App for calculating area for track?
So big question: What app (android) do you use to find the enough space needed for building a track?S Sorry but I will try my best to explain it.
The tool can or may have feature where you will be placing an item on a grid so you can have an idea on how your track's space needed will look. Just like drawing on a paper with grids but easier. I will add more info here soon
Why this question? I was thinking of making another track (Probably will replace old track next time) and this question came up to mind to make it easier for me to calculate the space needed for a new track. I tried drawing on a grid but the the way I drew the curves (135°) I always mess up the drawing making it unaligned.
Thanks for any answers :)
Discussion
the above is obviously not drawn to any sort of scale but you get the idea
I do mine initially sketched onto paper, to get an idea of the overall shape i want, then I go into Illustrator and start making shapes to scale. I will usually laydown an outline of the area I have to work with first, then see what I can fit inside that.
For the curves I take an overhead photo, then copy that into Illustrator and trace it out, then scale it to size. I found this helps with initial visualisations, but then actually going and laying out all the pieces on the floor (overlapping each other as I'm not worried about height at this stage) and checking that things line up as expected.
For height, it gets a bit trickier as you can't guranatee what looks good on paper will translate to real world performance. However after some testing I've worked out what seems to work most of the time, in terms of how much drop per metre of track so that the cars make it through the turns.
Interesting...the closest thing I could think of is maybe some track designer used for slot cars but even then the measurements of track and curves will be all different. Considering all the custom parts for diecast it'd be hard to find software to account for it. But an interesting niche, for sure.
But what's most interesting is that you're designing first then trying to figure out where you can put it. Most people don't have the luxury of choosing where their track goes and just make a track to fit their space...you're lucky!
I'd probably say good old fashioned graph paper is the way to go. I would draw out the track bits as best to scale as I could with measure the curves, etc., and then make copies and then cut out each little piece and arrange them on the graph paper. It's a used as a kid from old model train books and it was pretty fun and useful.