help..

alright. so in an effort to not be so new, and make my coasters better...


what the duece are FVD's where can i download something that does what ever that is, and how do i use them...


fill me in.

Force vector design... aka (waste of time) ,,,well, theres alot of debate about this program, and many others. i personally dont use the fvd's and alot of my tracks are pretty good without them IMO,,they arn't nessesary unless you want a perfect mathmaticly correct coaster. FVD's have been rumored to be really hard, and also to be really easy. When i looked at them, my brain literally melted... no joke, big mess all over the floor, took a while to clean up. (got a new one at K-mart) ...get the point yet? well anyways, they are great for some people and terrible for others (me). If you really want them there are links all over this site for them, you just gotta look.

ok ok ok. what programs do you recomend?

i would suggest ahg, and elementary (with h,sak) thats all i use. elementary is used for making certain elements, corkscrews, helix's...so on and so forth. ahg will heartline your track which in turn reduces extreme laterals and allows the creation of perfect heartline rolls.

Haha FVDs waste of time...

Lets have a buildoff to see how much they aren't a waste of time.

http://home.arcor.de/stephan.krautsdorf ... VD-v11.zip

Those are the FVDs.

jimmy you are a god compared to me lol. having a build-off with you is like getting slapped in the face by a titan... a realize FVD's are useful, i just think they are too complicated.

Oh goodness, Jimmy That's some real takin' advantage of...

TMV, FVDs are not a waste of time...They're not as hard to learn as you think and in some cases it's funny to see what you can come up with. I imagine you dislike them because of your inferiority with mathematics? Or is that an incorrect assumption?

Imagineer- I as well suggest to start out with Elementary

http://www.gravimetricstudios.com/softw ... /index.cfm

You can use Formula Wizards to design your own select elements, and it's a very simple start.

After, move on to H:SAK (Helix: Swixx Army Knife)

http://www.nolimitsdevcenter.net/pageid-5.html

That's a step up. That's a downloadable formula that you open using the Elementary. Quite a bit more complex, but not too much more difficult. You can use that formula to come up with many smooth elements. For help on the H:SAK, go here:

http://www.coastercrazy.com/articles/arti ... 10&aid=150

If you have exceptional patience and an even more exceptional attention span, catching on to the H:SAK formula and its purposes should be easy with Wing-Over's guide.

Then comes a little program called the Purgatorium (you may have seen it shortened to Purg):

http://www.coastersims.com/norestraint. ... =95&page=1

Ouch. That's another tooling program that I've heard mixed things about it. I'm attempting to catch on to it these days but am finding little luck or success. It's much more difficult than the Elementary and H:SAK but more open and useful.

FVDs can come into play whenever you want to commit. It takes some level of mathematical knowledge to catch on to most of these, but if you're at least a 7th Grader it should be no issue using the math included with these tools...

gerty, inferiority with mathmatics is an understatement by far... and in my case fvd's require a great ammount of patience, that of which, i have none...

hmm you really don't need math for anything you do in elementary.

true, but you need to know formula's for fvd's. to be honest i dont know the first thing about fvd's nor do i care to know. i dont think they really help all that much.

Originally posted by Jimmy Yoshi

hmm you really don't need math for anything you do in elementary.

A slight bit of very young math. If you want to anticipate and connect slopes with the track your building, you'll need to know how wide a 10 m. radius will be and how steep 43 degrees of slope will result in...

the more we talk about this the more convinced i become. maybe i should learn some fvd's or something. Despite how much i despise them...

poor guy

thanks guys, that helps alot.

how do you make elements like corkscrews and loops and other inverting elements...

The best idea to start out is just using the Element Wizards in the Elementary...

Open Elementary > File > New Element Wizard > Vouila! Choose your inversion.

You'll have understand the basic concept of slope, radius, and start and end points...

oh ok.. thanks.

I'd say that the best way to start is by using your brain and your hands. Mathematical perfection isn't so important for you yet.

I see, so after building a good hand built coaster you automagically become clever.

Starting with the Elementry is a good idea, because you're tracks are always going to be mathematically correct. As said by others I wouldn't suggest diving into the FVD (Force Vector Design) first because people who had a lot of experience with the Elementry before hand had trouble understanding how they worked.

First, just open it up and have a little play around with some of the basic formulas, such as the straight track and then mess around with the values in the forumla window to get a feel for it.

Once you feel confident with that, then try making a fairly simple coaster the the H:SAK (Helix:Swiss Army Knife). You can find the latest version over at www.nldc.interfix.net

After you've done all that you can try and grasp on how to use the FVD.

Good luck!