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First Layout Attempt Scaling Trouble

Started by TrickyZXR, January 26, 2021, 11:24:30 PM

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TrickyZXR

Hi

Total newbie to AnyRail and my plan is to replicate a scale version of my home town mainline. I have grabbed Google Earth images to use as the background in order to get my layout as close as I can to the real thing. I have managed to get track to loosley follow the back ground image but I have obviously gone a bit wrong somewhere with the surface layout area / scale I think. Please see my attached plan.

So if anyone could advise on resolving the follwoing please would be greatly appreciated thank you.

To get image or surface to fit so I have not got 100 odd pages.
The image seems correct size as track fits to me.
Also my ruler show a distance of 36615 units do I divde this by the scale of track gauge used to get true lenght or is this layout going to be some 36615mm long!? I could add up the track lenghts but a lot of work when one has a ruler.

Thanks in advacne for any guidance and advise.

Regards,

Tricky

HG #1.any

BadBanana

I think you just lost control of the settings or scaling when you imported the drawing (easy to do).  I have pulled in the edges and reduced the size of the sheet, but without modifying your trackwork.  The number of pages is simply a function of the selected paper size if printing - you can print 1:1 for actual layout if required, but I often do my test prints at a much reduced scale (in the printer options).   

Does the attached version help at all?

TrickyZXR

Hi BadBanna,

Oh wow thank you so much for A) taking time to read and reply and B) for taking time to adjust it for me. You are a STAR  thank you so much. Yes that looks a lot better and track still adds on to size.

What magic did you perform to do this?
My over all run is quite large (see attached image) so I have split it in to manageable sections with the plan to print 1:1 for laying track.

Image won't attached server 500 error so will try later

BadBanana

#3
Hi!  To be honest, not so much magic, rather it's just that I have probably been using AnyRail a bit longer than you.

So this is very roughly what I did...

I modified the surface that you had created by pulling in the corners to match the shape of the image.  To do this, click on the edge of the surface to select it (the outline becomes green) you can then click and drag the corners one at a time.  I had to move each corner a few times to get them close to the image. 

But then it is still surrounded by lots of empty space.  So the next step was to select all of the surface with the image and drag to the top left corner, and do the same with the tracks.  You can of course zoom in to position the tracks back over the image more accurately.

the last step was to change the size of the work area in the settings for the project so that it was only a little larger than the area of interest.  That's simply a case of estimating and changing the X and Y dimensions.

All in all it took just a few minutes.

One thing I did notice - your AnyRail file is very large and I think this is caused by the fact that you have used a very high resolution image.  If you can reduce the pixel resolution of the image before you import it, then the resulting file would be a lot smaller. 

As for dividing the plan into sections - that's a matter of personal choice.  I doubt that you really need to that unless you are working on a modular layout with other people each doing their module, and the benefit of a single layout is that you can work on different parts of the layout more easily and not worry about how they connect. The printing side of AnyRail is quite flexible and would allow you to print only a selection of pages if you need to print a particular area at a larger scale.  My current layout project would be 72 pages of A4 paper at 1:1, but for printing a particular area I can specify the page numbers to be printed.  As you saw, I think, AnyRail can overlay the page numbers for any particular print scaling onto the layout when it's on the screen (turned on and off with the Page option under the Show tab).       

TrickyZXR

Thanks again for info and help. Sorry for delay in replying the forum doesn't seem to be send notifications or allowing them when i select them!

Anyway yes file is very big so I can get the detail from the back ground. The full layout is 48,500 x 6,500 dpi and 400mb in size! Yes agree doing on one layout would be the right way to go. Thanks again.

BadBanana