SCARM - Simple Computer Aided Railway Modeller


just discovered

thank you for your contribution to model railroading . all i have to do now is use it enough where i can do a layout . is there a library of layouts that you could import ?
mike
 
Thank you Mike :)

At the moment, there is no ready library with layouts, but you can search this and other railway model forums where many SCARM users are sharing their layouts and ideas.

Mixy
 
I love this. Wish I had found this before I got started 6-7 weeks ago. I just played with it a little but I think it's great. Thank for making this program available to us. Allen
 
Mixy, got an idea. Called a Radius calculator.

In your 'flex track" dialog box of Tool Box, if you could have in input for "degrees" and have it calculate the length of the track off of the degrees and radius and insert it, it sure would be handy. Pretty simple calculation. I've built a Excel spreadsheet for it, but you have to keep going back and forth.

Just an idea.
 
Hi,
I decided to take a swing at SCARM. Very cool. You really need a fully functional mouse... laptop touch pad just doesn't cut it.

Anyway, here is a quick loading dock that I "built".

Need to learn how to do roads next :)

Doug
 
Nice screenshot :)

You can use figures also for creating some basic flat roads. But I am working over “true” roads modeling feature, which will appear in some of the next versions of SCARM ;)

Mixy
 
Thanks Mixy,
This is an amazing program. Maybe I'll hold off on the roads for now and start working on a couple of bridges and tunnels.
Doug
 
New version SCARM 0.9.16

After some delay I am happy to announce that the last version SCARM 0.9.16 is ready and can be downloaded as usual from http://www.scarm.info :)

The most important new feature of the program is the ability to work with texts on the drawing plot. To place some text, first select “Edit” > “Place Text” from the menu and then click with the mouse at desired location on the plot – a text box for editing will appear. You can select font type and relative font size form the controls, appeared in the right part of the Toolbar, next to “3D” button. When ready with the editing, press Enter or click outside of the text box. You can move the text or group it with other figures on the layout and also rotate and align it to other texts and figures. You can change the text color from the Properties window. For now it is not possible to enter formatted (bold, italic, justified, etc.) or multi-line texts, but this will be changed in the future versions. The texts are visible only in 2D mode and are not displayed in 3D Viewer.

Note that not all fonts are suitable for scaling and rotating. Some fonts may not be presented on other computers and texts might be looking different when layout, saved on one computer is opened on another. Try to use the most common system fonts, available on all Windows-based machines to ensure proper text look of your layout on all computers. My experiments show that “Trebuchet MS” and “Verdana” are good fonts for using in SCARM. “Arial”, “Times New Roman”, “Courier New” and “Tahoma” are well scaled, but are rendered with some offset when rotated. This is due to reasons outside SCARM, but I will search how to make it better will all possible fonts.

There are also some new and updated track libraries, special object library with some US signals and many small improvements and bugfixes. Hope you will like it ;)

Mixy
 
interesting program, does it have any train models loaded in that would let me see what different areas of the layout would look like with and with out trains and a way to "run" them to test the lay out for possible issues (say tracks that may cause trains to possibly collide) or other things that you may not be able to (or want to) do with your current set up with out testing?
 
No, SCARM is not able to run simulations with trains. But may be this will be realized in the future :)

Mixy
 
Creating a full 3D model of a real loco is difficult task. But if you want to check (for example) how many coaches will fit in length on particular track at the station, you can create a rectangle with the length of a single coach and then copy and paste it along the track. May be in the future I will spend some time to create a loco and several coaches but I am not able to tell when :)

Mixy
 
Thanks as always, Mixy. Love your work.

I was wondering, do you foresee SCARM being "finished" and out of beta any time soon, and if so do you plan on keeping it free?
 
I have to implement several important features before SCARM reaches final state and I hope that version 1.0 will be ready till end of the year. For now I have no plans to make it commercial, but there are more and more users, who wants more and more features, 3D structures, support, cross-platform run, etc. and I am not sure how will find enough time and resources to keep it free. May be I will start a donation campaign or will put more ads on SCARM website – don’t know yet :)

Mixy
 
Just as long as it doesn't go from simple to complex! "CCARM" doesn't have the same ring to it. ;) The only feature I feel is missing at the moment is the ability to manually terraform instead of using figures to manipulate the landscape.

I for one would happily donate if you give the opportunity in the future. :)
 
I found SCARM earlier this week and want to give a big THANKS to Mixy for creating this great tool. I looked at several other RR modelers but to just create next year's Christmas layout (I don't have room to keep it up all year) this provides the perfect solution. I'm looking forward the all the additions I read about and hey, this layout creating is becoming a hobby all by itself! Awesome job!
 
Downloaded Scarm today tried to use it keep getting an error message :confused: Exception EGL Context in module scarm.exe at 000BC879.Context activation failed: 0, the operation completed sucessfully. It wont do anything else, any suggestions Mixy ?
 
Have you tried reinstalling the program? I run Windows 7, and when just trying the program out, I got an error message as well. When I reinstalled the program, it ran fine.
 



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