Topic: Simple Road (CAW) Tutorial

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Posts: 295

Our Goal, is to complete the road around the lot. Here's what we're going to do...

First, we need to move the road a bit because currently, it ends at the edge of the lot. (The road I have selected I already have connected, once you have connected a road to an intersection moving the intersection will move the road...but we'll get to that stuff later ~_^)

For now, we're just going to extend the road a bit. Click the "Move World Object" button then click the intersection. Drag the intersection out to your desired length.

Here's an image to show where we're at now that the road is extended. Next, we're going to add a couple more intersections and begin building our road.

We've zoomed out a bit so we can see the area we're working with. I always place the intersections first because it makes things alot easier. It's also very important to place them first because you can't put them ontop of a road you've already built. This means, if you decide you want to add a road connection later, you cant >_< So just to be safe, plan ahead and add an extra intersection to your roads.

Here, you see the intersections we're going to be working with. The two circled intersections (2 and 3) are the ones we just placed.

Now, it's time to place our road!

Normally, I always zoom in close to start the road at the center of one of my intersections so it lines up. I started building the road under the top intersection (labled 1 in the earlier photo) and drug it down to the middle intersection on the left (labled 2 in the earlier photo). The red lines in the picture show my starting and ending points.

You'll notice, a crosswalk has appeared at the top of the intersection we labled 2. This means it's already connected! This is one of the reasons placing intersections first is always a good idea. When you run your road into one, they auto connect and makes the process go much faster.

With that said, the top intersection ( Intersection 1) isn't connected. You can tell because there is no crosswalk. We need to fix this, or we're going to have some road problems when the game is playable. (Note: If your roads aren't connected properly your sim will drive to the end of the road, get out of the car and walk to the next patch of road....then get in their car again. Silly right? That's why we need to make sure all the roads are connected.)

Back to fixing our first intersection. It's really easy. Just go back to your "move world objects" button and select it. Then you need to click your first intersection. Move it around a little bit (usually, you just need to move it up, then back into place) and it should auto connect. You'll know if you've connected it because a crosswalk will magically appear.

(Again, as long as your crosswalks appear then you're doing great! It means your roads are connected and everything *in theory* should work perfectly once your world is playable)

To finish up, all we need to do is repeat the steps above to get to our end product.

If we've done everything correctly our end product should look like this ~_^ All our roads are connected to intersections (Crosswalks, Crosswalks, Crosswalks) and we've got plenty of room to add more roads later. (The edges of the intersections that do not have crosswalks)

After our roads are connected if you wanted to expand the area, you can use your move world objects tool and click the intersections to drag and expand the road. Since they're connected they'll remain connected, so it's just a matter of moving them around ~_^

I hope this was helpful to anyone having questions about building their roads. I really wish fraps didn't crash CAW because this would have been alot easier to explain and alot easier to understand.

Good luck and happy building!

~Animaga ^_^

December 19, 2009 at 4:08 PM

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UrbanThunder(MILEYROCKS)

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Posts: 156

Hey thanks a heap animaga. I was stuck trying something like that except was making a road around like five lots.

URBAN DESIGNINC.

December 19, 2009 at 4:15 PM

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Animaga

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Posts: 295

Ugh, I tried to edit it before the time expired but my window closed >_<

Just another helpful tidbit...

The middle intersections (ones placed in the middle of a road between 2 intersections) will not extend the road if you move them. It simply moves the intersection along the road.

For instance, if we wanted to move intersection 2 down a bit, all we'd have to do is click the "move world objects" tool, and move it to it's new position on the road.

Normally, its why I add an extra intersection in the middle of the road. If I want to build a road coming out later I can and if I don't, oh well, atleast there's more crosswalks so my sims aren't caught j-walking