From: burke@doright.Tymnet.COM (John Burke)
Newsgroups: rec.models.railroad
Subject: Re: Software tool for pike layout
Date: 11 Jan 93 22:54:15 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: BT North America (Tymnet)

I don't have much experience with DYOR, but I can say a little.

I bought Design Your Own Railroad by mail order from Micro Warehouse
for my PC, followed the install instructions, and was up and running
pretty quick.  I then proceeded to start entering the master plan of
my layout which is Already In Progress.

Well, it is a layout design tool and functioned reliably for what
little I did.  You will be able, with the expense of substantial
time, to make a good comprehensive picture of a flat track plan,
with tables under it if they are rectangular and all parallel, that
is, not at angles.

Now the negative comments.

It takes a lot of motion, clicking, and waiting for redisplays, to
get anything done.  However, if you read the relevant sections of the
manual you can mostly do what you want.

One major lack: it does not do switches according to any standard shape,
that is, you can't say for example put a #4 or #6 switch here.  So,
they will not figure out how the layout works out, say, with several
#4 switches packed up together, which in my experience is one of the
biggest issues in layout design!  The way it works is, you just attach
the end of one straight track to the
middle of another and it decides that's a switch; they let you give
a "maximum angle for switches" on some menu, and they won't make the
switch if the appended track makes a bigger angle than that.  But
there's no such thing as enforcing the length of the straightaway
and branch portions of a switch.

You won't get any help making sure parallel tracks stay far enough
apart, stay aligned around curves, etc.

It doesn't know anything about grades/elevation.  However, you can
represent one track passing above another.  It goes sort of like this:
you divide the layout into sections which can be turned on and off.
You make the lower layer one section, save that, and start a new
section.  Then make the parts of it "hidden" where you are going to
an upper level, and make still another section.  Then, just continue
from the tracks below which are to go up, draw the tracks going up,
and draw them over the hidden areas.  I'm not sure if, using this
method, the program will know that the trains on these tracks can
cross without crashing.

Another real gripe I have about this and many similar mouse drawing
programs: if you are moving an endpoint about and trying to position it
accurately, you are stuck with trying to make very fine motions with
the mouse, giving you muscle cramps,
or else blowing up the picture very big, which in DYOR
takes time.  It's cumbersome to use the arrows: every arrow keystroke
causes a full re-display, and you have to pull a menu and key in the
value for how far to move upon an arrow stroke.  Note, you can key
a parameter, such as length.  But making small adjustments is time-
consuming; you can't just say "move .05 left" or ".07 up" on an
endpoint.

I got some freeware called EditTrack: I found it functional,
but very troublesome to learn,
with a lot of non-intuitive concepts and a totally amorphous approx.
40-page document, which apparently you are expected to read straight
through from beginning to end, since it has no table of contents, much
less index, nor even reasonable section headings.  Much of the useful
information is buried in discursive, wandering paragraphs.  On the
other hand, it provides real switch patterns, and looks like it will
compete with DYOR once you get the hang of it.  Groups of track, once
created, can be moved; also rotated, which I don't think DYOR can do.
If you can't figure out what the *** a "spline" is, send me E-mail
and I'll tell you what I figured out.

From: wbrill@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Warren Brill)
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 21:53:52 GMT
Subject: Re: K-line beacon tower help
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA