How Do I Snap This In Place?

[Elanorbreton]

Grrr... this building malarky is driving me nuts! I'm making a castle entrance and have got everything snapped into place EXCEPT one arch support! It just won't go and I've been trying for ages!

Please can someone tell me how to get it into place? The one on the other side went in nicely, but this is the closest I can get the right hand one to go...

I have tried 'add to building', I have tried the ctrl key, neither of those will get it into place.

 

[Bullethead]

You're adding a gridded piece under an existing piece. Whenver you do that, you must first use SHIFT to raise the new piece above the entire stack of pieces already in place at the same X,Y coordinates. Only then can you align the piece on the desired X,Y position, in this case directly over where you want it to be under the bottom of the arch. Once you have it in the desired X,Y position, use SHIFT again to lower it down through all the existing parts to the level you want it.

 

[Elanorbreton]

Thank you very much.

Do you also know how to combine buildings? What I did with part of it was make it a blueprint so I could kind of 'copy and paste' identical pieces, but it sees them as two different buildings now. The left hand part is one building and the right hand part is another - even though they both have the same building name they do not both highlight when I click on part to edit.

 

[Scott.]

Thank you very much.

Do you also know how to combine buildings? What I did with part of it was make it a blueprint so I could kind of 'copy and paste' identical pieces, but it sees them as two different buildings now. The left hand part is one building and the right hand part is another - even though they both have the same building name they do not both highlight when I click on part to edit.

As far as I'm aware there is currently no way of joining to buildings to become one. A massive annoyance imo.

 

[WingardiumLevicoaster]

You can't join buildings together to be one as far as I am aware, but you can save multiple buildings as a blueprint, which may be useful if you want to build many of multiple buildings.

 

[CrazyLoo]

Could you highlight and move one half of the building, then drop it onto the other half with the 'add to building ##' thing that appears when you hover over another building? Haven't tried it, but might work? Good luck!

 

[Bullethead]

Could you highlight and move one half of the building, then drop it onto the other half with the 'add to building ##' thing that appears when you hover over another building? Haven't tried it, but might work? Good luck!

That doesn't work. Or if it does, there's a trick to it I don't know. But as others have said, there seems to be no way to combine separate buildings. I believe this is because what makes a "building" a separate type of entity is that it has its own coordinate system evidenced by its grid. In the file where the building is saved (either a park or a blueprint), every part of the building has its position specified in reference to its own local coordinate system. Thus, it would be hard to specify those parts in reference to the different grid system of a separate building.

 

[Snodge Snoodle]

Have you tried to rotate the part by 180 degrees? (press z twice)

 

[Elanorbreton]

Ah well, so sad the building parts cannot be joined [cry]

But at least I am getting plenty of practice at building! I started the whole thing over again and was much quicker at it this time and am getting a little more proficient. But I am finding the zoom in/out, rotating camera etc very difficult to get to grips with - possibly because I use a trackball, it seems to send the camera in the opposite direction I am rolling it to and sometimes I will suddenly zoom way across the park when I didn't mean to or struggle to get in close to something.

Is there a good place to go where there are tons of building tips all in one thread or blog?

 

[Abletudu]

In my opinion a mouse is always better than a track ball, possibly you can pick up a mouse to use with this game?

 

[Bullethead]

But at least I am getting plenty of practice at building! I started the whole thing over again and was much quicker at it this time and am getting a little more proficient. But I am finding the zoom in/out, rotating camera etc very difficult to get to grips with - possibly because I use a trackball, it seems to send the camera in the opposite direction I am rolling it to and sometimes I will suddenly zoom way across the park when I didn't mean to or struggle to get in close to something.

Is there a good place to go where there are tons of building tips all in one thread or blog?

On the subject of camera contral, are you using "free look" mode? The default camera mode when you start a new or load an old park is NOT "freelook". You toggle it on and off with the T key. Anyway, it's MUCH MUCH easier to use "free look" mode at all times, which makes me wonder why it's not the default. Anyway, when in "freelook" mode, you can move the camera in small amounts with the WASD keys so you don't need to use a mouse/trackball.

And BTW, a PROPERLY DESIGNED trackball is far and away superior to a mouse. This was established as far back as the early 1980s. It's just that trackballs have to be handed to work properly and a few years ago, various idiot lefties sued because they couldn't bother to teach themselves how to use a right-handed trackball, so the trackball manufacturers quit making handed trackballs and went to a completely stupid center-mounted whatever-handed format, which sucks. So given what's on the market today, sadly a mouse is better than a trackball. But that's not the way it's supposed to be.

 

[Elanorbreton]

Ah! Yes, I was using 'free look'. Much better now to flip between the two.

Re the trackball, I have a wonderful right-handed one and it is amazing for my wrist problem (hence why I don't use a normal mouse). I agree, the central mounted ones are kind of a waste of space.

I hope it's ok to keep adding to this thread - there is more that I need to ask! I found some very useful building videos by someone called Jonti (geeksim) which have helped me a lot but... he manages to rotate pieces (such as wall pieces) whilst he is still editing a building and I cannot do that. No matter if I press Z a million times or hold it down, they will not rotate. I have to exit the edit, pull the piece of wall out, rotate it and then add it to the building. What am I doing wrong?

Also, is there anything I can use on the edge of this roof to make it look better? (up the slope bits).

I'm slowly improving all the time! Thank you so much for your kind replies xx

 

[Bullethead]

I hope it's ok to keep adding to this thread - there is more that I need to ask! I found some very useful building videos by someone called Jonti (geeksim) which have helped me a lot but... he manages to rotate pieces (such as wall pieces) whilst he is still editing a building and I cannot do that. No matter if I press Z a million times or hold it down, they will not rotate. I have to exit the edit, pull the piece of wall out, rotate it and then add it to the building. What am I doing wrong?

If you're trying to rotate a piece of wall you've already placed, select it. Then up in the upper right corner of the screen, there will be an info box about that part with a row of icons along the bottom. One of these looks like a cross, which is "move". If you push that button (or the hotkey for it), the piece is detached from the building and can be moved around X-Y, lifted in Z, and rotated (with the Z key) just as if you were adding it as a new part.

Also, is there anything I can use on the edge of this roof to make it look better? (up the slope bits).

Look in the Building/Roof/Trim menu. Many of the stock roof types have nicely done gridded eave strips for exactly what you're trying to do here. They snap right into place like any other gridded part. Or you can make your own. For the latter, you can go in to Building/Wall/Trim and find a number of non-gridded strips of various materials---rough unpainted planks, smooth paintable beams, etc. Then just build an eave molding out of these parts.

 

[CrazyLoo]

Right, may not work for everything, but I was building a large, scenery display last night, with lots of walls, rocks, water features, trees, bushes, signage etc. I kept moving it about to get it lined up, and realised at some point that some of the items I'd added weren't moving with it. I highlighted the entire selection (using the far right bottom button), and a new little button I hadn't seen before had appeared within the selection window in the top right corner. Next to the 'save as blueprint' button i noticed another button with a picture of a tree and a '+' sign. This button adds everything currently selected to your building. Don't know if this would work to combine 2 buildings, but thought it might be worth a try!