QUOTE(dgionet @ Aug 2 2008, 05:00 PM)
Hi Blue Train,
Greetings from Canada! In regards with the use of the Activity Master software, I do understand some of your frustration in having difficulties with AM. A few years ago, when I have purchased AM, had some of the troubles you had and finally gave it up for a while. A few months later, I have decided to take it a shot again and had received help from Steve and Norm and finally got the hang of it. I don't use it as much as the Activity Generator (AG) software but it works. I have made templates for AG, including South Africa's Western Province Metro route made this Spring and am very happy to see some of our users from other countries.
I am confident with some patience and some help from our colleagues, you will be able to push it through and enjoy AM at its fullest. Don't give up! We have a very dedicated team and colleagues ready to assist in the best of their capabilities. This is why I am still today here and glad to be part of this team.
Cheers
Thanks Denis for your kind words!
Also Joe Smith (Sr. Programmer for ConBuilder) has been very gracious and has helped me with some suggested additional error trapping routines for Activity Master. Once I have had a chance to run some rigorous tests on those and perhaps add more error checking, I will be posting an update to Activity Master that does a better job of handling errors in rolling stock files.
Remember Activity Master is no substitute for ConBuilder or RouteRiter: all have different purposes and all are valuable. ConBuilder will idenfity and fix problems with your rolling stock files. Activity Master will not -- it simply replaces rolling stock in activities, very quickly and efficiently, "en masse". Nor can you build new consists or add to consists using Activity Master: again that is the domain of ConBuilder.
We are fortunate to have so many great tools available to us in this very mature simulator, all authored by third parties. I am glad that Activity Master is one of those tools, and I certainly use it a lot, especially when testing the AG templates written by others and I don't want to download all the rolling stock required, or, when I want to run or generate an activity and simulate a particular railroad and/or era.
Blue Train, again please reach out to me via email at
SteveDavis@skylinecomputing.com or here and either I'll help you with your problems that way, or we can go live on line together, using software I have that enables me to see your screen -- while you also see it -- and that way rather than my having to ask "20 questions" to figure out what is going on, I can just fix the problems for you, and you can learn by observing how they are fixed. AM is the sort of program that, once we get it working and all the kinks worked out of your rolling stock files, it will typically run from then on with little or no fuss or problem, and you will no longer need my help. Also, if you could click on the "generate debug file" box, try and use Activity Master on an activity, then send me the debug.txt file that the program will generate (you'll find it in your \Program Files\ActivityMaster folder) via email to
SteveDavis@skylinecomputing.com, I may be able to identify the problem that way. This file is basically a "window" into the thought process that goes on within Activity Master while it is processing files. It basically lists every file encountered/processed, and any problems with it. And if the list abruptly stops at a certain file, most likely it is that file which needs attention from Route Riter or ConBuilder to be fixed -- or stored by train store or moved out of your rolling stock \TRAINSET folder if you prefer.
Thanks,
Steve