Content → Getting Started

1. Keep the track plan design simple and schematically and leave out all unnecessary tracks.
   Every symbol in the track plan is a Window object ¹⁾ and needs computer resources.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centralized_traffic_control

Example of extraction
Station areas in a designer.	Station areas schematically in Rocrail.
Staging area in a designer.	Staging area schematically in Rocrail.

1. Plan block length to fit the longest train which will run on this layout.
2. Plan at least 2 sensor sections in each block. (ENTER and IN)
3. Plan switches or switch motors with position feedback.

Large layouts with Windows is not a good choice:

• https://forum.rocrail.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10065

A free Linux distribution on the same hardware is preferred.

1. Select a simple CS because Rocrail offers all control needed and saves a lot of money.
2. Choose an event based sensor system like LocoNet, mergCBus, xPressNet…

In Rocrail all file names and IDs are case sensitive.

• Avoid using blanks in ID's.
• ID's should be short codes; Use the description field for more information.

In case an XML Layout file should be manually modified, which is normally not necessary, an UTF-8 capable editor must be used to save none ASCII characters like umlauts.
The standard Windows 'editor', Notepad, will damage the encoding.

• Notepad++ for Windows
• Gedit for Linux
• TextEdit or TextWrangler for Mac