Catenary Woes

[savv_nz]

For those on UTKS, apologies for the cross posting but I have scoured the internet and nobody seems to be having the issue I am having...

Greetings All,
I was wondering if someone out there could provide me with some assistance. I am having myself a go at making some catenary and while it all seems to be working just fine, there is one thing that isn't - namely the connector 'nodes' for connecting catenary up over points etc where the auto-placement tool has troubles are not appearing. My gantries are made with the gantry blueprint (2) and the wires with the usual loft blueprint for such things, however I have seen there is a 'wire connector' blueprint, does this need to be referenced in the gantry blueprint and if so, where? The only stuff I have seen on catenary is largely in german which is a little tricky to understand after being partially mangled by google translate.

Thanks in advance,

[wacampbell]

It seems you have done it right. There is a gantry component section in the Gantry Blueprint where you specify the node names of the attachment points for the wire.

I've attached an an image of one of my gantries with the 'gantry component' section open.

Does this help?


Wayne

[savv_nz]

Ah thanks Wayne, it seems my issue was one of having also entered the node name into the 'child name' slot in the blueprint, took those out and it started appearing.

I have another question though, the catenary in question has two support wires ( http://www.westonlangford.com/media/photos/103557.jpg ) due to its alpine nature and the exceedingly large snow-falls they get up there. I cant find a way other than specifying two support wires and two contact wires to get this to work - and then when joining up it (since the contact wires have to be in the same location) only gives me one support wire. On a more complex gantry I also have telephone wires being carried on it, but when I use a loft with the type set to 'wire' - to get the appropriate sag - I can't seem to attach it to my poles as although the nodes are there and clickable when using a loft set as 'catenary' they vanish if I try one set as 'wire'.

Spent the last couple of days trying to get the nodes to appear, so its a big step up all the same!

[wacampbell]

> my issue was one of having also entered the node name into the 'child name' slot
Yes, when the node is located in a child blueprint ( eg specified in the Container Component section ), specify the child name here. Otherwise leave it blank.

I can't think how to do the dual catenary support. I can see the problem of having the two contact wire nodes in the same location. I'll have to think about it more.

As for the telephone wires, there should be no problem. My towers also have hanging telephone wires. In fact the open 'Gantry Component' node in the image above is for the telephone wires. The wire loft has its 'Special Curve' type set to 'Wire'.

It does take a bit of fiddling around to set it up, but overall I really like Railwork's overhead wire feature. I have been using it also for power lines between house and pole and other uses where ever wire needs to be strung.

[savv_nz]

My wires have the 'Special Curve' value set to wire, but its still being stubborn about letting me using the wire loft and attach it to the poles.
Is there a limit to the number of nodes one can have on a given pole? As I noted while some red boxes had appeared the node connector itself hadn't for some of the nodes that were further down in the blueprint reference.

I had wondered if a loft containing two wires would work for the support wire, but then I gathered the automatically generated droppers would appear in the middle and hang from nowhere which wouldnt be much use, unless there is a way to define the droppers as their own shape which would be quite a complex issue since they all need to be of different lengths.

Once I get one of these things working as it needs to I suspect the whole process will speed up, its certainly making for better looking telephone wires etc than we had before with their graceful curves in the wire itself!