I finally have a cut of the bezier-curve based Autocross layout designer I mentioned on this forum a while ago. In it's initial form, you can use it to draw course outlines with bezier curves and then have the program place course objects along the curves at defined intervals.

Here's a screen-cap of the UI:



The program is available for download here. Unzip into a suitable folder and read the ReadMe.txt file.

Questions, comments & suggestions most welcome.

Enjoy!!

John.

Seriously awesome dude! I suggest you post in the unoffical addons section as well.

Although i have to ask whats in the 14 meg archive? This seems like the sort of program that would only be a few hundred kb.

Also could you allow direct placement of objects without having to put them on a curve?

*edit*

Just read your readme and it answered a few questions like the one above

It's written in Python, about 50K of source, but shipping it as a bundled executable brings along the whole Python runtime and required libraries. It's a reasonable trade-off - Python is substantially faster to code. I may post the Python source at some point.

At the moment, you can only create curves, just make it short enough to contain one object. There will be updates if it gets some interest. It is actually a side project as part of a larger extensible track analysis laboratory for both sims and real racing.

John.

I just made a rather large layout and placed bales 10cm apart. It only did half the layout before it ran out of objects and when i raced on it i could just drive through them. Also when moving a layout that has objects placed the program slows down a lot as it rebuilds the track when your moving it. Perhaps a build button could be useful?

It's unclear what the exact limit on object count is. The layout file definition provides an unsigned 16 bit int for the count which allows for >65,000 objects. I'll post a query to see if anyone knows the limits and code that into the designer.

I can also add a rebuild button, or maybe a View Objects checkbox, but for now you can just assign the object "None" while you are editing long curves and then re-assign when it's ready to export.

Awesome stuff man!!! If the application works well for everyone, I suggest this thread be a sticky.

I will give this a try tomorrow, nice stuff John

The object rebuild is *very* slow, it was much faster than that during development, maybe something happened during the py2exe bundling. I'll see if I can figure what it is. Stay tuned...

I believe the object limit for a layout is 512.

OK, just found the rebuild performance problem, just repackaging and uploading a fix now. Dang, sorry to make you guys first line of QA. I'll ping when the fix is up.

Thanks for the limit info sil3ntwar, I'll look at putting a limit count in place.

OK, just uploaded a fix: v0.1c. It should be a lot faster rebuilding edited curves that have a lot of objects on them.

I'll point the link in the original posts to the new file shortly.

Here's another patch for the TrackLab AX designer. I have fixed several export & file save/open bugs and included a simple .trk file importer which will overlay the imported track (or track segment) on the current design. It can be downloaded here: TrackLab v0.1d.

John.

okay...at first it said in a popup box.... python24.dll could not be found...blahblahblah so i downloaded it and installed it into the folder

now when i try to run the program it says "Runtime error!

program desktop/blahblah/blahblah.exe

this application has requested runtime to terminate it in an unusual way.
please contact the applications support team for more information"

??? and yes i installed the D patch

is this farely str8 forward?? coz im a newb haha

jep it is very easy to use :P

Awesome job! Very usefull! Thanks a lot!

May I give a couple of suggestions?
1) It would be very usefull to add a tool to create perfect round. It is very difficult to create prefect and constant curve with bezier.
2) It would be very usefull to be able to lock on 0-45-90 degree with (for examble) ctrl key (as it is in Illustrator).
3) It would be very usefull to be able to import AI file from illustrator, and/or EPS vector file and/or jpg file (for reference).

+ grid (snap to grid)
+ undo/redo

its awesome dude now im waiting for someone who will make some great drift tracks or d1gp tracks for carpark of course ;] i made simple oval, i put 2 checkpoints, how to make starting line for ~10 cars? i can spawn only 1 starting position :/

shift + u and make layout, and i have demo (only 3 cars), so whats wrong?

how is the progress of autocross designer ?
anything new some bug fixes etc.

Just downloaded this fantastic little prog. Works a treat. Cant wait for the next release! Good work!

Yeah that's i always wanted
i never could make straight lines
THX

I hope that we can load a pitcher in the layout Maker, because if I want to copy the track in the photo now, I should draw it on the screen with write broad pan