AnyRail 6 Video Tutorial Part 17: Grab That Track Plan

[@weston1903]

i just discovered your videos today i am loving the all you do an amazing job of explaining and simplifying this program thank you soo much for your time and effort

[@steampoweredradio2981]

Thank you for the kind words. Glad they were helpful. Dave

[@weston1903]

@@steampoweredradio2981 do you know anywhere i could go to have someone help me design a layout i have my bench work built but cant seem to get a good design

[@derekalexander4030]

Hey, it was nice to see and meet you. I have been enjoying all of your videos and thank you for taking the time and effort to make them. I think you are including just the right amount of info to satisfy all of your viewers. If someone already knows what you are talking about they can move forward but those that don’t know it can’t go back if you didn’t include it. Lol.

[@melleveenstra7766]

You are a great teacher,thanx

[@olebond0071]

Hi Dave, I enjoyed watching all 3 current videos about to take the image to put into Any Rail. They were very informative and shld help me get to where I want to do. Thank you so much, Bob

[@steampoweredradio2981]

Robert, I'm glad they were helpful. I agonized over how much detail to put in and then just gave up worrying and put all I could think into the videos and figured that is what the fast forward button on the viewer was for. I promise not to do any more on camera appearances. Dave

[@williamlegg6542]

Something that I used when following your earlier example of inserting a layout picture into Anyrail6 was to make a copy of a track plan by using the snipping function that comes with most computers. I snipped the plan and saved it to my desktop. That image would then be loaded into the program.

[@steampoweredradio2981]

William, Thanks for the tip. I was unaware of the snipping tool in Windows. I tried it and it seemed to work OK. It looks like it captures at 72DPI which would probably be good enough for most applications. Dave

[@steveclark9881]

Dave, I have been using the screen capture sniping tool from Windows 10 and I have been able to grab the images from the Track Plan Database pretty well. I will check on the file size. I also plan to see if AnyRail will load a TIFF image. That format is a compressed type but has no loss when opened and closed several times as compared to a JPG format.

[@steampoweredradio2981]

Hi Steve, let me know how it works out with a TIFF file. I just updated to the new version of AnyRail and gave it a try. Tiff files come up as a file it will load in the load image window but my Tiff files don't show up. I tried it with one f and two fs and nothing. BMP, PNG JPG and GIF files seem to work but not Tiff. I have options for five different compression schemes and two for color channels when I save as a Tiff. I tried two compression schemes with no luck. Maybe AnyRail wants a certain compression and color channel? I'd be interested in what you find. Dave

[@steampoweredradio2981]

Hi Steve, a quick update. Decided to try again loading a tiff file. Had to select tiff from the dropdown menu on the Load Image pop up. Then, it would only display the file that had the tiff with two fs. Clicked open on the file and I got a warning that said 'ASCII value tag 'Software' contains null byte in value: value incorrectly truncated during reading due to implementation limitations'. My response to that was "huh?". Clicked OK and the warning popped up again. Clicked OK again and then the image loaded. Go figure. Hope this info helps. Dave

[@steveclark9881]

@@steampoweredradio2981 Dave, I used the Snip tool and saved the image as a PNG format and it went right into AnyRail with a load image command. I have not checked file size yet. I still need to see how good the image is when zoomed in. It looks great at standard size.