Hi Charlie,

If you create a curve from flex track, the radius and angle will be kept as long as you don't move the control points. As soon as you move them, the radius and angle are no longer valid and thus lost.

By far the easiest way to transfer the plan is to print it 1:1. AnyRail will print small indicator lines on the pages to make sure you can tape them together correctly.
Of course, you don't have to print the complete plan at once. If you make AnyRail draw a grid it's easy to position the pages in the right spot on your layout.

If it's the amount of ink you're looking up against, you can uncheck the 'Tracks' checkbox in the Tools/Options/Drawing tab, and AnyRail will just draw the center lines of your track.

About your last issue, I'm not sure that I know what you mean. You do know that you can simply drag the outer control points of a flex track to the existing track you want to connect with? AnyRail will line it up for you and make the join. This is also described in our flex tutorial that you can find on the website. If you mean something different, please let me know!

David.

Hi Charlie,

You are right, those values are not saved to the .any file. That also causes the garbled info. We'll repair that in the next release.

Just a question: why do you want to keep notes of the curves? To reproduce them on the plywood?
If it is because you want to make sure not to create too narrow curves, you can also use the warning system. (See Tools/Options/Flex).

David.

Hi Charlie,

Thanks for your comments! At the risk of telling you what already know, I'd like to explain a bit further:

Indeed, we've already gone through a number of improvements in handling flex track, but we really want to keep it simple yet powerful. We are not trying to simulate a real CAD program.

I think that for single track, it works reasonably well now. Room for improvement is mainly in parallel flex track.

One of the thing about the radii and angles: the flex tracks are represented by four control points, enabling you to free format the track at will. Only when you position these points in a very specific way, the resulting track is a circular arc from start to finish. The same goes for easements. As it is almost impossible to create perfect curves and easements just by dragging the control points, we provided the little curve and easement functions.
(We'll make sure their values remain preserved when the plan is saved in the upcoming new release.)

What we could do, is show the minimum and maximum radius while you bend the flex. But of course, there is no thing as a  'fixed radius' for the whole piece of track when it is free formatted. Mathematically, the flex is represented as a Bézier curve, not as a (series of) circles.

A way to transfer the plan from screen onto your baseboards if you don't want to print it out 1:1 is to use the grid function (Tools/Options/View). I've used it myself, and it works as follows: Reproduce the grid on screen (or on a 1:10 print out) onto your baseboard. Measure and transfer the points where the flex intersects with the grid onto the baseboard, and lay the real flex with the help of these points.

Finally, we're always very interested in track plans! They usually make it so much easier to find and solve issues that people have with AnyRail! So please, upload it here or send it to our mailbox!

Thanks again Charlie for all your valuable feedback. This always helps a lot to think of ways to improve the software.

David.