TransDEM Forum

jrfolco wrote: When attempting to export a georeferenced map to Trainz, I'm getting the following error: Error Writing File, "[Map Files Export]".

Thanks, Joe

Geophil replied: There are a number of reasons why the exports fails. These days with the routes tending to become bigger and bigger, it could be the sheer size of the route which may hit memory limitations. In such a case I suggest to try a very small route, like the Muengsten tutorial. Does the export succeed there?

I exported the Durango to Silverton, to Trainz, and it worked OK. The route is very large. Is there a solution to this problem, or should I split it into two routes?

Thanks, Joe

Welcome here, Joe

Seems to be a memory exhaustion issue then. I suggest to split it into two segments and merge in Surveyor.

Form the memory point of view: TransDEM is a 32bit process. On 32bit Windows systems this means a maximum of 2GB virtual memory. With the tweak explained in the manual you can increase the limit to 3GB. For 64bit Windows the limit is 4GB (which is the value range of a 32bit unsigned integer). During export to Trainz TransDEM needs a lot of additional temporary storage space. Once memory allocation hits the ceiling export will abort.

Thanks, Geophil
I can split it into two maps.

Regards, Joe

It would be very welcomed that the program wrote why an error happened. Not everyone is looking at their Task Manager graph of memory usage when compiling a Trainz map dear Geophil. Would You like to think about making a Debug console with different output options from "Silent" to "Yell like your house in on fire about every completed thing" and give the user an option to set debug output levels. Thank you for your consideration.

There is this old saying in software engineering that for every functional line of code you should add at least one line of error handling code. Often, it is more.

Some libraries I wrote for TransDEM return detailed error information in one way or the other, some do not. I'm afraid we have to live with the way it's implemented there.