Templot Club Archive 2007-2020                             

topic: 3049XTrackCAD imports - Templot2 and Templot3
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posted: 21 Jul 2017 19:27

from:

Martin Wynne
 
West Of The Severn - United Kingdom

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The free XTrackCAD program is still going strong after all these years, despite other free programs such as SCARM which have come since, and the popular free version of AnyRail.

 http://www.xtrkcad.org

As far as I know, XTrackCAD and 3rd PlanIt (not free) are still the only other layout design programs which will export DXF files in a format which can be imported directly into Templot's background shapes as a design guide.

This has the advantage over using a screenshot as a background picture shape in that you can zoom in without it becoming pixellated and so work to greater precision.

So I thought I would post a new topic containing some old notes about this.

There is an old page showing Templot tracks designed over a DXF import from XTrackCAD at:

  http://85a.co.uk/ision/rene_tandem.htm

Like this:

 rene_tandem4.gifrene_tandem4.gif

Note that the tracks shown in grey are background shapes imported from XTrackCAD, they are not Templot templates and cannot be adjusted using the usual Templot controls. But they can be overlaid as a design guide, and using the notch it is possible to align templates to them precisely: geometry > notch > notch on background shape menu item.

The maximum number of background shapes which Templot can support is 32000. For this reason, when exporting a DXF file from a large XTrackCAD track plan for use in Templot, it is very advisable to export the track centre-lines only, without the rails and sleepers (ties) -- i.e. not the full tracks as showing in this image.

XTrackCAD puts all the track details in one layer in the DXF file. You need this layer to contain only the track centre-lines, not the rails or sleepers. So you must change the settings in XTrackCAD first:

Turning off the sleepers is easy -- Options > Display > "Draw Ties" > None.

Turning off the rails is not so obvious. In Options > Display >, change "Two Rail Scale" to 0 (zero).

Then with only the track centre-lines showing, you can export the DXF file, and finally import it into Templot:

background > shapes menu item > DXF import tab.

Remember to set the units to mm or inches.

regards,

Martin.

posted: 6 Jan 2020 22:32

from:

Martin Wynne
 
West Of The Severn - United Kingdom

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Just bumping this topic, for no other reason than I have mentioned it on RMweb:

 http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/120110-welcome-to-st-aldhelm/&do=findComment&comment=3791641

XTrackCAD is open-source, so in theory there is scope for some integration with Templot3. There was some previous discussion about this before I made Templot3 open-source, although I haven't heard from Adam since:

 topic 3230

I did subsequently make a post on the XTrackCAD developer's forum to say that Templot is now open-source too. 

There is also a mechanism in Templot2 to create connectors for use in XTrackCAD or other CAD software:

 2_031310_320000000.png2_031310_320000000.png

I don't know if anyone has ever made any use of this.

cheers,

Martin.



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