Flexible Track

[Duchess Of Montrose]

David,
some suggestions to make it easier to work with flexible track.
1.  You have this from a previous note however it would really make my planning easier if you had a way to move the sliders on flexible track and keep them in a straight line.  ie hold down the shift key while moving the slider would keep it in a straight line.
2.  If you adjust the length of flexible track using the slider, it would be good if the length appeared in Adjust Flex - Straight Flex dialogue box.
3.  If you adjust flexible track to be curved using the slidders, it would be good if the angle and radius appeared in the Adjust Flex - Curve Flex dialogue box.
4.  When you hover the curser over a point, it shows the code number of the point and its length.  It would be good if it showed the angle of the curve of the point and talso the radius of curve of the point.  (this would be even harder for a curved point)

Charlie.

[David]

Hi Charlie,

Thanks again for the suggestions.
1. We'll add that in a future version. It's already on our plan board...
2,3. These features are only useful when the flex is still a perfect straight or a perfect curve. If you don't use the control points after using the 'Adjust flex' functions, the old values will reappear in the dialog box. If you've moved them, there are no correct values to put in the dialog box, so the default will be shown. Any suggestions here to make it better are welcome!
4. Usually, you'll find the information about the point in the status bar at the bottom of the screen. Here, normally the information taken from the catalogue is shown. To avoid confusion, we do not really want to add more details there as we learned that that usually leads to more questions than answers

Hope this helps a bit.

David.

[Wingnut]

Hi,
Not sure if this has been asked for already, but when the straight/curved flex dialogue box opens could the first value be highlighted ready for typed input instead of having to select it. Also could curves be more than 90deg (for one section) or is this problematic, I can replicate it by replacing 2 sections with one once the other sections are there to connect to but its long winded. This feature would be handy when planning lengths and cuts for trackage
Cheers David

[David]

Hi David,

We'll fix the point you mention on setting focus on the first item in the dialog box.

Flex curves (circular arcs) cannot go over 90 degrees because of the internal mathematical representation.
(For the interested: this is done with a bezier curve, and there is no way to approximate a circular arc well when it spans more than a quarter of a circle).

However, you can easily copy and paste existing flex. So if you need a 120 degrees arc, create a 60 degrees one, and copy/paste it and connect.

You're right that some higher math might be required later on to decide how many pieces of flex should be bought in the store and how to cut them!

Hope this helps,

David.

[Duchess Of Montrose]

David,
a suggestion on flexible track:
Could a piece of flexible track be marked as "straight"and then it would not bend to fit with the nearest track.  This would help when trying to have two straight pieces of track attached to a curve.  It would also be useful if you could change the length of a piece of flexible track without having to disconnect, then unglue, then change the length and then reconnect.

Charlie

[David]

Thanks for the feedback. We'll take it into account when planning new versions!

David.

[David]

@Charlie:

Your first suggestion has been added in version 3.15.0 of AnyRail.

David.

[pvdleek]

I have another suggestion, not sure if this has already been mentioned: I have a lot of flex track (using N Peco code 55 which doesn't have fixed elements, only flex) so I often loose the plus-signs. Could there be an easy way to highlight the plus-signs that belong to a certain flex? For example by hitting the H key when the flex is selected, or via the submenu?

[David]

For each flex there are four control points.
Two pairs in fact.
Each pair consists of a point located on the endpoint of the flex, and a free point.

Normally, you should see a thin line whenever you hover any of the control points to the other point of the pair.

Does that help a bit?

David.

[pvdleek]

I already knew that, it helps in some cases, but not in all.
See the attached screenshot, sometimes I really have to search for a few minutes to find the belonging free point

[David]

I see!

We can make these thin lines light up when you hover the flex.

Would that help?

David.

[santerdam]

Peter, if you hover the mouse over the endpoint, the endpoint becomes purple and a thin line to the '+' becomes visible. I agree, sometimes finding the correct '+' is not easy.

Sander

[pvdleek]

@David, yes, that would help a lot!
@Sander, I know, David also said this, but with a lot of flex rails in a small area, it's still not very easy

[David]

In the next version, the lines connecting the control points will light up when hovering a flex.

David.

[pvdleek]

I can hardly wait
Thanks!