Trackmaster parts and Customizer support

[chambm]

Did you do any work toward supporting Trackmaster (pre-2014 style) tracks? I've made good progress toward it; currently printing a straight one. Ultimately I'd like to make a new style of track that looks more like plain track rather than the gravel/track combination of the old-style Trackmaster tracks. Should save filament and time. :)

For Customizer support, can't we do some automatic preprocessing which includes all the dependencies into a single file and let Thingiverse work with that?

[ex-nerd]

I don't have access to any of the older track, and unfortunately the even newer Trackmaster track (including this year's change) requires support to print, and the connectors need to be thin and flexible to really work properly (which makes makes them

I do have plans to make some models with the new 2017/2018 wooden track connectors, though (even if they suck). I'm also pondering moving a lot of this work over to OnShape, because fillets are awesome and I can't see an easy way to do them coming to OpenScad any time soon.

[chambm]

Fillets are what you're using bevels for now?

You'll probably be getting a PR sometime to add support for the old TM track. :)

[ex-nerd]

A fillet is an edge treatment like a bevel, but rounded. Unfortunately, OpenSCAD doesn't track edges or even post-rendered vectors so it isn't possible to (easily) do things like arbitrary fillets or bevels.

[broncosis]

I am comfortable in onshape and fusion360 and have a thomas nut for a son I'd be game to help with some of this it would be good practice

[chambm]

@ex-nerd Do you know about the offset parameter (for 2d primitives), and minkowski() and hull() methods (for either 2d or 3d)? It seems pretty simple to create filleted or chamfered primitives this way.

I had finished the code for old TM track straight and curve sections, and even exported and printed it, but forgot to save the .scad file and lost a lot of the changes. 😭

Instead of redoing that work, I've been thinking about porting the OS railway code to TM dimensions, and possibly adding the outside edges too. But are the outside edges really necessary? Can't the wheels just hug the rails and that'll keep it in the center? There would need to be a flat section between the railroad ties. I just prefer the look of plain railroad track rather than mixing it with the ballast and grading. So basically similar to the new Trackmaster track, but without the toothed surface and outer edge. I don't think printing it would need support if the straight sections between ties were arches or solid with infill.

[Cinderhaze]

Did you ever get around to doing this? Do you have your own fork somewhere @chambm ? I inherited a bunch of old trackmaster track, and am working on making some simple parts for my daughter, and would like to generate them with openSCAD instead of fiddling in proper cad (code just makes more sense to me).

One thing that I'm currently trying to do is a specific length 'trackmaster' track, and I wish there was a trackmaster_track() method like the wood_track() method so that I could more easily make an adapter that doesn't have the bump up in the middle. Adding some type of 'gravel texture' to the surface for grip would be a bonus, but not a requirement.

[chambm]

Here's a diff with what I have. I never made a fork. Sorry it's a bit of a mess. I strongly recommend importing some known good trackmaster part STLs to compare the results (you'll see I have some commented out code in there toward that end).
trackmaster-track.zip

I think I stopped working on this because I realized more of the interesting things I could print weren't very OpenSCAD (or at least not this library) friendly, e.g. track crossovers, switches, train cars.

I do have a trackmaster_track method, but again compare to a known good STL.