Norwegian DEM

[geophil]

I get to page 61/2 of the Part 3: Tutorials
Release 2.6.5 Tutorial 1: Using the TransDEM Trainz Exporters
[...]
But I cannot find these files in TRS2019.

Part 2 exports the UTM tiles, part 3 the vector data and only in part 4 we import the entire route in Trainz.

[pdw2107]

Yes OK, but I wanted to check at stage one. There is an error according to TRansDem - it says "errors writing files exporting "(map files export)".

Does this tell you anything?

I'm sorry to take your time on this, but I do appreciate it!

[geophil]

Make sure your file location is writeable. Somewhere in your user files, Trainz may even have created a folder for you. Do not try to write to C:\Program Files

[pdw2107]

OK I made the Trainz 2019 files writable.

I completed the first step. When I try Part 2, Export of UTM tiles (3D) I get the following message from TransDem:

"Errors writing file "(UTM overlay objects)"

Invalid lat/long location.
Not at centre of baseboard.
Error finding World Origin or invalid location.

[geophil]

OK I made the Trainz 2019 files writable.

That does not sound like a good idea! What is the exact path of your export destination folder?

[pdw2107]

C:\Program Files\N3V Games\Trainz Railroad Simulator 2019\editing

[geophil]

As I said, it's a bad idea. Never try to write anywhere in the path of C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files (x86). These entire trees are read-only, by intention. It's a huge security risk if anyone could write there, malware in particular. Windows was rather late to enforce this. You and every program needs elevated user rights to override the read-only rules. For good reason, TransDEM has no such rights.

Early versions of Trainz also did that wrong, a bad habit from Windows 95/98/ME development that unfortunately made it into XP. Later Trainz editions adhere to the modern concepts.

Define your import folder somewhere in your own user space, e.g. underneath the Documents root. Where did you store your geo data for TransDEM? A parallel folder to the geo data hierarchy would make sense. Of course, you can still use the dedicated export folder that Trainz creates. I think it's somewhere under C:\ProgramData (I have not installed any Trainz version at the moment, so I can't check myself.)

[pdw2107]

OK, I have now moved TRS2019 to my D:/ drive.

[geophil]

Well, you haven't reinstalled Trainz to D:\, have you? That would work, but you'd lose the Windows built-in protection. The basic principle is simple:

• Program files, everything from the exe, the DLLs and supportive read-only files go to C:\Program Files. But this is beyond your concern, the installer of the program will take care of that. That's why you need admin privileges during installation.
• All program data, whether written by the program itself or the user for the program, go somewhere else. There are dedicates regions in the Windows file system for that, but, in our case, you don't need to use those.

Again, the key point is separation of read-only and read/write files. This is not specific to Windows. Other operation systems like Linux do the same.

As a long time Trainz user you may be confused a bit, because early versions of Trainz screwed up here, and some users recommended to install elsewhere.

[pdw2107]

Yes I did put Trainz in D:/

Should I put it back in its original location?

The programme data is under Documnets:
"C:\Users\Peter\Documents\Arkiv (Peter)\TransDem"

Thanks
Peter