Kit-building on Templot plans

[Rob Manchester]

For example you could cut the base into individual chaired timbers, and stick them down one at a time on a curved template. A bit tedious, but not actually difficult. Slide the main-road stock rail (pre-curved) through them as you go to ensure they are correctly aligned with each other. Remove it when the glue is set to allow the switch blades and tie-bar to be inserted.

cheers,

Martin.

Martin,
That takes me back a good decade or two. I used to use the SMP kits with the injection moulded bases and cut them into point timbers with the chairs attached. I seem to remember the chairs were a little under scale size.

Rob

 

[Stephen Freeman]

But won't the slide chairs be in the wrong place? As for say anything about curving them after being built, you know the old saying surely?

 

[ColinW]

Hi Martin,

Sounds like I'm the sort of user you have in mind. I've invested enough time and trouble to become a "competent amateur" in Templot, sufficient to meet 95+% of my layout planning needs. Wouldn't use anything else now converted. Then along came my need for a BF Single slip and then needing to change the geometry once it was finalised by Wayne.

I worked through the required steps in Templot to build the slip first time then had to redo the whole thing step by step.

Turnouts, crossovers etc. have by comparison caused me no issues, even when I needed to do a global reset of the selected gauge to reflect the BF settings. On my shopping list would be a .box file with all the slip components which I could just open up. In fact when I did a rebuild / tidy this is how I carried my slip into the new design.

Not sure if this is of any help.

Colin W

 

[Martin Wynne]

We would need a method of combining several partial templates into a single entity. We would need a name for such an entity. We would need a listing of such entities, and a whole new set of functions to select them and join them, and maybe curve them. And a means to split them back into their partial templates when necessary. And probably a new file format to contain them.

I'm continuing this in a separate topic, as it would apply more widely than just to building pointwork kits:

https://85a.uk/templot/club/index.php?threads/convert-group-to-patch.488/

cheers,

Martin.

 

[Chuffer Davies]

Martin, you asked in Wayne’s RM topic how you might evolve Templot following the introduction of Wayne’s Finetrax range.
With the increasing popularity of 3D printers, and hopefully with Wayne’s support, would it be feasible to expand Templot’s capabilities to be able to 3D print track bases for points and crossings? What a fantastic facility that would be.
Food for thought, or pie in the sky, I wonder?
Keep up the great work.
Frank

 

[Paul Boyd]

@Chuffer Davies We already can do that

 

[Martin Wynne]

Martin, you asked in Wayne’s RM topic how you might evolve Templot following the introduction of Wayne’s Finetrax range.
With the increasing popularity of 3D printers, and hopefully with Wayne’s support, would it be feasible to expand Templot’s capabilities to be able to 3D print track bases for points and crossings? What a fantastic facility that would be.
Food for thought, or pie in the sky, I wonder?
Keep up the great work.
Frank

@Chuffer Davies

Hi Frank,

Welcome to Templot Club.

The experimental Plug Track project to export 3D printing files direct from Templot without needing any CAD skills has been ongoing for a few years now.

At present you can export files to create plain track panels having resin-printed chairs, which are plugged into FDM (filament-printed) timbering bases, or laser-cut plywood bases, or CNC-machined solid wooden bases.

For turnouts I am still working on the chair files, although in the meantime you could combine what is already available with the special chairs from C&L/Exactoscale.

More info in these topics:

https://85a.uk/templot/club/index.php?forums/plug-track.34/

Especially this one:

https://85a.uk/templot/club/index.p...ug-track-3d-printed-cnc-milled-laser-cut.229/

But I must stress that this is all still extremely experimental. Do not rely on anything you read there working in any particular version of Templot, or remaining working in any future version. That topic is 22 pages long. To make sense of page 22 you will need to read the first 21 pages, and then ignore them, because everything is in a continuing state of flux.

For more about creating the above timbering "bricks", see this topic:

https://85a.uk/templot/club/index.php?threads/extracting-a-3d-timbering-brick-from-a-track-plan.295/

cheers,

Martin.