Raily 5 User Manual
en

Getting started 3: Annotations

Annotations mark stretches of track. A single "marker" looks like an arrow and means "the annotation starts here at the arrow head and carries on from there". Raily works out how far the mark reaches. That calculation is the whole point: you say where something begins, not which twelve pieces of track belong to it. That same mark becomes a tunnel in step 4, and a cut in step 5.

Load File → Example Plans…, folder Tutorial, plan tutorial3. It holds three exercises: three straights at the top, a straight with a switch in the middle, and a circle at the bottom.

Exercise 1: the straights

The first annotation

Put a marker on one of the upper straights with Add highlight annotation.

The marker has to sit on the track

An annotation lying beside the track is not anchored and is passed over when you refresh. Raily then reports "The annotation is not anchored to a track — drag it onto one first." Drag it onto the track again in that case.

Now right-click the marker and choose Refresh annotation.

On a tablet

Without a right mouse button, long-press the marker instead. The same applies everywhere the manual mentions the right mouse button, see Conventions.

The result: the mark runs from the arrow to the end of the track. You have set a beginning but no end, so Raily takes everything that follows in the direction of the arrow.

Setting a counterpart

Put a second annotation on the same straight, further to the right, and have it point back at the first.

The arrow direction comes from the side of the track

Which side of the track you point at with mouse, finger or pen decides where the marker's arrow points. Drag it to the other side and the arrow turns round. Flip direction in the context menu does the same.

Refresh the mark. It now lies exactly between the two arrows — the second marker bounds what the first one opened.

Exercise 2: the switch

Move to the middle group: a straight, a switch, and two straights behind it.

Put an annotation on the straight at the left, with the arrow pointing right, towards the switch, and refresh.

The result: every element is marked — including the branches behind the switch. The region follows every path reachable from its beginning, and a switch simply has more than one continuation.

Now put a counterpart on each branch, pointing back, and refresh again. The mark is cleanly bounded.

Exercise 3: the circle

Put a single annotation on the circle at the bottom and refresh.

Nothing happens — instead a red message appears briefly: "Annotation is inconsistent: the region loops back into an entrance. It is not applied."

That is not a fault but the nature of a circle: the region runs round and meets itself from behind. Raily cannot know where it should stop, so it does not apply it at all.

On a closed loop you always need two annotations — one for the beginning, one for the end. Set a counterpart and refresh: the mark now sits on the stretch between them.

For comparison

The plan tutorial3b in the same folder holds the markers of all three exercises. After a Refresh annotation it looks like this:

The three exercises after refreshing. The three exercises after refreshing: the pair at the top, the bounded switch in the middle, the loop at the bottom — with no mark.

At the top the mark lies between the two arrows. In the middle the switch and its branches are marked and bounded at all three exits — which takes four markers there: one as a beginning and three as counterparts. At the loop below there is deliberately only one marker, and that is exactly why the loop stays grey: the inconsistent case from exercise 3.

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See also