AnyRail Model Railroad Forum

General Category => Problems => Topic started by: santerdam on May 20, 2009, 01:17:46 AM

Title: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: santerdam on May 20, 2009, 01:17:46 AM
David,

After working a while with the library rectangle symbol, I am getting problems. Dragging symbols to other positions causes the symbol to jump in stead of a nice movement. Cursor positioning is also difficult. The problem slowly gets more and more worse when you continue working. After a while you can't hardly move symbols anymore and it takes a real long time before you see the symbol to jump.

Easy solution is to save the plan, close AnyRail, restart AnyRail and continue editing the plan. Than everything works as a charm again. The problem look to me like a 'memory leak'.

Sander

Extra info : Anyrail version 3.27.0 NL on Windows XP
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: David on May 20, 2009, 08:12:10 AM
Hi Sander,

Could you please send us your plan file? We'll take a look at it!

David.
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: santerdam on May 20, 2009, 02:16:18 PM
David, please find attached the testplan.

Sander
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: David on May 20, 2009, 02:33:47 PM
Hi Sander,

I've been playing with it for about 10 minutes, adding new tiles, and removing other ones, but it all seems to work smoothly.

Do you have any series of actions that leads to these hiccups?

David.
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: santerdam on May 20, 2009, 03:16:35 PM
David,

The series of actions was : Starting with a blank sheet and step by step make this plan. That involved everything, like adding symbols, rotate and mirror, move and replace, add text, move text, ..... The only thing I know is that I did not use rulers and lines.

The whole sessions was about 2 hours, with breaks (coffee and such) without closing AnyRail. Rather often I save to disk while working on a plan. During editing in AnyRail, I sometimes read The BeneluxSpoor forum, check details in the program Koploper and my documentation (Word or Excell). (Computer has lots of power and memory, no restriction for capacity or speed)

The only thing I know is, that at a certain moment you notice the slowing down. I was moving symbols and text. From that moment, the hiccups got worse and worse. Delays went up from 1 second to 20+ seconds and each next move made it worse. I have had the issue twice, each time I could solve by restarting AnyRail and all hiccups are gone.

Sorry, no real strict reproduceable facts.

Sander
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: David on May 20, 2009, 03:53:18 PM
Hi Sander,

Did this happen only once, or every time again?

We've been bringing down the number of 'Undo' steps in the past to avoid excessive memory usage, but it might still be too large in this particular case.

If it happens again, could you please check the memory usage in the Task Manager?

David.
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: santerdam on May 20, 2009, 04:00:45 PM
David,

It happened both 'only twice' and 'every time'  :) That's because I only started yesterday with the new version. I guess you need at least a session of 1+ hour to get the problem. Next time I have problems, I will check taskmanager and report to you.

Sander
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: Chris on May 20, 2009, 09:10:21 PM
Hi David, Sander.

I had a similar problem with the square tiles. I was dragging symbols from the library right across the screen. They would follow the mouse so far and then stop. A few moments later they would catch up again. However, after this happened with 3 or 4 tiles everything went back to normal so I assumed that it was something else going on in the PC.

Best wishes,
Chris
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: santerdam on May 21, 2009, 02:21:19 AM
Hi David, I have an other issue. This time with text. Sometimes I can't get my cursor on a text in order to move the text or edit the text (without moving the track or deleting a symbol).  See attached example.

Sander
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: David on May 21, 2009, 07:52:59 AM
Hi Sander,

This is one of those cases that wherever you move the cursor on the text, you also hit a tile. And the tiles go first in the 'activation order'. However, you can draw a bounding box (rubber band) around the text to select it and move it with the arrow keys. Once it's moved a bit, you will be able to grab it again to drag it.

David.
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: santerdam on May 21, 2009, 04:21:09 PM
Thanks for the reply David. Selecting with the rubber band and moving with cursor keys works. As a workaround, this works. But, more in general, it is not ideal. I noticed that plans are often solid filled with tiles. When I was working with my testplan, I had the situation at least once every 5 minutes.

Sander
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: David on May 23, 2009, 08:54:44 PM
Hi Sander,

You're right, it's not that convenient in this way.
We'll try to make it a bit easier to grab the text.

David.
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: santerdam on May 23, 2009, 10:06:03 PM
Thanks David. Please allow me to do a suggestion.

Now you can grab a tile on the thin line around the tile and on the thick line, representing the rails. The rest of the tile, the 'white space' doesn't select the symbol. Assume a straight rails symbol (200). Move the cursor in a vertical line. You will see the grab is yes (thin line), no (white space), yes (rails), no (white space) and yes (thin line). This on/off behavour is rather 'nervous' when you are working with symbols. When symbols are connected, you hardly see which symbol you select when hoovering the thin line.

My suggestion is not to grab a symbol on the thin line and only grab when hoovering the thick line (rails). I assume that grabbing text is now also solved.

Sander
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: David on May 26, 2009, 01:27:33 PM
Hi Sander,

We've made grabbing of text a bit easier in version 3.27.1

David.
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: santerdam on May 26, 2009, 07:54:03 PM
That's an understatement David ! It is not 'a bit easier', you hit the bull's eye. On a large testtrack I could grab each text very easy, while in the previous version it was hard or even impossible to grab. This is a great improvement. Thanks.

Sander
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: David on May 27, 2009, 01:06:02 PM
Thanks Sander, glad you like it!

David.
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: Chris on May 27, 2009, 06:42:23 PM
Hi David.

I've given up over Bookmarks and have lost all my remembered passwords etc, ets. :o(

Anyway, I have been messing about a bit more. All the problems seem to have been fixed except that I have found three small snags.

1a. The round symbols disappear once they have been dragged onto a tile unless one goes to 1:3 Zoom. At 1:5 (my working zoom) they are completely invisible. Can I suggest thickening, and brightening slightly, the two arcs (and, possibly, bring them a bit closer to the 'centring' dot.

1b. Removing a 'dot' seems to involve dragging a box around it, disconnecting the symbol, boxing it again and, finally, doing delete. Is that the correct procedure. Just right clicking it comes up Set Position.

2. I wanted to add in a whole new row of tiles at one point so did a series of joint disconnects to seperate the two parts of the layout. When I started adding in the new tiles, they joined part one OK but when I tried to offer up part 2 it would not join up. I carried on anyway and by the time I had finished it had sorted itself out. I'm not sure exactly what happened and I'm not trying again!

3. Are you working on a diagonal buffer section?

BTW, my thanks to Sander who was talking about 'flipping' tiles; I hadn't noticed that.

Other than that, I'm a happy bunny, as they say. If I come up with any further problems I'll let you know.

All the best,
Chris
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: santerdam on May 27, 2009, 09:02:11 PM
Chris,

Although I did no extensive tests with the colored dots, I noticed the visibility is depending the settings for 'endpoint size', 'connection size' and 'control point size'. When you set those three to 0 (zero), the dots are visible in any scale.

Tip : Removing a dot is easier by hoovering over with the mouse and use the delete button on your keyboard. You don't have to select with a rubber band and you don't have to disconnect.

Sander
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: Chris on May 27, 2009, 09:25:49 PM
Hi Sander. Thanks for that.

I see what you mean regarding the dots. At least, you can see them if you know they are there. And, funnily enough, I discovered the hover (only 1 'o' - 'hoover' refers to vacuum cleaners!) /delete key method just a few minutes ago.

Best wishes,
Chris.
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: Chris on May 28, 2009, 12:11:44 AM
Hi David.

An afterthought after a lot of visits to 'Tools ¦ Options ¦ Drawing'. Would it be possible to have a toggle added somewhere to turn on and off all three size options so that one can easily switch between all of none?

Best wishes,
Chris.
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: Chris on May 28, 2009, 09:00:47 AM
Hi David.

Still having problems with square tiles. This morning I added a red circle to a straight section and just ended up with a small white dot. I did what Sander suggested again and it turned into a small red dot. However, this time I could not get rid of it at all so ended up doing a Ctrl-Z to get rid of it. It was like it was behind the tile. Hovering made no difference and right clicking just got up the Set Position option. I think part of the problem is that it is so small that minute movements of the mouse can affect how it behaves. I was thinking that, in reality, these symbols don't need to be quite so small. As Sander pointed out, once you fit your switches and lamps etc. they will be hidden by the switches and lamp bezels etc.

In normal track planning the user can make symbols larger and smaller (esp. text). Could this be done with these control panel lamp/switch symbols? I would be quite happy for the round and ovoid indicators to take up the full width, of even more, of the track symbol. After all, the track symbol width I get when printing is 2.5mm; much smaller than a LED bezel of switch mounting.

Best wishes,
Chris.
Title: Re: possible issue with rectangle symbols
Post by: David on May 28, 2009, 11:50:31 AM
Hi Chris,

The white dot that you see is probably the 'connection'. If its outline turns purple when hovering it, then that's what it is.

As Sander indicated, when you make the connection size smaller, you should see the red dot again.

When hovering these dots, you should go for their outlines, not their center point. In the center point, you'll hit the connection instead of the dot.

I know, it's sort of tricky maybe...

About your other comment, one of the things we're working on in version 4 is an easier and quicker way to set the options.

I've attached a sneak preview.

David.