1.5 custom supports....help

[jayman]

i dig the new terra former, but when i try to use custom suports for my wood coasters the wide supports go past ground level to zero feet, which kinda makes it useless. sometimes i wanna have a real high ground level... do i gotta build my own supports now, or is there some sort of setting?

[Kev]

I hate to tell you this, but NL wooden coasters and terraforming has never gotten along very well. There is no setting that will fix this, which means you'll have to do a lot of custom support work.

Sorry for the bad news.

[jayman]

BUMMER

[GRIM.657]

it always works for me if you terraform before you do the supports

[jayman]

this is after i've raised the land level before i put the supports..

If you are using wood, you gotta terraform first if you are using auto supports. Hence, you really need to know what kind of design you are gonna have and cannot willy-nilly put track in around the hills and hope for it to work. I have always found that some terraforming really is not all that necessary on woodies though, mainly due to all the maintenance it takes and level ground is best for building woodies on. Just an observation ...

Also a neat trick for making your own supports, if you click on a node, and then add a new free node thing while another is clicked, it will automatically put the new node on the same plane (either the x,y or axis depending on what view you are in). It makes it alot easier when trying to 'line up' the nodes.
I hope I explained that properly lol

[jayman]

what i mean is that i built my ride, with everything starting at a bout 30 meters, (the lowest being 30) then i wanted to add a large hill into a canyon at the end....i add the supports AFTER and the wide supports go all the way to 0 meters, right through the land......, i know better than to add the land after the supports...

I used chapel supports and it seems to have less problems. Otherwise, if it relies on terrain entirely, you may not need lateral supports at all.

Also a neat trick for making your own supports, if you click on a node, and then add a new free node thing while another is clicked, it will automatically put the new node on the same plane (either the x,y or axis depending on what view you are in). It makes it alot easier when trying to 'line up' the nodes.
I hope I explained that properly lol

Yeah, I use that alot. I don't see who wouldn't. BTW, I never considered it a trick, just something they added to the program to make life easier.

i agree its not really a trick, but I didnt find out about it until about a month and a half after I started using NL lol

Well, I am having similar support problems with The Rockler, which has terrain about 350 ft above normal ground level. The track therefore has support towers over 410 ft tall that I have to go in and manually delete every single inch of. And the train doesn't completely hug the terrain, so I have to use wide supports on the flat portion of the ride, which has been causing me 2 months worth of headaches. Unfortunately, this is a bug with NL, and the design team has yet to figure out how to solve it. So, until they do, all of us terrained woodie makers are doomed to hard labor.

Hey CJD, how's that Rockler V2 coming along? I really enjoyed the first one, despite the few problems, and have been waiting for v2. I was absent from the site for a long time; I recently came back and the first thing I did was check to see if you had released v2 yet lol. I can imagine the headaches you are experiencing. I ran into the same problem with Copperhead, and it isn't half as grand in scale and doesn't have nearly as much terrain as Rockler, so I can just imagine. Anyway, I'm not rushing you, just wondering about a release time frame; looking forward to it.

Cheers.

I have posted a topic called "fall 2004 coaster projects" where I have discussed all of my coaster projects, including Rockler v2. I will also be posting a hard hat area topic on this coaster within the next week, so stay tuned on that. I actually need to update that topic, because the coaster is almost completely done. however, I would rather keep chat about this coaster limited to the behind the fence topic, and not turn other people's topics into advertising forums for my coasters... I merely mentioned it to say that I am having similar problems.

So, until they do, all of us terrained woodie makers are doomed to hard labor.

Only use wide supports on larger areas and use simple supports on where it hogs the terrain. The gave us the individual settings for a reason.