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Drawing Vehicular Roads

Posted: 15 Dec 2017, 17:59
by hdunsmore
Is there an easy way to draw roads into the RM layout? I have very-y-y slowly tried to use the polygon shape tool to render the roads but the time spent doing so is totally unacceptable. I used the line shape tool and it too is time consuming and tedious; it also limits the line to a maximum of 15 width. Much needed: a line drawing tool. Is there one? Where is it?

Re: Drawing Vehicular Roads

Posted: 16 Dec 2017, 08:06
by RailModeller Support
Hi there,

We include several libraries for vendors offering roads for various scales e.g. Faller Car System or Faller Laser Street.

The Line tool from the Shapes popup in the toolbar allows to draw lines with an arbitrary number of points.
Can you illustrate how a line drawing tool would differ?

There have been (very few) requests for dedicated tools to create streets over the years and we might add something to make this easier in a future update.

However, you're invited to request it in our feature request forum so other users can vote for it to support the idea!

Cheers,
Jan

Re: Drawing Vehicular Roads

Posted: 17 Dec 2017, 15:26
by hdunsmore
Hi RM Support and thanks for the reply. The following is the gist of what I think would enhance the line tool. I used to use a program called Freehand which acted this way. I think Adobe Illustrator has a similar line tool but I don't use it. The reason for such a tool would be to easily and flexibly draw shaped lines particularly for roads, rivers, mountain lines, and textures.

This is how I would envision a line drawing tool:

a) select the line tool icon *
b) place cursor on the spot where you want the line to begin
c) holding mouse down drag across the layout to the point where you want the line to end **
d) release the mouse and the line appears with anchor points on the line at 'key' points ***
e) in an ideal situation each anchor point could be selected and 2 controls appear which would allow the user to move the point and in turn bend i.e. reshape the line
f) click off the line and the anchor points disappear (BTW the current line tool cannot be disengaged without going back to the menu and selecting the arrow tool. Clicking on the layout without doing this creates an unwanted anchor point)
g) the line width should be selectable (perhaps with the choice of a preset of scale i.e. N, HO, etc) or just in increments up to and thicker than the current limit of 15)

Thanks for the opportunity to voice my opinion. My roads are currently taking a lot of time to place on the layout.

Henry

p.s. lines drawn this way could be striped or dotted to add further 'coding' e.g. dotted lines could be to id paths or property fences; stripes on a thick line could represent road markings i.e. double solid, dotted, solid/dotted, etc (this could be useful for Faller car system)

* I would call it the "free form" line tool option (a "pull down" window could offer the current line tool or the optional free form line tool)

** to draw a straight line (in any direction) click the mouse once to generate an anchor point then select another location and click the mouse again which would generate a second anchor point with an adjoining line. Clicking on the line would create further anchor points which can be edited

*** to add to the line:
i) click on the line which shows the auto-generated anchor points
ii) click on the last anchor point at either end and click mouse
iii) hold and drag the mouse
iv) a new line will be added to the original one making them a single item

Re: Drawing Vehicular Roads

Posted: 20 Dec 2017, 10:47
by RailModeller Support
Hi Henry,

Thanks for the detailed explanation and the feature request!

The line tool can actually 'stop' the current shape by either hitting the ESC key or via double-click, but I realize that many options are somewhat hidden in the manual so we do have a to-do item for the next major update 6.0 to display all options for the current tool in the bottom area of the window (similar to how other graphic design tools do it already).

So hopefully all the options already available in the tools will become easier to discover!
As for the other points there's certainly room to improve and we'll take all comments into consideration.

Thanks for the feedback!

All the best,
Jan