SteveB Posted January 19, 2015 Posted January 19, 2015 (edited) Hi All, I loaded Michael Gale's ME Track models into BlueBrick (a layout designer program) Parts Library and it works great! The library is freely available for download at Michael's website at www.brickdimensions.com/resources/trains. Photos of and Flickr thread is here. Again thanks Michael for this awesome resource! After about 30 mins of laying out track on top of the base plates that represent my future layout I quickly realized a few things. This is a whole new world of layout design! The new radii offers a lot of choices in the layout but with flexibility comes complexity. Initially I created 1/4 circle track segment groups to keep it simple and immediately realized that 1/4 and 1/2 length straight track segments are required. I think to exactingly plan a large multi-loop layout it would take a lot of work and there will be some hands on real world BKMs (best know methods) learned in the coming months. Model railroaders have a lot of layout design rules that we can learn from too. One rule that is immediately aesthetically noticeable is, "Try not to have the track run parallel to the edge of the table." The new subtle curves can really help with this! I can't wait to see what is thought of... I think in the "old days" many of us learned the limitations of the 40R only system after a couple attempts at building a few layouts and train yards etc. This limited geometry inadvertently keep layout design simple. NOTE: This is not your 9v track system anymore! :-) I'm very excited to use the new track radii and I hope the real track I ordered arrives soon so I can get some "hands-on" experience with these new curves! Thanks, SteveB Edited January 19, 2015 by SteveB Quote
SteveB Posted January 19, 2015 Author Posted January 19, 2015 Michael and I were just chatting off line about visual alignments of BlueBrick elements. They sometimes may look visually "off" because of pixel granularity, but are actually precisely aligned via the connection points so the accuracy of the layout is maintained. More details: Michael says, "Alignment in BlueBrick is always an issue--mostly as visual artifacts than true misalignment. The issue is that BB elements are rendered using GIF bitmaps which are pretty coarse at 1 pixel/1 mm. To make bitmaps for those custom curves (or any curved element for that matter), you need to truncate your pixel bitmap by a fraction of mm or so depending. This may register as a pixel shift +/- depending on zoom ratio, position, etc. Luckily, the connection points in BB are precise to floating point decimals. They are referenced to the centre point of the bitmap. Unfortunately, this means they are referenced to a coarse 1 pixel grid within the part. Thankfully, when adding consecutive curves, the connection point locations define the part position precisely. Its only the rendering of the GIF bitmaps with respect to these connection points that get quantized to the coarse 1 pixel grid. As long as you add track segments relative to another--they will remain precise in the drawing. I recommend starting a curve from a precisely aligned straight section first. Straights do not suffer from the pixel grid alignment issue, so you can be assured that they are aligned both logically and visually." Thanks SteveB Quote
zephyr1934 Posted January 20, 2015 Posted January 20, 2015 Oh wow! I was just tinkering with bluebrick last night to play with potential layouts for ME model's track and thought to myself, "gee, wouldn't be great if there were elements for the new radii". Thank you thank you Michael for the parts and Steve for sharing. Quote
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