Adding text to the track plan is important – it will allow you to describe the purpose of the lines and branches and to name different areas and train stations in your layout.
To place some text, first select “Edit” > “Place Text” command from the menu and then click with the mouse at desired location on the drawing plot – a text box for editing will appear. You can select font type and relative font size form the controls, appeared in the right part of the Toolbar, next to “3D” button. When ready with the input, press Enter or click outside of the text box. If you want to edit the text later, just double click over it.
| The texts are visible only in 2D mode and are not displayed in 3D Viewer. |
You can move the text or group it with other figures on the layout and also rotate and align it to other texts and figures.
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To move the text (or any other object), select it, hold Ctrl and drag it with the mouse or use Move command from the context menu. To group and un-group texts or align them (or any other objects), first select the objects (by selection rectangle or by holding Shift and clicking over each of them) and then use corresponding commands in the Objects menu. To rotate the texts (or another objects), select them and use “Edit” > “Rotate” menu command. |
SCARM does not support formatted (bold, italic, justified, etc.) or multi-line texts, but you can always make changes in the font type and relative font size and also change the text color by using of “Objects” > “Properties” menu command.
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To create multi-line descriptions, just enter each line separately. Then align all of them and use grouping to obtain a single object. |
Note that not all fonts are suitable for scaling and rotating. Some fonts may not be presented on other computers and texts might be looking different when layout, saved on one computer is opened on another. Try to use the most common system fonts, available on all Windows-based machines to ensure proper text look of your layout on all computers. My experiments show that Trebuchet MS and Verdana are good fonts for use in SCARM. Arial, Times New Roman, Courier New and Tahoma are well scaled, but are rendered with some small offset when rotated.
See also
How to work with figures
I would like to place/draw straight and curved lines on my layout to plan wiring runs and make balloon notes. I could make a pdf file but that seems inconvenient and requires making a new pdf for revisions. Any suggestions?
Doug
Hello Doug,
You can use the figures for adding of various objects, including wires (use long and narrow rectangles for that) and balloons (use polygons) for the text. See more about the figures in SCARM here: http://www.scarm.info/index.php?page=help&topic=28