SCARM modelling software

[Mark 37]

Hi Mixy,

 

I decided to try your software and I get as far as drawing a baseboard, but I require an operating well but just can't seem to be able too draw one in. Is this a fault of my own or the software?

 

Many thanks,

 

Mark

[Mixy]

Hi Mark,

 

I am not sure do I understand you. If you need a hole for a turntable in the baseboard, just place the turntable from the tracks selection panel. Not every track library has turntables in it. If you need something else, please explain it more detailed and I will try to help you.

 

Greetings,

 

Mixy

[Mark 37]

Hello Mixy,

 

No not a turntable. An operating well is an area to control the trains from.

 

See picture below to try and help explain it.

 

 

I know you are doing this out of the goodness of your heart, but another couple of ideas to include are.

 

1, Measurments in both metric (milimetres) and imperial (inches). As you can see all my boards are cut in feet and inches, I'm sure there are a lot of modellers that also do this.

 

2, As you can see I am doing modular baseboards, but I cant see anything that will allow me to represent them in the software. It would be great if you could, that way you could avoid placing point work on the board joins.

 

Thanks for the software and your personal time to develope it.

 

Best regards,

 

Mark

[Mixy]

Hi Mark,

 

Now I understand – operating well = control board

 

At the moment, there is no way to define control board, so you can add it as a part of baseboard. When my work over 3D objects in SCARM is finished, you will be able to add control board, baseboard legs, signals, platforms, buildings and so on.

 

About your ideas:

 

1. SCARM is already able to work with metric (mm) or imperial (in) measurement systems. Choose between them using Tools > Settings > Dimensions > Measurement units.

 

2. At the moment, there is no support for multiple baseboards (modules) in SCARM, but I will add such feature in the near future, because there are many users like you, creating modular layouts. You can represent the layout from the picture by creating baseboard in the following way (starting from red dot):

 

 

Then your baseboard will look like this:

 

 

It is not perfect (there is a little gap, because crossed and overlapped lines are not allowed), but is some workaround solution for now. Hope this will help you.

 

Greetings,

 

Mixy

[Mark 37]

Mixy,

 

Thanks, that will present a solution to my problem. Thanks for taking the ideas on board.

 

Best regards,

 

Mark

[Mark 37]

Has anyone had any security issues with this software??????

 

Best regards,

 

Mark

[Rammy]

Mark

I have been using SCARM for a while now but had no problems.

What sort of security issues do you mean?

Dave

[Mark 37]

Mark

I have been using SCARM for a while now but had no problems.

What sort of security issues do you mean?

Dave

 

Just looked at my post again, see what happens when you rush a question.

 

I should have been more detailed.

 

I installed the SCARM software last night and my anti vires and fire walls quarantined it immediately after I ran them this morning.

 

Regards,

 

Mark

[Mixy]

Hi Mark,

 

What antivirus software do you use? If it is McAfee security software, I know that his heuristic algorithm gives fake warnings about SCARM. If it is some other software, let me know to check it.

 

Greetings,

 

Mixy

[Mark 37]

Hi Mixy,

 

It is McAfee that I run.

 

Mark

[Mixy]

Hi Matk,

 

If you updated SCARM from www.scarm.info, it is OK. You can always send suspicious files to VirusTotal and to check them with more than 40 antivirus scanners. Here are the last reports for SCARMsetup and scarm.exe v. 0.8.0:

 

http://www.virustota...2398-1307087979

 

http://www.virustota...d9fd-1307297243

 

Note the hash checksums below every report - these are the signatures of original files for v. 0.8.0

 

Greetings,

 

Mixy

[Mark 37]

Hi Mixy,

 

Thanks for your time and patience.

 

Best regards,

 

Mark

[Mixy]

Long time passed from the last update, but I believe that it was worth the wait – the new version 0.9.0 of SCARM is ready

 

Now it has the ability to draw 2D/3D shapes and objects for representing of buildings, platforms, roads, signals and many other railway and layout related items and accessories. The enthusiasts will be able even to create the interior of the room where their layout will be standing The user can easily create many things with the figures in SCARM, but there are also some items that will be unable to be shaped. This is due to the work in one plane in the 2D editor and I have to work more in order to solve this. However, there will be predefined figures and objects like signals, trees, lamps, catenary and so on and new version already contains some of them. Before start working with the new version, pleasе check the new items in the FAQ section of the documentation. I will also describe some tips and tricks in the next days here.

 

There is a sample layout: Sample1_HO.zip. Download it, unzip and open in SCARM to see in details some of the new features. Here are some pics taken from it (click to enlarge):

 

 

Remember, that SCARM is still in beta stage of development and sometimes may not work as expected. Always create archives of your layouts and save changes in the files with incremental names (just in case) i.e. layout_1.scarm, layout_2.scarm and so on. Please report any bugs or error messages with explanation how, when and where in the program they occur and I will try to fix them as soon as possible. Last but one version is still available from http://www.scarm.inf...setup_0_8_8.exe

 

Hope all of you will like the new version of SCARM

 

Mixy

[Mixy]

The new version SCARM 0.9.5 is ready and published on www.scarm.info

 

The most important new features are the ability to set track colors and 1:1 zoom factor for exact printouts of particular track pieces.

 

To set the track colors, use the color menu, displayed by dedicated new button in the toolbar (next to Tunnel button). If there is selection, all tracks in it will be colored with the chosen color and newly added tracks will be colored with last selected color (visible on the button). There is a small bug – tracks, repeated by pressing of Spacebar are not automatically colored, but I will fix it in the next update.

 

To print in 1:1, select View > Scale > 1 to 1 from the menu – the Print Preview page will be displayed and adjusted exactly at 1:1 zoom factor. You can print in 1:1 even whole layouts, but for now this can be done only manually (page by page) and is not convenient for large layouts. In the next days, I will try to create an example about 1:1 printing for those of you, who want to use this feature

 

Mixy

[Mixy]

I am happy to announce that the new version SCARM 0.9.16 is ready

 

The most important new feature in this release is the ability to work with texts on the drawing plot. There are also some new and updated libraries and many small improvements and bugfixes. I hope that you will like it

 

Mixy

[Mixy]

At the beginning of the autumn, I decided to collect all interesting stuff about SCARM in a recently launched SCARM Blog – a site, which will unify together all my knowledge and experience about SCARM in order to help you in your work with the program. In the blog you will find news & updates, tips & tricks, tutorials & examples, videos & clips and more, related to SCARM. The first articles are already published and more will come soon. See them and say your opinion

 

Meanwhile, SCARM reached v. 0.9.17 and I am continuing to work over it. Many new features will appear in the next versions and I hope that you will enjoy them

 

Mixy

[Mixy]

Hello all,

The new version 0.9.18 of SCARM is ready and published on www.scarm.info

It contains many improvements and updates, together with some important bugfixes. See the list with the most important changes in this version in the following SCARM Blog post – www.scarm.info/blog/general/scarm-0-9-18-released  

This release should fix one well-known issue – the empty snapshots in 3D viewing mode, seen on some PCs. If somebody have met this bug, please update SCARM and try 3D snapshot feature again.

SCARM is extensively tested on Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 in all 32 and 64-bit versions. However, I am unable to perform full tests on Windows 8. If you have PC, running under Windows 8, please install SCARM on it and tell me how it works.

I am continuing the development of SCARM and the next version is planned to appear in much shorter period than last one

Mixy

P.S. If “Check for Updates” feature in SCARM 0.9.17 reports that there is no newer version of the program, download the installer directly from the website. The old version info file may be cached on your PC and it will need some time that cache to expire.

[Jaggzuk]

Hi Mixy

 

I have just come across SCARM (After seeing a 3D image on a users layout plan blog) and have had a quick play with it last night.  It looks great and would appear to be a very good way to get an idea of what a planned layout will look like in 3D.

 

I have one initial question following my playtime and looking at all the online material in the blog etc.  I note from the SCARM Blog that you can now copy between multiple instances of the program, which is good, so you can say copy a building from one layout to another.  What I was wondering though, is there/will there be way to create a library of useful buildings and objects that you have previously drawn, like stations, signal boxes, bridges, etc? so that all you need to do is simply select them from a list (like you do for track from the library) and then place them into a current layout plan?

 

If this feature is on your list, cool, I look forward to it.

 

As an aside to this, as the SCARM community grows, so will the results of collaborative effort.  Therefore, soon we could have a good online library of standard buildings and objects available.  I would even imagine that these will represent the ready-made models provided by the likes of Hornby and Bachmann.  So, can I ask will there be somewhere on the Blog where these objects can be uploaded and listed for others to downloaded and use?

 

I look forward to the exciting future of SCARM and seeing the results of your hard work.

 

Paul

[Mixy]

Hello Paul,

 

Other users of SCARM are also asking about some kind of custom libraries in the program, so I am in research of this and such feature will appear in some of the next versions, along with expanded set of user-defined figures and objects

 

Meamwhile, I updated the blog with an article about custom railroad bridge supports and railings in SCARM. It shows some ideas of using the figures to make the basic SCARM bridge more realistic looking in 3D vieweing mode, like the one below:

 

 

I hope that you and other SCARM users will like it

 

Mixy

[Jaggzuk]

Hi Miky

 

Thnaks for the bridges, a great resource.

 

I was having a play last night to get to grips with the tools and methods and came up with something I found a tad difficult to do.  

 

I wanted to create a track running in a cutting with smooth sloping sides. I read the Blog entry "How To Create Tunnel Under The Base Level" and used the method of raising the base ground level but the ground ends up being too gentle along the length of track I want to be in a cutting.  The only way I could see to do it was to create Polygon land mass, but this have very steep jagged sides, see snapshot below. 

 

The bit of track to the left creates the sort of cutting slope I am after.  But obviously I want it just to be land.

 

 

http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/gallery/image/50226-cuttings/

 

Any ideas

 

Paul

[Mixy]

Hello Paul,

 

I understand what you need. However, at the moment there is no smooth solution for this problem. I am working over user-defined terraing shaping feature, but there is still a lot of work, before completing. You can try to use several polygons at different heights in order to make it looking better, but this is only a workaround - dedicated terrain feature will be the best solution. Hope it will be ready in the summer, but who knows...

 

Mixy

[Jaggzuk]

Cheers Mixy for the speedy reply.  

 

No worries, polygons will be fine in the meantime.  Shall look forward to new features when they are ready, I was more worried that I had missed a better way to do it, hence my question.

 

Paul

[Nick_Burman]

Any chance of a track library for Tillig HOe and HOe/HO mixed gauge track?

 

 

Cheers Nicholas

[Mixy]

Hello Nicholas,

 

There is always a chance for the new libraries in SCARM

However, I need to rewrite some program code in order to allow correct displaying in 3D mode of Tillig mixed tracks and turnouts.

Now I am in process of publishing of the new version, so I will start coding and adding of these libraries after that

 

Mixy

[Jaggzuk]

Hi Mixy

 

Looking forward to the next version!!

 

Seeing the recent SCARM Blog post containing  the HO rolling stock http://www.scarm.info/blog/tutorials-and-examples/examples-of-rolling-stock-in-scarm-ho-scale/ it got me inspired in to have a go at creating some UK rolling stock for my layout which I am designing.  

 

I have now created some RB Blue coaches and some Railfreight wagons.  These are representations of the type of stock I will want to run on my planned layout.

 

 

 

What I have also done is to create an Excel spreadsheet that can be used to help create any size of wagon/coach and livery version just by changing a few parameters  as can be seen the above screenshot. The wagons/coaches are only rudimentary in shape and livery style, but then that is all that is required on the 3D layout view to give the impression of rolling stock on the layout.

 

The one wagon I found the most challenging was the MGR HEA coal hopper, as there was no obvious way to create the hopper part, but I managed to find a way by using a building roof figure and playing with the dimensions.

 

 

I will be happy to allow the rolling stock to be shared, if you would like.

 

Paul.