Track colour not matching section colour-

Create track with several Sections, with multiple pieces of track per Section

Click a piece of track in one Section to select it

Copy it to the clipboard

click on the workspace and paste that piece of track [it shows as coloured like the Section it came from]

Drag it and drop it to connect to one of he other Sections

Issue: The colour remains that of the originating Section, not the one it's currently connected to

If you copy and paste track with section info, this section info is copied as well.

If you don't want that, remove the section info first after pasting and before connecting.

David.

I could see that, if you were moving an entire section, but I'm not convinced that it should apply when doing a copy/paste. I think it ought to be handled like other situations and any track that is pasted should acquire the attributes of the section it's connected to. In other words, if you don't have isolators between the piece(s) being connected and the section you're connecting it to, it really should become part of the section you connect it to, including such things as colour, no?

David, this looks like the same bug as I reported you last week. For me it is a bug and not a cosmetic issue.

Sander

It's not a bug, it's on purpose.

What happens is the following: whenever you copy/paste track with section info, a copy of the section info is made. This is very useful if you copy/paste large parts of a layout to another one. You don't want to recreate all the sections if you copy a large station.

Also, when something is pasted, it's quite easy to remove its section info before reconnecting it to existing sections.

When only part of a section is copied and pasted, this approach might seem strange. I agree.
However, making this behavior depend on copy and paste of partial sections seems a bit confusing to me. What do you think?

David.

For me, the name (and color) of a section is owned by a group of railspieces, connected together with isolators on both ends with a certian position in a railsplan. Each single railspiece doesn't own that name (and color). When you copy a part of a section, that part doesn't inherit section proporties.

Compare it with taking some paving-stones from a street and place them in an other street. In that case the streetname is not transferred. The streetname belongs to the position of the street and doesn't relate to the stones, used to make the street.

Sander

Hi All,

I agree that it would be better to have the highlighted track pieces lose the section information when copied, than to retain it. When working on your layout and having to copy many parts of a section and then deleting and creating new sections is time consuming.
It will depend on how easy this is to change in the program code and have other effects.
Yours,
Andrew

It's a tough one 'cause I hear David's point and have actually experienced the need for it to do exactly what it does at the moment. Moving from one version of a layout to the next, and the part I was moving being precisely the track grid for the central station. I've been working on my 13-track big station, and having track lose section information would have been a rather painful exercise had it lost all the information given to it from a copy and paste perspective.

Kimbo, I can agree with you... up to a point. What I mean to say is that the only track that should retain the Section information is an actual Section - i.e. a piece or pieces of track contained by isolators. Any track piece copied out of a section should, since it will have no isolators, take on the attributes of the track piece(s) it's then connected to, just like a piece of track out of a library.

Jeff, a additional remark on your text "an actual Section - i.e. a piece or pieces of track contained by isolators".

As soon as you copy stricktly on the isolators, those isolators will be lost when you paste. I agree with your suggestion, but it only works when you copy the section including one extra piece of rails on both ends.

Sander

Please continue your discussion. It seems that it converges to a perfect functional description!

David.

Santerdam, that's what I thought, too. The fact is that I have copied a section several times and when it connects, the connection has isolator(s), so that the Section is still a Section. Give it a try and you'll see.

Jeff, I tested before I wrote my reaction. I had this testcase :

    ---|-S-|---

A 3 rails part (not section), next a 3 rails section (S) and an other 3 rails part (not section).
I selected and copied the section (S)
Next I pasted and connected the duplicated section on the right.
On the right side this resulted in a 6 rails section, not 2 parts of 3 rails with an isolator inbetween.

Sander

Some additonal testing shows me :

If you connect a section to a non-section, you don't see an isolator. This makes me think that the isolator is not included in the copy-paste.

If you connect 2 sections, you will see an isolator. This makes me think that the "connection mechanism" automagically adds a new created isolator. This is also true when you manually create 2 sections and connect them - copy-pste not used in this operation.

I assume you have seen this effect in your test.

Sander

Ok, I now understand the difference. I was connecting the copied part to an existing other section, not plain track. If you do that, it will create an isolator to keep the sections apart. If you paste, then connect it to plain track, it will attach the plain track to the section and it will be part of the section you pasted. It took me a few tries to figure out what we were doing differently.

Now, why the two cases have been made different, I'm not sure.