RailModeller Pro Forum

Hello

Just making my first steps with the program and so far it works perfect.

My primary reason why i only start now is that i needed the image import. I have a rather huge finished hand drawn plan of my railroad and want to use this as a underlying sheet to put my rails on top (at least approximately) and do not have to redo everything.

This works perfect so far - only little problem i have is that it resizes every image to 2048 -- also there is no way to enter the value i like for a certain piece. This can be overcome by noting the real size it has in photoshop and later approximately resizing by pulling the rectangle (not too easy workflow but ok)

Now comes the larger problem - the reason why i write here: As it is a larger layout i divided it into different parts as i need to rearrange the areas (i have some stations, railyard, harbor, industrial plants etc.). When i imported i saw that i need to put every item on a seperate layer. No real reason to do that but it seems due to the functionality of RailModeler -- but so in the end i exceeded the numbers of allowed planes which seems to be 10. Is there any way to overcome this limitation or is it planned for a later release?

It is not such a huge problem for the end result as i plan to build every single item with tracks and when this has been finished i can discard the imported pictures. Still for reassembling the parts it would be extremely helpful to be able to load all of them - just to see how they fit on the canvas in the best way. I guess this is rather a unusual problem which occurs as i have planned the railroad for a different location and now need to rearrange everything so it fits into the new location i have for it. I want to preserve as much of the layout as i can.

Any help is very much appreciated

Hello,

Gronf wrote:Just making my first steps with the program and so far it works perfect.

Great to hear that!

Gronf wrote:This works perfect so far - only little problem i have is that it resizes every image to 2048 -- also there is no way to enter the value i like for a certain piece.

Selecting an image layer makes the image tools available in the Tools section in the toolbar;
The Resize tool can be used to adapt the size of the image to your layout!

Gronf wrote:.. i exceeded the numbers of allowed planes which seems to be 10. Is there any way to overcome this limitation or is it planned for a later release?

Each image is stored in a dedicated image layer. Up to 10 image layers can be added per layout.
(More details on images can also be found in the Working With Images section in the manual)

As the main motivation (i.e. the feature that's been requested for years) for images in modeltrain layouts is the ability to import sketches, maps or drawings this should be enough for most use cases.

More importantly though the limit is a safe-guard against 'benevolent abuse': Even now it's possible to create huge layout documents with only 10 images. With even more images there's the risk of motivating some users to e.g. add scenery and plenty other elements via images thus creating ginormous documents, which would in turn severely impact the performance of the app.

So as a workaround I would suggest to perform pre-processing in a dedicated image editor (or even Apple's Preview) app and combine the images into one (or fewer) images before importing them into RailModeller.

Hope this helps,
Jan

Thank You for the quick reply

I have seen the option with the resizing and it is very useful. I have also used it to get all teh pictures i imported to the proper size. Still i would think it would be a useful function - so maybe it is something for a later update.
I am using the import for importing my hand drawn plan in 1:10. So i scanned it, put the parts together and resized it in Photoshop so the Scale is correct. Now i know which size my plan must be to be in scale so i can put the tracks on top in rail modeller.
At the moment i can do that manually with the resize tool - but it is rather difficult to get the measures right. It wuld be easier just to be able to put in the right numbers. But as i wrote nothing important, only convenience...

For the 10 layers i did exactly what you suggested - and this of course works fine.
It just did not meet my original idea - but of course is much better than before as i now HAVE the option to import my layout which is really great.

I guess mine is a special case: I have planned a railroad that was never built due to personal changes. I kept the plans and now i have again the opportunity to build a railroad. But of course the room looks different and so i have to adapt the plan. (The old one was drawn in stone age where no electronic help like Rail Modeller was yet available )
Of course i would like to keep as many of the planned elements - and so i cut the old plan in pieces (electronically) and thought i could do the planning in rail modeler. Of course i can do it in Photoshop and import the finished rough layout - but it would be much more conveninet in rail modeller as the planning could be interdependent. Just to explain an example: I have a station some industrial plant (container terminal) and a railyard all planned complete with tracks - for the old room. Now i have three 'snippets' of the groups of tracks and the should fit into the part of the new room where this scene shall take place. If i can import all 3 of them i can push them around while i am redrawing the tracks with rail modeler. After all i want to keep the basic layout and the functionality - but if there is a better layout due to the new measures i will of course adapt it - the adaptation on the other hand will give new opportunities for combining the parts, which will again lead to adaptations and so on. This would be the benefit of having ALL of the 'Snippets' of the old layout available.

As this is not possible (or only possible with 10 layers) i will do it different and just redraw the old layout 'as is' in rail modeller - and then use groups of tracks to recombine them so they will fit into my new room.
The other way would hav ebeen my preferred one, which was thereason why i had asked.
I do understand Your argument about 'user protection'. I would not have used it for any other picture thing. Maybe a checkbox woudl be an option which is usually off and You must override manually with some warning text (got across something like that recently in the settings of firefox: "Beware, here be dragons - proceed at your own risk") - just something to think about...

I will now use the alternative solution, so for me the problem is solved - thank you for your support

Andreas

P.S.: Soll ich solche Fragen eher in den deutschen Bereich schreiben? Ich hab gedacht ich schreibs im englischen, dann haben mehr Leute was von der Antwort. Oder ist das anders gedacht?

Hi Andreas,

Gronf wrote:At the moment i can do that manually with the resize tool - but it is rather difficult to get the measures right. It wuld be easier just to be able to put in the right numbers. But as i wrote nothing important, only convenience...

Yes, it sounds reasonable to directly enter image dimensions - I'll add it to the to-do list for a future update!

Gronf wrote:Now i have three 'snippets' of the groups of tracks and the should fit into the part of the new room where this scene shall take place. If i can import all 3 of them i can push them around while i am redrawing the tracks with rail modeler. After all i want to keep the basic layout and the functionality - but if there is a better layout due to the new measures i will of course adapt it - the adaptation on the other hand will give new opportunities for combining the parts, which will again lead to adaptations and so on. This would be the benefit of having ALL of the 'Snippets' of the old layout available.

I see - it sounds like a use case where module support would come in handy.
(Modules as in the standards created by NRMA or ETE)

Each segment (as defined by an individual sketch/image) could then be planned as an individual module and the completed modules could be combined with each other in various ways.
It's a feature request that comes up from time to time and it's definitely on our schedule!

P.S.: Soll ich solche Fragen eher in den deutschen Bereich schreiben? Ich hab gedacht ich schreibs im englischen, dann haben mehr Leute was von der Antwort. Oder ist das anders gedacht?

Kein Problem

Thanks,
Jan