Avenue/Highway Interchange Step-By-Step Tutorial - Pics

[PaleoCardio 150]

So as a beginner, working with the real highway (RHW) puzzle pieces can be pretty daunting, especially when trying to create interchanges. As a beginner myself I wanted to construct an Avenue/Real Highway interchange, but after a lot of trial and error was unsuccessful. That is, until I cracked it.

This Avenue/Real Highway interchange tutorial is aimed at the novice SimCity player who wants to get into the RHW a little more and needs a step-by-step approach to creating a standard, but useful interchange.

Warning: The following post contains a lot of pictures, but hopefully will be helpful.

 

Step 1. Choose a real highway starter piece from the menu highway menu.

I decided to use the 8S starter piece. Press tab to find the correct puzzle piece. You can use any of them, but I chose to use the 8S for this tutorial. Make sure that the yellow lines are in the middle (important for direction of traffic) and place on the ground.

Using the RHW2 from the highway menu, drag through the starter pieces and elongate the highway to the desired length. This tutorial requires a bit of space, so drag at least 30 tiles or so.

Now go to your hole digger lots (found under misc. transportation) and choose the 15m sunken hole digger lot. Place the digger with the arrow facing away from the highway, 4 tiles out, and repeat on the opposite side of the highway, opposite the other digger.

Starting one tile towards the highway, drag a road through the digger lot for 10 tiles. Do the same on both sides. There should now be a sunken alley.

Using the road piece, press individually to bring the sunken level of road to the same height. This should be 2x5 tiles facing away from the highway. Once level, bulldoze them.

Next, remove a section of the highway in the middle of the sunken holes to leave space for the tunnel.

Choose the avenue and then place it on the sloped terrain and drag to the opposite side. If done correctly, a tunnel will be formed. Then drag the end pieces of the avenue out at least 15 tiles or so.

Then drag the highway back by using RHW2 to form the completed highway again.

Now we have completed a sunken avenue under a highway and with the first stage complete we can now move onto the ramps.

Using the RHW2, move 4 tiles along the highway from the middle of the avenue.  Now we are going to create a ramp. This is a 3-step motion.

1.     Drag out 1 tile, 2. Drag up 1 tile. 3. Drag outwards 2 tiles.

This should build a B1 ramp. This ramp can also be found in the ramps puzzle pieces and just placed on the highway, but this is a great and fast way to place a ramp exactly where you want it.

Next, click on the build highway and ramps button and then scroll down to the real highway wide radius smooth curve puzzle piece. Press tab until you get to the MIS-45 degree piece. The puzzle piece should be placed so it is 1 tile out and 1 tile down from the end of the ramp piece. Make sure that the yellow line is on the same side as the ramp and place on the ground. It is important to keep the yellow lines on the same side as each other at all times.

Using tab, scroll through to the 90-degree smooth puzzle piece and orientate it with the yellow line on the same side as the 45-degree piece and place it 2 tiles down from the 45-degree piece.

Next, go to your road/rural highway puzzle pieces. Press tab until you get to the Ave-4 type B1 entrance. Move over to the avenue and place it 6 tiles from the entrance of the tunnel.

Using the RHW2 piece, drag from the ramp diagonally 2 tiles so it squares up to the 90-degree puzzle piece. Using the RHW2, drag from the now elongated avenue ramp to connect to the 90-degree puzzle piece. These should now connect. Now drag diagonally from the highway ramp to the top of the 45-degree puzzle piece and they should also connect. The final step is to use a filler piece (found under the highway icon). Make sure to orientate the yellow line the same as the other MIS pieces and connect the 45 degree puzzle piece to the 90 degree puzzle piece.

Now you have a complete and finished loop.

Go to the other side of the highway and repeat the process to create a secondary loop.

Now the final stage is to connect the final 2 ramps to complete the interchange.

Using the same technique earlier to create a ramp on the highway (drag out 1 tile, up 1 tile, out 2 tiles). 12 tiles from the middle of the tunnel create a B1 ramp. Drag the ramp at a diagonal using the RHW2 towards the avenue.

Now go back to your road/rural highway puzzle piece and press tab to get to the Ave-4 type B1 puzzle piece. This should be placed at an angle so when placed it can be dragged diagonally to meet up with the highway ramp. In this instance it is 11 tiles from the entrance of the tunnel. Drag the ramps together to form a straight diagonal connection.

Repeat the process on the other side, opposite the other curved interchange you made. There we go, hopefully now you have a completed Avenue/Highway interchange ready to be used.

Edit 1 - as mentioned by @Jeffrey500, there are a couple of missing links that I discovered and moved further up the highway. These are an exit ramp in north moving traffic and an entrance ramp on south moving traffic. Here is a quick diagram to show how you could incorporate them to this interchange. Still learning 

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

Nice looking tutorial. I really like how you have pics for each of the steps and good narrative to describe the process.

A couple of (prolly dumb) questions since I've only used NAM 34 a wee little bit and haven't installed 35 yet.

1. Are all the pieces you used part of the standard install? Or do I need anything from the custom install options?
2. The text above your 3rd pic says to go 3 tiles out with the hole digger. It looks like 4 to me. Is that right?

(You prolly know you can edit your post up there any time if you have any tweaks or clarifications you wish to add.)

As part of the staff's efforts to organize and revitalize the forums we will eventually have an index thread to all of the useful tutorials and yours will be included in that. One concern we have is the longevity of the image links. Did you host the pictures using an account at Imgur or annoymously? And do you give Simtropolis permission to make a backup copy of the images and to later host them locally if the need arises?

[PaleoCardio 150]

20 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

A couple of (prolly dumb) questions since I've only used NAM 34 a wee little bit and haven't installed 35 yet.

Actually, I am running NAM 34 still as when I installed SimCity a couple of years ago I cannot remember exactly how I did it (oops) and as I am running on a mac (which is difficult enough to get everything working right as it is), I have decided to wait until I feel a little more confident in it all again to update to NAM 35. I feel I want to play and learn before I need to start digging around in a fresh install.

1. So the answer to question 1 is I am unsure. Maybe someone can come along and give me a hand. I think I did a complete install, so not just the basic, but a custom install and clicked all the extras.

2. 3 away from the highway so yes, I think you are right, that will make it 4 out. I will see if I can edit that part now.

20 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

As part of the staff's efforts to organize and revitalize the forums we will eventually have an index thread to all of the useful tutorials and yours will be included in that.

That is so good to hear! I was really happy when I finally cracked the curves, they are som very tricky pieces to work with. I used Imgur (from my Imgur account) to upload the pictures and yes, I give permission for the images to be backed up and used locally. I am thinking of putting all of this onto an easy to read PDF too, if there is interest.

Thanks for your encouragement in making a tutorial. You really forced me into learning the curves and how to put the interchange together, so that has been a lot of fun and I used your FLUPs tutorial as a template for making each step as clear as possible.  So a big thanks to you.

  Edited February 9, 2017 by PaleoCardio  
clarification

[Cyclone Boom 16,852]

Great stuff, thanks for sharing your progress.

[AsimPika3172 1,129]

Thanks for nice connecting road / avenue into real highway!

[Jeffrey500 567]

Quite interesting interchange, altough there are a few missing links in this interchange.

[PaleoCardio 150]

3 hours ago, Jeffrey500 said:

Quite interesting interchange, altough there are a few missing links in this interchange.

Yes, there are a couple of links I decided to leave out for the moment and took them further up the highway instead, I discovered that when I was building a city around it. I was concentrating on using the curves for this tutorial, which I find particularly tricky.

13 hours ago, Cyclone Boom said:

Great stuff, thanks for sharing your progress.

Thanks  The curves are particularly tricky to use and I wanted to show one way of working with them.

  Edited February 10, 2017 by PaleoCardio  
clarification

[jeffryfisher 2,176]

I notice that the loops are out of round (straight then curve then straight etc). Is that an intentional feature of RHW, a limitation on placing curves, or a matter of personal taste?

If I were to try RHW for an interchange, I would want virtually circular loops like I see in RL. I've seen some RHW interchanges elsewhere on the site, and I don't think I've ever seen such. Is it even possible?

[APSMS 1,892]

47 minutes ago, jeffryfisher said:

If I were to try RHW for an interchange, I would want virtually circular loops like I see in RL. I've seen some RHW interchanges elsewhere on the site, and I don't think I've ever seen such. Is it even possible?

It is almost possible; puzzle pieces have limitations on slope which make close placement more difficult. If you use the draggables and FLEX pieces, this is more possible. Mostly though it gets really difficult to carefully place the pieces so close together without breaking anything. This is the main reason why well constructed smooth interchanges are so rare.

@PaleoCardio I commend your efforts for trying to put together a tutorial. I would suggest trying to learn how to use the viaduct/overpass system (elevated RHW) because although tunnels work fine, they don't work for all networks (street, for instance, wouldn't work here). I would also suggest learning some of the drag patterns for the draggable curves because you can place them closer together than the puzzle pieces, and also the puzzle pieces are deprecated items and will eventually be removed entirely in future NAM editions (the puzzle pieces already placed will always still work, but you won't be able to place new ones).

Another recommendation is that you update your NAM because there are various bug fixes that are introduced in new versions that you may be missing out on and won't necessarily notice right away. You are free to continue using the old version, of course, but any tech support questions you may have will always be answered by the perennially annoying (but eminently relevant) "Are you using the latest version?" before any other things are addressed.

[Tarkus 6,932]

1 hour ago, jeffryfisher said:

I notice that the loops are out of round (straight then curve then straight etc). Is that an intentional feature of RHW, a limitation on placing curves, or a matter of personal taste?

If I were to try RHW for an interchange, I would want virtually circular loops like I see in RL. I've seen some RHW interchanges elsewhere on the site, and I don't think I've ever seen such. Is it even possible?

As @APSMS mentioned, if you're using the ground version of the FLEXFly, or the new FLEX-based Multi-Radius Curves (MRCs), you can get a lot rounder.  You can also completely cut out the use of the MIS Filler Pieces, as the FLEX-based items can carry overrides, whereas the old MIS 45-Degree and 90-Degree Curve puzzle pieces used here cannot (they're also planned to be phased out/relegated to legacy status once the MRC work is complete).

Taking this into consideration, and using the Draggable Avenue Viaducts as APSMS suggested, this is the best I was able to do with the NAM 35 feature set (technically, I'm on a custom developmental build, but none of the items seen here have changed since NAM 35).  This configuration used exactly one static/non-FLEX puzzle piece--the RHW-10S-to-8S transition I used to taper off the entrance auxiliary lane.  I also used the new diagonal MIS x Avenue "Short T" setups--new to NAM 35--in place of the old Avenue ramp interface puzzle piece.

I did encounter a little bit of an adjacency stability issue with having the Avenue height transition directly next to the RHW, so I had to put it one tile out.  If that issue is fixed, it'll save a little additional space.  One could also save a little further space if the long ramps leading to the highway at the top of the image made some 90-degree bends, instead of going for the highest design speed solution shown here.

Also, in theory, if overrides were put in place to allow the starts of the MRCs to overlap, the loops could get a bit rounder.

-Tarkus

[PaleoCardio 150]

1 hour ago, APSMS said:

Another recommendation is that you update your NAM because there are various bug fixes that are introduced in new versions that you may be missing out on and won't necessarily notice right away.

Just installed NAM 35 and all seems to be fine, except the bullet train mod will not work (even though I clicked for it to install) and have the bullet train mod in my plugins. A litle weird. Otherwise it will be fun to see what differences I can figure out with the new NAM. 

2 hours ago, APSMS said:

I would also suggest learning some of the drag patterns for the draggable curves because you can place them closer together than the puzzle pieces

Yes, I am definitely trying to learn these as much as I can. Thanks for your tips and help.

[MeMyself&I 379]

You could also use the SPUI interchange for RHW/AVE4.  I have a couple of them in my largest city and they work well and take up much less space.  Good for developed areas near RHW where you may not have the room for extensive ramps.  I use them with RHW4 and RHW6 but I believe they can be made to fit any width of RHW

[CorinaMarie 29,574]

7 hours ago, PaleoCardio said:

... the bullet train mod will not work (even though I clicked for it to install) and have the bullet train mod in my plugins. A litle weird.

I may not know what I'm talking about cause the only Macs I get now and then are Big and come from McDonalds. However, I recall reading that the Mac version only allows a certain number of plugins to load. You could prolly test this pretty easy by temporarily moving some other stuff out and see if you have bullets then. If this works, you'll prolly want to look into Dat-Packing your plugins.

[PaleoCardio 150]

53 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

You could prolly test this pretty easy by temporarily moving some other stuff out and see if you have bullets then. If this works, you'll prolly want to look into Dat-Packing your plugins.

Good idea, thanks! I will test that right now by taking out a lot of plugins. I know about the mac issue with the number of plugins that can be run. I don't remember datpacking after I installed NAM 34, but you never know, it was a while ago now and I might have done. Anyway, thanks again for the tip (now off to test)!

[PaleoCardio 150]

 

9 hours ago, PaleoCardio said:

Just installed NAM 35 and all seems to be fine, except the bullet train mod will not work (even though I clicked for it to install) and have the bullet train mod in my plugins.

Just in case someone stumbles across this issue. Unfortunately it hasn't solved the problem. The mod is still not working. It would seem to be directly related to my updating to NAM 35, but I don't blame that specifically, just something weird is going on. Sometimes I feel some of my STEX downloads never make it into my gaming, but I never have a crash to desktop, yet. But hey, it is running on a mac 

[rsc204 21,806]

4 hours ago, PaleoCardio said:

It would seem to be directly related to my updating to NAM 35

Sorry nope, yours truly (me), handled a number of updates for NAM 35, BTM being one of them, which was extensively tested. BTM actually works better than it ever did before as a result. I'm guessing something's gone wrong on the installer side of things, possibly a load ordering issue or the files were not installed? BTM is simply an override network, it doesn't require any specific code to work, that all works off the Monorail network. So if you see monorail in your rail menu and not BTM, either the BTM files are missing or not loading in the correct order, hence Monorail is there instead.

Check in the z___NAM folder, do you have a folder named "Shinkansen Bullet Train Mod" inside there? Does it contain a number of files, most starting with "ML Shinkansen MOD..."? If both those conditions are true, then it's installed correctly. Try moving the entire folder temporarily to a new folder in the root of plugins, name that "z__________LAST", does this make it appear? If that's not working, I'd remove the NAM entirely and re-install it.

If the folder/files are not there, then they've not been installed. We'll need to investigate why that is, but it could be related to the Mac installer somehow. Which won't have had thorough testing, since none of us on the team are really Mac users.

[PaleoCardio 150]

54 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

I'm guessing something's gone wrong on the installer side of things, possibly a load ordering issue or the files were not installed?

I didn't think that NAM 35 was directly responsible, just that when I installed NAM 35 the bullet train mod had disappeared from my plugins (which I have now also discovered) and even when I did a custom installation and clicked to include the bullet train, it has not installed.

So in summary, the installer for some reason has not installed the bullet train override (tried it twice) when doing a custom installation. The Shinkansen files were not anywhere within my plugins or z__NAM folder. I tried the Bullet train mod version 1 in the z__NAM folder and the override didn't work. However, version 2 seems to have changed the monorail skin to a bullet train line and tested in my large city with functional bullet trains. So success in the end. I am not sure what the problem was, but at least for me something happened under the installation.

Thanks so much for your help, it is much better to have bullet trains  

 

[huzman 445]

Maybe not related to all this but, I had an Elevated Highway and connected to Ground Highway and then added an Avenue and everything went quite right. Does this means anything ?

[Tarkus 6,932]

16 hours ago, huzman said:

Maybe not related to all this but, I had an Elevated Highway and connected to Ground Highway and then added an Avenue and everything went quite right. Does this means anything ?

The RHW system is a completely different beast from the game's default Elevated and Ground Highways (AKA Maxis Highways).  There are no pre-built or automatic interchanges with it (though pre-built ones will be coming to the RHW with the QuickChange Xpress system in a future NAM release).

-Tarkus

[Max4k 721]

I can't figure this out, how do I merge highway to Avenue ?

 

Can't find Ave-4 type B1 under Roads rural .

 

Also, how do I fully merge the highway to a stop light intersection ?

 

[Lucario Boricua 7,027]

The Avenue ramp interfaces appear in the AVE/RHW menu button at the end of the roads menu, they include the B1 (the one visible in your last screenshot) and the C1 (fractional angle ramp, which is intermediate between the diagonal and orthogonal alignments).

A better option for avenue ramp interfaces is using the RealExpressway, which provides a set of wide radius curves and ramp interfaces made with the one-way road (OWR), they're ideal for these RHW/Avenue interchanges. You can get many more options for ramps connecting to avenues using it.

With respect to traffic signals on ramp terminals, this is something we've been debating on doing with the MIS and RHW-4 intersections with surface networks, we might do them as part of a later stage of the Flexible Turn Lanes (FTLs) and the Signalized Intersection and Turning Arrow Project (SITAP). In the short-term, you can transition the MIS and RHW-4 ramps to OWR-1, OWR-2 or avenue, at the expense of getting a lower capacity compared to the direct MIS and RHW-4 intersections.