Hey Everyone,

So first of all, this program is wonderful!  I have really enjoyed mocking up various layouts, and it beats the heck out of the old “template” method.  So kudos to the developers of AnyRail for all of the work they have put into developing this software!

I have a few suggestions for features that may improve AnyRail, though, I understand most are far fetched, and not likely to be released in a simple patch as a significant change in code may be necessary.

My Wish List:

Layers would be a wonderful addition.  That way people would be able to create scenery, and turn it off/on as desired.

It would be great if you guys could add a “spline” style curve so that people don’t have to click each point individually and tell it to be curved.  This would help in the construction of topographic contours, rivers, roads, etc.  Also, the addition of defined shape library such as circles, squares, triangles, etc.  This would allow people to place various custom designed objects on the layout with ease.

It would be wonderful if there was a library of buildings from different manufacturers that could be placed on our layouts as well.  Things like the DPM series, Walthers buildings, and American Model Builders.  Additional scenery elements like a greater variety of trees and shrubs that can be chosen, rock outcroppings, textured terrain would be a boon as well.  These features would vastly increase the ability of the program to take the design process from the initial conceptualization stages, all the way to a finished product with buildings, scenery, etc.

The ability to import 2D drawings from programs like Google Sketchup, and AutoCad as “objects” that can be moved around in the layout.  This would allow for both the independent development of custom buildings.   Mix this with a new section in the forum and you can have people interested in getting this detailed with the trees, buildings, and stuff, do the development work for you.

And though I understand this is kind of like Ralphie’s Red Rider BB gun, but it would be really cool if there were some form of 3D aspect to the design software where people could alter the height of a surface by drawing contours, setting the height of the contours, and having AnyRail create a surface using either a grid, or triangulation so that designers can further develop their concepts.

I know this is a ton of stuff, but I was just trying to throw out ideas, and see if there was anything in the works for future versions of Anyrail.  After all, this is the wish list thread, and though I wish to win the lottery, I fully understand when I am not the one out of the other 175 million.

Hi Ollieo83,

Thanks a lot for your array of buildings! They look beautiful.
One could copy and paste them individually by drawing a selection box around them (left mouse button and draw a rectangle. Then Ctrl-C Ctrl-V.
An easy approach is to start AnyRail twice, open this file with buildings in one of them, and your own track plan in the other, so you can copy and paste between them.



About your other suggestions:
You could create spline-like lines by creating a line as you're used to, and double click the points to give them 'curved' corners. We're still investigating the option of creating really wide lines in this manner for roads and water.

We're adding a few structures each time, but we realize it's not going very fast. We might create some system to build them yourselves, and exchanging them with fellow AnyRail users. However, this is still only an idea.

About 3D features, we've decided to go for 2D first, but the software is prepared for 3D.
Even in 2D, it might be nice to have a way to indicate the landscape features though. We have a couple of ideas in this area, but nothing concrete yet.

Please be sure that we're working on the software each day to improve it, so eventually these features will be there to use.

David.

Hi Ollieo83,

Funny! well, of course not really, and copy/paste is not supposed to destroy the drawing order.
We'll check it.

You're right about the lines when you want to change all the corner types. You know that you can double click a point to change its properties? At least that's slightly quicker than the right click popup menu.

David.