Layout Editor

Tutorial

Planning a four lane Ninco club track. Part 1

Overview

Our small slot racing club is moving to new premises, and we want to plan a new 4 lane Ninco track.

Ninco Club Layout

This tutorial will outline the process and will involve...

  • Planning the room and the space available for the track
  • Designing a first draft of the track layout
  • Publishing the layout online for general discussion
  • Planning the tables
  • Producing plans for building the track

Let's get Started

To open the Layout Editor -

  • Layout Editor  ButtonClick on the Layout Editor button in the Left-bar or on the Home Page
  • Views Menu Edit Track LayoutOr choose "Edit a track layout " from the Views list in the Header Menu
  • Or press F9 on your keyboard F9

 

Create a new layout

New Layout

Select "New" from the File Menu to start designing a new track layout, or press Ctrl+N on your keyboard.

Choose your track brand

Select Track Library

In this case we'll choose Ninco track and a 4 lane configuration

Choose Toolbars

In the View menu we'll switch on the Zoom, Room, Autoshapes, Display, Drawing and 3D Camera toolbars

View menu

 

Room Layout

Before we start thinking about our track layout, we're going to layout the room, it's size and shape, the access areas and the furniture. So after carefully measuring our room, we can use the Room toolbar to set up the plan.

Room toolbar

T shaped room tool Our room is T shaped so we click on the T shaped Room button, which enters a room into our layout.

Room entered

Now we need to change it's shape and size. So first, we grab the corner points and drag, to create the general shape we want.

Room reshaped

Now we can adjust the size.

  • First we go to View > Preferences > Grid and rotation settings and set the Major Grid units to cm or in, for maximum accuracy
  • Then we adjust the corner points until all our walls are exactly the size we want
  • Finally we double click on the room shape to open the Object Properties panel where we can check the overall dimensions in the width and depth dimension boxes. We can make adjustments here if necessary

Room sized

Furniture & Access

So now we've got our room accurately laid out, we'll add in the furniture, the doors and the space we'll need around the track for drivers, marshalls and for general access.

Rectangle tool We can use the Rectangle tool to plan the objects and spaces within the room. Here we've added two red squares to represent the two doors and the space they need to open, and two black rectangles to show the tables, shelves and cupboards which occupy two of the walls.

We've set the dimensions and colours by double clicking on each rectangle to open the Object Properties panel. We could alternatively select each object and go to Circuit > Properties. Here we have set the width, depth and fill colour

Room with doors and shelves

Rectangle tool Then we've used the rectangle tool again to plan the access areas. Obviously it's a matter of opinion how much access space you need but our club members wanted generous access all round the track, so here we've set the green rectangles to a width or depth of 90cm.

Room with access space

This leaves us with the space we have to use in the centre of the room.

Save

At this stage we'll save our layout and call it "Room layout".

We will probably work on several track designs, so it's useful to have an empty room layout that we can start with for each separate layout idea.

In the next stage we'll start to design our track layout

 

Next