Making highways of various types and ramps

[Digicoma 18]

Hello,

I've been slowly learning NAM and getting better through the help of instructional videos.  That being said, I am highly challenged by something that despite watching videos and searching for posts to help is vexing me a bit.
I am having difficulty doing much with highway and ramps when it comes to dragging them where it is I want them to go.  In the videos I've watched, it looks rather simple, yet when I try to do it, I get nowhere.
I am versed with the TAB, CTRL, HOME, and END keys.  I understand Starter Pieces.  Once I lay down the type of Starter Piece, I want in the direction I want, my objective is to lay it in the direction I intend it to go.  When I try to make a curve though, I get stuck just dragging it in the direction I want it to go to.  Same with ramps.  I thought it was supposed to be that I'd lay down a ramp piece wherever I wanted a ramp to go along my highway and continue on with the highway in the direction I wanted.  Further, I thought once the ramp was skewed off from the highway that I could place my mouse at the end of the ramp and draw it through to wherever I wanted the ramp to connect to.  I am having no luck even in getting the ramp to extend beyond the ramp piece I set down.

At this point I'm convinced I don't understand what I'm doing at all with the real highway system.  I want all sorts of highways.  I want elevated ones, ground level ones, etc.  I also feel I don't know how to properly cycle through elevation changes.  In the videos I've watched you can see the meter height as you cycle through.  I'm not seeing a meter reading at all.  Again, at this point I just think I'm not getting the concepts laid out in the videos at all.

Part of the problem is I feel the videos quickly mention a concept, followed quickly by the YouTuber moving their mouse quickly and saying something along the lines of, "See?  You can do this!"  Followed inevitably with them quickly bulldozing the whole thing.  From my perspective it looks like it's supposed to be a pretty simple drop and drag process, but for me that doesn't seem to be the case.

Could someone either list for me a video (or videos) where the concept is explained at a slower pace along with a thorough explanation of how to make highways and ramps do the things I've described I want them to do.  Even if it's a different process than I currently might be misunderstanding; if the correct process could be explained in the video(s) I'd be much appreciative.  Failing that, if anyone could plainly explain it to me in response to this, it would help a great deal.

Right now, I'm feeling kind of dumb as everything else has come to me with little effort.

Thank you in advance!

 

[Flann 1,709]

It sounds like maybe you've ended up using some legacy puzzle pieces that don't allow for dragging through or out of.  Maybe give this tutorial series a try:

 

[Digicoma 18]

On 12/11/2023 at 2:10 PM, Flann said:

It sounds like maybe you've ended up using some legacy puzzle pieces that don't allow for dragging through or out of.  Maybe give this tutorial series a try:

Hi Flann,

 

Thank you for responding.  I have watched a couple of videos and they helped me glean some information.  However, I still was a bit unclear about a couple of things.

Just to explain a little about what I was doing that led me here to ask the question in the first place is I was intending to lay an elevated eight-lane highway from another region through an area of the city that has streets.  My goal was to have 7.5-meter highways running above the crossing streets in that general area.   So, I would have wanted to have two areas where there were onramp/offramps from the elevated eight lane highway.  I wanted to have just one onramp and one offramp for each area; otherwise, I just wanted to have the eight-lane highway to continue beyond that general area.

From watching these videos, I still can't figure out how to have an elevated highway have an offramp or onramp which comes down to ground level to then meet a road or a street.  I can see how to make a more complicated exchange with puzzle pieces, but I can't see where there is a way to have an elevated highway have an offramp which glides down to ground level, and then can be dragged to a road.

I don't know if the concept I have is not something that is supposed to be done, or if I'm just missing something.

If you could help me understand what to do (or what concept I'm getting wrong) it would be great.   Generally, I'm dragging the elevated highway, so I haven't used a puzzle piece.  

Lastly, is there a printable legend anywhere that has all of the various types and designations that I could print out and refer to?  It's a lot for my wee brain to remember, and rather than click in and out of the game, it would be nice to look over at a sheet of paper that listed each type of highway piece and the letter/number designation that went with it along with a description.  Same goes for puzzle pieces.  If you know of something like that and could point me in the direction of that it would be most helpful.

 

Thank you again!

 

 

[rsc204 21,857]

4 hours ago, Digicoma said:

From watching these videos, I still can't figure out how to have an elevated highway have an offramp or onramp which comes down to ground level to then meet a road or a street.  I can see how to make a more complicated exchange with puzzle pieces, but I can't see where there is a way to have an elevated highway have an offramp which glides down to ground level, and then can be dragged to a road.

Well you want to do the inverse of what is shown in the video, i.e. start with elevated highway and have the ramps transition to the ground. Before you do anything else, you really need to understand the difference between on-slope and ramp pieces as height transitions. The basic order would be:

• Build the highway first and choose where to make your intersections, ensure the land is sufficiently flat if necessary.
• Build four FlexHeight 1 Level Ramps, at least one tile from the intersecting road at ground level, pointing the correct direction as required.
• After that you can use the FlexRamp pieces or more ideally the Draggable Ramps (made using specific patterns with the RHW tool)
  to connect them with the height transitions, this should override everything to MiS.
• You can then drag through the height transitions and connect everything up to the surface roads.

There is simply a lot to learn when it comes to RHW, which is easily the single largest part of the NAM. It never hurts to open a blank city, give yourself all the money you could need and just mess around experimenting with all the options in the menus, it will give you a much better knowledge of what's there. However once you get a few key concepts of how things work, that can be applied to the whole and you'll soon be confidently building better highways.

[Digicoma 18]

Quote

It never hurts to open a blank city, give yourself all the money you could need and just mess around experimenting with all the options in the menus, it will give you a much better knowledge of what's there. However once you get a few key concepts of how things work, that can be applied to the whole and you'll soon be confidently building better highways.

Thank you RSC204.
What you are saying about just opening up a blank city and working all the possibilities out is a good idea to get myself familiar with things in a consequence free area.   I think I have been frustrated because I couldn't get things to work in a city I was developing.

I will also do what you have stated once I feel more comfortable.

Thanks!

[rsc204 21,857]

I shouldn't forget either, you can accomplish this with a single piece these days, thanks to the QuickChange prefabs:

Tab through until you find the type you want (L1 RHW x AVE in this case), then use rotate the piece until the 8S/10S version appears. Plop the intersection and connect up with RHW, couldn't be easier.

[Digicoma 18]

Thank you.  This is what I have been using since I figured it out (with everyone's help).