Make room

Putting a table down

Go to the Room tab and click Draw a table. A table of 1200 by 600 millimetres appears: a shelf you can reach across.

Click the table to select it. You then get the Table tab, with the gizmo that moves and turns it, and the buttons for editing its shape.

A table around your layout

A table around the layout does it the other way round: TRAX looks at the track that is already there and makes a table that fits around it.

You get a small window with the choices:

• Rectangle or hull: a rectangle around everything, or a shape that follows the layout.
• Margin: how much room to leave around the track.
• On the grid: line the sides up with the grid. Useful, because a straight side on a round measurement is what you would saw in real life too.
• Round off: round the corners.

At the bottom it says how deep the table becomes and whether you can still reach across it. If that figure is red, the table is deeper than an arm's length.

Once the table is there, TRAX takes every piece of track above it into use straight away.

Height and colour

The height of the fascia and its colour are in the settings drawer of the side panel, under Table. The fascia grows downward by itself when you sculpt deep valleys into the terrain.

Deleting a table

Select it and press Delete. The track that was on it simply stays; only the table goes.

Locking the terrain

The Table tab has a lock for the terrain. If you have sculpted a table nicely by hand, turn that lock on: filling in automatically then skips that table and Flat again refuses it. You can still work on it with the brush — the lock is against being overwritten automatically, not against you.

A table does not have to be a rectangle. An L, a U, a ribbon along three walls: that is what real layouts are.

Editing the shape

Double-click a table, or click Edit the shape on the Table tab.

A handle appears on every corner, just above the table's foot, where you can always reach it and where no hill can stand in front of it.

Corners

• Drag a handle to move that corner. The table is redrawn under your hand.
• Click a handle to select that corner. Ctrl selects more; Shift selects everything between the last one and this. Selected corners are red and drag as a group.
• Double-click a handle to remove that corner. That works down to three: fewer than a triangle is not possible.
• Delete removes every selected corner.

If the table gizmo is on, it stands on the first corner you selected. Moving slides the group, turning turns the whole table about that corner.

Sides

Click beside a side and that side is selected: you see a blue arrow at its middle, pointing outward, and the table's fascia along it turns blue.

• Drag the arrow to slide the whole side out or in. Both corners come along.
• Double-click a side to make a corner in it. That is how a rectangle becomes an L.

Done

Click somewhere else, or press Esc. The table is rebuilt at full resolution and the terrain is fitted into the new shape.

Every edit of the shape is one step in undo: a drag, a split side, a removed corner.

The terrain comes along

Make a table bigger and the terrain that was already there is laid over the new shape — your hills stay where they were and the new part starts flat. Make it smaller and what falls outside disappears.

The dimensions

Put the look on CAD and every side of every table is dimensioned. Double-click such a dimension and you can type it in: the table is stretched along that side until the measurement is right. That is how you make a table of exactly 2400 by 600 without dragging. See The drawing.

Track belongs to a table. That does not mean it is glued down — it means it comes along when the table moves.

How track joins a table

Put a piece down above a table and it becomes that table's. Drag a run onto a table and let go there, and the whole run goes with it.

And if you want to do it in one go:

• Collect the track on the Table tab takes every loose piece lying above this table.

Move or turn the table after that and the whole layout travels with it, landscape, trees and roads included.

Above and below the table

Track does not have to lie on the table. A bridge is above it, a tunnel below it. TRAX keeps both with the same table — what matters is what moves with what, not the height.

If a point lies above two tables, at a hidden station under a second deck for instance, TRAX picks the table you see: the top one.

The ground follows the track

Once track belongs to a table, the terrain under it belongs with it. Set a piece higher and an embankment is laid under it; set it lower and a cutting is dug for it. Move the track away and the ground comes back the way it was.

And track you lay across a piece of landscape makes room for itself: trees, bushes and objects that end up too close to the rails are taken away. Undo that move and they come back.

Deleting a table

Delete a table and the track stays. It comes loose and hangs at the height it lay at. You can hand it to another table afterwards.