and elaborate that towards the final route with my "track surveyor" (Absteckrechner). This is much more complex but the additional effort should be rewarding. However, there is not yet an English documentation for this approach.

For crossovers you can start with just connecting the tracks, either with the route editor or the Absteckrechner. Afterwards you can turn these elements into "proper" points by using the route editor's "points generator" (ot needed for the points to work in the simulation). Nowadays, you can also place one of the highly detailed readymade points kits. Such a kit contains all the route elements of the points plus necesssary functionality and strictly adheres to the original geometry. Furthermore you can take those kits and bend the points (with the latest route editor), if your points are in a curve. However, none of those tricks is needed to make the points work. Points exist for Zusi, as soon as track elements are connected.

Roads and rivers are easily created with route elements, just as you suggest. The route editor has function to generate the final shape from these elements.

[Oliver Lamm]

Hi,

the chapter "tutorial route" should be translated since month.
You may wnat to write a email to Christian Gründler, as he might have a copy of it. The original translater is Immo, but I've never had contact with him.

Oliver

[Christian Gründler]

...write an email to Christian Gründler, as he might have a copy of it.

I suggest that Bruce Kennewell tells us whether the second part of "Creating a simple test route" has been translated by Immo Birnbaum. If I remember correctly, the first part is hosted (concealed) on Bruce's website, but I can't remember the URL of this document (must be mentioned somewhere here in the Forum, but I didn't find that topic either).

As Immo doesn't own Zusi, there a some mistakes in his translation; nevertheless I think that it is quite useful in connection with the manual.

Regards,
Christian