The editor

The workspace is your layout in three dimensions. Everything you build stands there.

Looking around

You move the camera with the mouse, and it works the same way as in a map program:

• Dragging the left button on an empty spot slides the view.
• Dragging the right button turns the camera about the point you are looking at.
• The scroll wheel zooms in and out.

The left button is your selection button as well. Click a piece of track, a table or a tree and you pick that up instead of sliding the view.

Lost your bearings? Find the layout on the Project tab brings the camera back to the whole of it. and zoom a step at a time.

The gizmos

A gizmo is the tool that appears on something the moment you select it: arrows to move it, rings to turn it, a handle to scale it. You take hold of an arrow or a ring with the mouse and drag; everything you do that way is one step, which Ctrl + Z undoes.

Which gizmo you get is switched on in the Gizmo group on the View tab:

• Move gives you arrows along the axes. Drag an arrow and the selected thing slides along that one direction, so you never move it sideways by accident.
• Turn gives you rings. Drag a ring and the thing turns about that axis.

The two are independent: you can have both on, and with both off you only ever select and your layout stays where it is.

Where the gizmo lands

• On track it lands on the dot you clicked, so on a connection. The vertical arrow is that point's height; the rest of the run follows.
• On a table it stands in the middle. While you are editing the shape with corners selected, it stands on the first corner you selected and the whole table turns about that.
• On a tree, a building or another object it stands at the foot. There is a scale handle with it: the vertical handle makes the object bigger or smaller, in every direction at once.
• On a flat thing such as a dirt patch you only get what is possible: sliding over the ground, turning about the upright axis, and that one scale handle.

What else to know

• The click that ends a drag selects nothing. Otherwise every move would pick up whatever happened to lie under the mouse.
• A press that moves nothing changes nothing. So you can touch the gizmo without fear.
• A run of track that is locked gets no gizmo. That is exactly what the lock is for.
• An object you move stands on the terrain when you let go, and the ground under it adjusts.
• Escape lets go of whatever you are doing.

The grid and the floor

Under your layout lies a grid of lines with the measurements beside them. It is not part of your layout, it is an aid for judging distances. In the settings drawer of the side panel you can switch the grid and the grey floor on and off independently, with the measurement labels.

Height 0 is the top of the rails, not the top of the table. Every height in TRAX is measured from that line, because that is the measurement a model railway is about: how high the train runs.

The status bar

At the bottom there is a bar. On the left is what the editor is doing — loading, saving, working out terrain. On the right are the coordinates of your mouse in the workspace, in millimetres.

The scale figure

On the Project tab there is a switch that puts a little figure in your layout, with a measuring rod beside him. You can place the scale figure anywhere on the layout to get a feeling for the scale.

Why

Building in 3D costs you your sense of size. You zoom in and out, you look from above, and on your screen everything is as big as you want it to be. A station that looks right on screen turns out to be a garden shed. A hill that looks good turns out to be higher than a cathedral.

The scale figure is the answer to that: a person of 1.75 metres, at your project's scale. Put him next to what you are building and you see at once whether it is right.

What you see

• The figure is 1.75 metres. In H0 (1:87) that is 2 centimetres on your table, in N (1:160) a little over 1 centimetre, in 0 (1:45) nearly 4 centimetres.
• The rod beside him is five metres tall, with a tick every half metre. With that you read a height off without doing sums: a platform is half a tick, a signal gantry somewhere around the seventh.

Change your project's scale and he is sized again. So he always stands there correctly.

What you do with him

Click him; you get the move gizmo and slide him over the ground to the place you want to judge. When you let go he stands on the terrain, so on top of your hill he stands with his feet on the ground too.

Worth standing him next to:

• a station or an engine shed — is the door high enough for a person?
• a platform — 550 millimetres in real life is about knee height;
• a hill or a viaduct — a viaduct with trains passing underneath is six metres before you know it, so three and a half figures;
• a tree — a grown oak is twenty metres, a good eleven figures.

Delete takes him away again, or you turn the switch off.

He is not part of your layout

The scale figure is not saved with it and does not appear in the photograph of your layout. He is a tool for looking, not a figure you put down. If you do want people on your layout, those come from the objects drawer.

Full screen

The Screen group on the View tab has a button for full screen. On a laptop it frees up so much room that it is worth remembering.

The ribbon is the bar of tabs at the top of the editor. If you know Microsoft Office, you already know this kind of menu. Every tab is divided into groups, and under every group it says what it is for.

Six tabs are always there.

Project

Here is everything about your layout as a whole: saving, zooming, undoing, cutting and pasting, and your project's scale.

• Save to the cloud keeps your layout on the TRAX server. Do it often.
• Save the log downloads the event log. Send it along when you report a problem.
• Zoom in and out.
• Find the track plan brings the camera back to the whole of your layout.
• The scale figure on or off. You can put it anywhere on the layout to get a feeling for the scale.
• The project's scale. Everything TRAX sizes for you — grass, trees, buildings, the loading gauge — works from it.
• Undo and redo.
• Select with a box: draw a box around the pieces you want.
• Copy and cut to the clipboard.
• Paste from the clipboard, and delete.
• This manual, and reporting a problem.
• Leaving the editor.

Track

The Track tab is about flex track and about which way a curve bends. The track pieces themselves come from the side panel, not from here.

• Direction flips which way a new curve bends.
• Flex track: the flex pieces in the library you are using.
• Straight inserts a straight length of flex track as long as the figure beside it.
• Insert a curve makes a curve with the radius and the angle you give it.

See Flex track for what you can do with it.

Room

This is where you make tables: the ground your layout stands on.

• Draw a table puts down a new one.
• A table around the layout makes one that fits exactly around the track that is already there.

See Making tables.

Terrain

The Terrain tab is about the ground itself: its shape and its texture.

• Height: the list of brushes — raise, lower, smooth, flatten, dig, noise and a slope.
• Fill in the terrain makes the landscape for you, Flat again takes it away.
• Texture: the paint and erase brushes, the choice of which layer you paint, and the window where you choose which textures you use.
• Brush sets the shape, the radius and the strength of your brush.
• Water: a lake or a sea, and a river.
• And a canal.

Scenery

Everything that stands on the ground.

• Plants and objects: the spray can, with the list of the group you are spraying beside it.
• Platform draws a platform along the track you have selected.
• A road and a fence.
• A hedge and a wall.
• Growth: the plant and erase brushes, the choice of which type you plant, and the window where you set the types up.
• Brush again sets the shape, the radius and the density.

View

How your layout looks, not what is in it.

• Screen: full screen on or off.
• Gizmo: switching between 3D and 2D.
• The move gizmo and the turn gizmo.
• Look: Realistic, and CAD.
• Terrain — see-through (50%) makes the ground half transparent, so you can see and click the track under a hill.
• Lines: outlines and the labels on the track pieces, on or off.
• And the textures on or off.

The grid, the grey floor and the background colour are not here but in the settings drawer of the side panel.

The context tabs

To the right of View another tab appears the moment you select something. What is on it depends on what you clicked: a piece of track, a table, a road, a stretch of water, a platform or an object. See The context tabs.

And if you choose the CAD look, the CAD tab joins them, with the measuring tools. See The drawing.

The side panel on the left is the cupboard you take your things out of. At the top is a row of icons; every icon is a drawer.

The drawers

• Track — the pieces from your libraries.
• Catenary — masts and wire.
• Buildings — stations, houses, sheds, viaducts. Each one unique, and you put them down one at a time.
• Plants — trees and bushes. Those you use over and over, so you can spray them as well.
• Objects — stones, rubble, poles, signs and the patches you lay on the ground.
• Rolling stock — still empty; trains come later.
• Settings — your layout's settings.

The side panel follows the ribbon. Go to the Track tab and the panel jumps to the track; go to Scenery and it goes to the buildings. You can always pick another drawer yourself.

The track drawer

At the top is the library you are using, with a button beside it to add another. That is where you choose your makes: Peco, Märklin, Fleischmann, Roco, Kato and so on. You may add as many as you like and use them together in one layout — the best turnouts of one make with the nicest flex track of another.

Under the library is a bar for sorting the list by name, by kind or by size, switching between a list and tiles, and searching on part of an article number.

You use a piece from the list in two ways: double-click lays it at the selected end of your layout, dragging puts it down where you let go.

The buildings, plants and objects

Those three drawers work like the track drawer: sorting, searching, list or tiles. Every model shows its real height, so you know at once whether that station suits your layout.

You drag a model into the workspace, or double-click it to put it down. With plants and objects you can also select a whole group and spread it over your layout with the spray can — see Trees and bushes.

The settings

The settings drawer holds the settings that apply to your whole layout, in groups:

• Grades — the steepest grade TRAX allows itself when it adjusts heights, separately for straight track, curves and the rest.
• Look — realistic or CAD, and whether outlines, labels, textures and ink lines are on. Every look remembers its own settings.
• Units — millimetres, centimetres or inches. Everything in the editor works in these.
• Terrain — the style of the landscape (rolling, hills or mountains), how high and how coarse, and how hard the wind blows.
• Table — the height and the colour of your tables' fascia.
• Grid — the grid and the grey floor on or off, the measurement labels, and how big the squares are.

These settings belong to your layout and are saved with it.

TRAX shows your layout in two ways. It is the same layout; only the way of looking differs. You switch with two buttons in the Look group on the View tab.

Realistic

Realistic shows what your layout would look like in real life: sun and shadow, textures on the ground, trees and grass moving in the wind, water flowing. This is the look for judging whether your layout looks good — and for taking a photograph of it for the showcase.

CAD

CAD shows the drawing. No textures, no wind, no grass: only what you need to understand the layout. Every part takes a flat colour for what it is — platform, road, wall, water — and trees are replaced by a cone or a ball of the right height. The shadows stay on, because without shadow a drawing cannot be read in three dimensions.

In CAD you get one tab more: CAD, with the measuring tools. Every side of every table is dimensioned automatically, and you can add lengths, angles, heights and texts of your own. See The drawing.

What you choose stays yours

A look sets a handful of switches: CAD, for instance, turns the outlines, the labels and the grid on and the textures off. After that those switches are simply yours again. If you want labels in the realistic look or no grid in CAD, turn them round — TRAX remembers per look what you chose and does not quietly put it back.

Your layout is saved with the look that was on, so it comes back the way you left it.