JMRI start - help needed teething troubles

[cheekychops]

I'm starting to use JMRI. I have opened the panel editor and grasped the basics of drawing a layout. Only issue is when i select all items or a single item, hold down the 'shift' key and move with Mouse 2 the display does crazy and the component shoots off into the distance even outside the grid. What the hell is going on? How do you reliably move items around.

 

On another point I don't find the help much use as with its confusing use of panel editor and layout editor - I'm missing the bigger picture - any useful tutorials available?

Edited March 4, 2021 by cheekychops

[Nigelcliffe]

Tutorials are called "clinics" (because that's what they're often called at US Model Train Conventions) and there are dozens of them on the JMRI website. 

 

 

[KingEdwardII]

Which computer operating system are you using? Windows or something else?

[cheekychops]

Hi, sorry should have mentioned it. Its a W10 Gaming PC, Windows is up-to-date and Java new installed.

 

I have tried a different mouse also. The issue is that selecting the layout, holding down 'shift' and using Mouse2 does not move the objects in any sensible direction, they can even shoot of the layout.

Edited March 5, 2021 by cheekychops

[cheekychops]

7 minutes ago, cheekychops said:

Hi, sorry should have mentioned it. Its a W10 Gaming PC, Windows is up-to-date and Java new installed.

Okay thanks, useful. What is a 'panel' - is it what we would call a panel which represents the layout in diagrammatic form which is then used to operate the layout. Is the layout the first place to start? In other words one layout - many panels?

 

No wait have found a clinic

Edited March 5, 2021 by cheekychops

[KingEdwardII]

"Panel" is here meant in the sense of "Control Panel" - and it is very common for a model railway to have a control panel for things like turnouts, signals and for displaying block occupancy, etc. Examples shown here:

 

https://pls-layouts.co.uk/html/control.htm

 

These control panels in many ways can mimic those on the "real" railway - see, for example, the Swindon Panel preserved at the Great Western Society at Didcot:

 

https://www.swindonpanel.org.uk/

 

So, the Panel Editor is all about creating a on-screen computer equivalent of such a panel.

 

The Layout Editor can produce a diagram of your layout which can also be used to control the layout from the screen - you may find this kind of diagram easier to follow since it can be laid out much more like the actual physical layout of tracks.  Here is the JMRI Layout for my own model railway:

 

 

In this case the coloured circles represent turnouts and clicking on a circle causes the related turnout to switch.

 

You can use a Panel or a Layout or both - whatever suits your needs.

 

Yours,  Mike.

Edited March 5, 2021 by KingEdwardII
correct spelling

[cheekychops]

Thanks, I didn't realise it was an 'either' or 'both'. Its too bad I've never had a chance to see JMRI work on a layout. Thanks for your time.

 

Still got this mouse problem moving the 'diagram' around in Layout Editor.

Edited March 5, 2021 by cheekychops

[KingEdwardII]

1 hour ago, cheekychops said:

Still got this mouse problem moving the 'diagram' around in Layout Editor.

Unfortunately, I have only used the Layout Editor on MacOS and on Linux - I don't have a Windows PC. I have not had the problem you are describing.

 

Yours,  Mike.

[Nigelcliffe]

Moving on my copy of windows is done with the right-mouse key.    It works reliably for most windows users.    I'd suggest the problem is a specific interaction issue with the hardware in use.   

 

The only ways to debug this are -  

a - a bit of semi-random experimenting to see what fixes it. 

b -  take the fault to the JMRI support group  jmriusers  which is on the groups.io  service.  You'll need to provide technical details from JMRI, such as system console logs, because otherwise debugging stuff which works on other machines is pretty much impossible.