Rolling Line

Rolling Line

Not enough ratings
Copy, paste and move groups
By Franks
Use the bulk move tool to do things like copy-paste large areas of props & track, or move entire segments of a layout
   
Award
Favorite
Favorited
Unfavorite
What is the bulk move tool?
This tool lets you manually select an area of props/track and move it all in one go.
You can also duplicate all props/track in the selection and move them to a new location.
Lastly, you can also delete all selected props.

You can use this feature to do things like:
  • Copy-paste a custom made building (built out of lots of smaller props) and duplicate it multiple times around your map.
  • Select and move a segment of your layout, or even rotate it.
  • Move/rotate your entire map.
  • Scale multiple objects at once
  • Delete a large section of your map easily in one go, instead of deleting props one-by-one.

IMPORTANT:
Make sure to save a copy of your map before making any big changes, since these actions cannot be undone!
Copy-paste a building
This is a step-by-step guide on how to take a custom-made feature of your map (like a custom building made out of lots of smaller props) and duplicate it around your map multiple times.

Firstly, you can find the bulk move tool in the "room -> advanced editing" drawer:



Place the move tool down on the ground near the objects you want to copy.
Then point at it and choose the "Edit options" hover menu (press Q).



The move tool currently has nothing selected, so the next step is to open the selection menu and choose which props to select:



Open the "select using bounds boxes" option, and then spawn some bounds boxes to place around the building.
Everything within these bounds boxes will be included in the selection, so make sure to cover everything (it's not a problem if there is extra, this will be cleaned up in a few steps).

You can also just select all objects within a sphere area using the "select all objects within a radius" option instead. You can combine both radius + bounds boxes together to make your selection.





Next make sure everything is editable!
Only props/track that has editing enabled can be selected by this too.
Use the edit tool and enable editing for all the layers you need (likely just "details" and "terrain") around the area you want to copy.



Next click "Refresh selection"
If editing is enabled correctly, and your bounds boxes overlap the props you want, then the number on the menu should show that several props have been selected.



Now that you have the whole building selected, click "done" to go back to the previous menu, and then click "Duplicate" to make a copy of these props:



After duplicating the selection, you will be put into "transform edit mode" and see a 3D gizmo which you can use to move the whole selection around:



If you want to clean up any extra props that got included in the selection (e.g. the extra trees around the building) then first move your duplicated selection over somewhere away from the rest of your map.
Once you have moved them to a new location, press F to exit transform edit mode.



Then manually delete the extra props (one-by-one):



Once you are happy with the new prop group, open the tool's menu again and click "refresh selection" again to update the selection with the new props:



You can now move/duplicate the building again and put it anywhere on your layout!
If you want to copy-paste it again in the future, I recommend keeping a copy of the building off to the side of your map somewhere, away from the rest of the layout. This way you can easily make a copy again whenever you want.

Move a section of your map
Another very useful ability of the bulk move tool is to select an entire large section of a map and move it around (and even rotate/scale it).

Here is a step-by-step example of how to do this.

Firstly, place the bulk move tool down on your map, open the edit menu, and then choose the "options" sub-menu:



Since we are moving an entire section of map, this means we want to enable this extra option which makes the move tool include "data objects".
Data objects are things like skybox region bounds, level crossing & signal custom triggers, audio regions, etc.
These are normally invisible unless you are editing them.

We want these to be moved as well, otherwise the map will not function as we expect (e.g. audio regions will still be in their old places).



Next, return to the previous menu and choose the "Selection options" menu, then "select using bounds boxes". You can then use "add bounds box" to spawn some bounds boxes for you to use to define the section of map you want to select.
Make sure to cover the whole area all the way down to the floor!





Next you will need to enable editing for all objects that you want to select (which in this case includes track, tables, and scenery).

You can use the edit tool for this. Make sure to include everything!



You might want to use the "edit all" buttons on the wall to make this easier. But be cautious as very large maps will likely be far too intensive to use these "edit all" options, and might crash your game from being too large.

If there are props on other skybox layers (e.g. large scale only walls, or miniature only scenery) make sure to enable these for editing too:



Once you have everything you need enabled for editing, use the "refresh selection" button and return to the previous menu and select the "move" option



If you had everything selected correctly then you should be able to move everything in one go!
Simply press F to exit transform edit mode when you have moved the segment of map to the new location.

3 Comments
Franks  [author] 10 Jun @ 9:30pm 
@SvAtle, yup!
You can use the copy-paste feature to copy between maps, it will remember what you've copied when after loading a new save (it will reset when you quit the game though)
SvAtle 10 Jun @ 6:23pm 
Does this apply also to copying out large portions of one layout to import into another? Say, an industry pre-made in one layout and copied into an existing layout?
IZX 1 Sep, 2024 @ 6:44pm 
thanks:steamhappy: