Trouble with SCARM Cut and Paste

I am going to reply to my own post. This was apparently a bug in the software, version 1.6.  I recreated the section I was working on in a NEW project and the symptom described above went away.   I was working with an old SCARM drawing at first so maybe that was the problem.

There are times when the delete key doesn’t seem to work. It hasn’t happened in a long time, but there have been several Windows updates since, so I don’t know if it’s SCARM or Windows. When it happened, I simply saved my work, then closed and reopened SCARM. The copy/paste has failed on me too at times, but it’s been me hitting a key or something in between actions and that loses the copy. You would think it’d be in the clipboard until the next paste, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

If you cut, the track goes away until you paste it.  It gets pasted right back where you cut it.  Creating a new start point doesn't effect this.  Repeated pasting just overlays mor copies.

If you copy and then paste, it get placed on top of the original track pieces,  You can move it to a new location by the Move command or using Ctrl key and mouse.

Jan

Would you mind posting the SCARM file you’re working on? After reading your post again, I’m thinking that you’ve pasted tracks on top of one another so that when you delete one you see the arrows and the track below. When you copy/paste, SCARM does not paste where the cursor is, it pastes in the same place it was copied from. The arrows on the ends tell you that the copy is ready to move with the Move option or CTRL-left button. If you see arrows when you cut and still see a track below, it tells net that you have tracks on top of one another.

Cutting is useful when you are copying track sections from one layout file to another layout file.

Jan

OK, here is the file I was working on.  Try a cut and paste or a DELETE or MOVE on the track plan shown on the RIGHT.  It exemplifies the problem.  Do the same on the figure on the left and it works as it should.

Gary, it's just as I thought. Somehow you duplicated the tracks on the right multiple times. The original tracks are clear, the duplicates are different colors and were moved so you could see them.

I too have had trouble with this.  If you paste multiple copies it can get very confusing. One procedure I developed:  If you want to copy a section of track, select the section and copy.  Don't past right away.  Move the original section to the new location.  The original location will be empty.  Then hit paste and the copy will be placed in the original location.  If there is a mistake and there have been multiple pastes, this will be revealed by the original location not being empty after the move.

Bill

Yep, you had a whole pile of copies there. The "empty parking spot" is the best way to go.  I've moved finished layouts few inches and found stray track underneath plenty often. A minor pita, and "who cares" unless you're using the free version with piece limits .  

I used to take screenshots of small count segments of much larger count track plans and photo shop them into one picture later    

I have used vector based drawing programs like Visio and AutoCad before, and despite the fact that SCARM claims in it's documentation that track operations work "like any vector based program",  this is evidence that it clearly does not work like those programs.  I consider this behavior to be a bug, albeit with a workaround as explained here.

Gary, I’m curious. How does Visio and AutoCAD stop someone from pasting something multiple times to create this situation? Personally, I wish the paste were done where the cursor is, like how adding text works.

Dave,

In Visio , which I currently use,  a MOVE is very simple--you just click and drag to the new location.  To COPY, you click and move while holding the CTRL key. You can also copy and paste with the right click context menu.   The paste operation part just drops the object on the drawing and you move it where you want to.  Using the right click method it is possible to place several copies on top of each other.

Going back to my original post with SCARM, I had copied (duplicated) an assembly of track from one side of the drawing to another.  After it was copied, I tried to delete an individual track in the copied clone assembly to put in a switch.  The delete process (using the DEL key on the keyboard) resulted only in arrows appearing at both ends of the track to be deleted but the track did not disappear.  Now I see , going back to that example, that if you hit the DEL key about 4 times, it eventually DOES disappear!  I don't know what's up with that behavior.

Gary, that seems like just a different way of doing things as opposed to something unique about vector graphics, that’s what had me puzzled.

Anyway, the only time I’ve ever had the delete problem you describe is when there were multiple copies on top of each other and I’ve done a lot of editing in all the years I’ve been using SCARM. It comes up more since I started using CTRL-V to do the paste because I accidentally hit the V multiple times and don’t realize it. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to go back after the fact to check, but as you can see in the example I posted, there were 5 extra copies causing the problem. Like I said, I wish the paste placed things where the cursor is vs the original location. It would help if SCARM did it like RR-Track and offset the copy a bit, but then I suppose you get into copyrights, etc.

Gary Liebisch posted:

Dave,

In Visio , which I currently use,  a MOVE is very simple--you just click and drag to the new location.  To COPY, you click and move while holding the CTRL key. You can also copy and paste with the right click context menu.   The paste operation part just drops the object on the drawing and you move it where you want to.  Using the right click method it is possible to place several copies on top of each other.

Going back to my original post with SCARM, I had copied (duplicated) an assembly of track from one side of the drawing to another.  After it was copied, I tried to delete an individual track in the copied clone assembly to put in a switch.  The delete process (using the DEL key on the keyboard) resulted only in arrows appearing at both ends of the track to be deleted but the track did not disappear.  Now I see , going back to that example, that if you hit the DEL key about 4 times, it eventually DOES disappear!  I don't know what's up with that behavior.

email your concerns to the author with the file attached and he will review it and respond to you directly

scarm@scarm.info

just for haha's uninstall scarm - restart the machine and then install the file from this link on the scarm page

any other buttons and links are advertisers that he has no control over at the web host

Dave,

I don't think that offsetting a pasted piece is copyrightable; it may be patentable.  But in this case I doubt that it is even that.  Offesting of pasted contents has been around for a long time,  Look at Powerpoint by Microsoft and other graphics packages.  Sixteen years is the limit of protection that a patent normally provides.

Any corrections would be appreciated.

Jan

Jan, I was just generalizing about why some things in SCARM might be done the way they are, but you have a point and patent was the word I was looking for, it just didn’t come to me. 😱

hhttps://www.huffpost.com/entry...f231c5b629695f57acdd

That was interesting.