Fintard96's tracks

[fintard96]

Thought that I would just start my own design thread, seeing as everyone else has.

[fintard96]

Okay, so I am working on a new design. What I've done is take a webcam picture of my pencil line drawing, imported it into sketchup and drawn in the basic outline (I'll use this as the centreline for the circuit). Now my idea is to measure the length as it currently is then scale that up to something suitable for F1. I have managed to dimension the straight bits but I don't know how to measure the circumferences of the corners. How do you guys do that?
Also, generally, how long must an F1 track be? And how wide? I think I read that the start straight must be around 14m and the rest no less than 12m?

[SpeedingTortoise]

Welcome!!

F1 tracks have to be more than 2.5 miles/4km (all except Monaco). Track width has to be at least 8m however 11-14m is more the standard now. Since you have made a centre line for the track, use the offset tool to create the track width. Right click the track and then Entity Info. This will give you the area. Track Area divided by Width will give you the length of the track.

There is also a tutorial that has been created to help those using sketchup.

http://tentenths.com/forum/showthread.php?t=120325

Hope to see you posting your tracks in the future.

[ScotsBrutesFan]

Originally Posted by fintard96

Okay, so I am working on a new design. What I've done is take a webcam picture of my pencil line drawing, imported it into sketchup and drawn in the basic outline (I'll use this as the centreline for the circuit). Now my idea is to measure the length as it currently is then scale that up to something suitable for F1. I have managed to dimension the straight bits but I don't know how to measure the circumferences of the corners. How do you guys do that?
Also, generally, how long must an F1 track be? And how wide? I think I read that the start straight must be around 14m and the rest no less than 12m?

Measuring the circuit length is pretty straight forward. once you have offset your design Highlight both the inner and outer parts, Right click for the Area and Selection. THis will give you a value in sq metres, simply divide that by your total width. This will give you the length in metres.

[fintard96]

So I need to offset first, then I can figure out the length? I was thinking more along the lines of working out the length, scaling it up and then offsetting to create a suitable width. It all seems a bit backwards to me!

Would you suggest:

• offsetting by equal amounts either side of the centreline,
• getting the area and length,
• removing the offset,
• then scaling up
• and adding the final offset (track width)?

[ScotsBrutesFan]

The problem with scaling is that a nice tight corners of say radius 5m suddenly becomes an open 20m radius curve.

When you imported your drawing, you may not have noticed in the bottom right corner it would have given you the width of the image. I'd open that image so that the main straight would be approx the size I actually want it 1:1 scale, so that might mean starting with the image a slightly blurry oversize, but you can then decide whether you want to draw a centre line over it or just inside or outside as the inner or outer line and offset which ever direction.

[fintard96]

Thanks for all the help guys!

One last thing.
Runoffs.
How big should the runoff areas be?
(Almost finished)

[fintard96]

The track is (centreline length) 4910.9m.
The width is 14m at the start finish straight and 12/13m everywhere else.
There are two separate pit lanes and facilities to run rallycross races. Additionally, there are multiple layouts including a short circuit using the north pit lane.

This circuit is likely to be suitable for indycar/touring cars/(maybe) F1.
I envisage this track to be in a forest with elevation.

(Some completely made up history
The original road circuit used the south loop and back in those days the chicane did not exist.

The next development of the circuit was a shortcut of the south loop which had a very fast left hand sweeper.

The sweeper was deemed too dangerous after about 20 years due to increasing speeds, so a triangular junction between the south loop and the shortcut was created. Also, a chicane was built after the large right-hander onto the secondary pit straight.

Since then only a few upgrades have been implemented, such as, a revised final corner at the top of the circuit; a redesign of the triangular junction - tightening the apex to encourage overtaking and the addition of the rallycross track.

(All layouts run anticlockwise)

[ScotsBrutesFan]

Originally Posted by fintard96

Thanks for all the help guys!

One last thing.
Runoffs.
How big should the runoff areas be?
(Almost finished)

Use Google Earth on real world circuits, the run off at the end of the Barcelona straight is about a max of 70 metres

[SKG]

Originally Posted by fintard96

The track is (centreline length) 4910.9m.
The width is 14m at the start finish straight and 12/13m everywhere else.
There are two separate pit lanes and facilities to run rallycross races. Additionally, there are multiple layouts including a short circuit using the north pit lane.

This circuit is likely to be suitable for indycar/touring cars/(maybe) F1.
I envisage this track to be in a forest with elevation.

(Some completely made up history
The original road circuit used the south loop and back in those days the chicane did not exist.

The next development of the circuit was a shortcut of the south loop which had a very fast left hand sweeper.

The sweeper was deemed too dangerous after about 20 years due to increasing speeds, so a triangular junction between the south loop and the shortcut was created. Also, a chicane was built after the large right-hander onto the secondary pit straight.

Since then only a few upgrades have been implemented, such as, a revised final corner at the top of the circuit; a redesign of the triangular junction - tightening the apex to encourage overtaking and the addition of the rallycross track.

(All layouts run anticlockwise)

Welcome, I want to see this!

[fintard96]

The long awaited pictures have arrived!









track 2 final attempt.skp

[fintard96]

The gp circuit (the layout that is in asphalt) is 4910.9m long and has 16 corners (8 left). There are a few kinks which you could argue are corners but I have not included them inn the corner tally.

[SKG]

For a first effort I think this is fantastic, very interesting circuit. I like the "adaptation" to the final corner, I could imagine opening the car up onto the main straight out of that corner would be fun, especially when you know you've got that mega-fast first right-hander coming up! I'm not so keen on the big switchbacks at the far left of the circuit, but that's more personal preference than criticism.

Did you consider putting the main pit and paddock on the outside of the circuit? I always try it and a lot of the time it fits better there than in the infield. In this case, for such a fast first corner, I think it would be safer to have the pit exiting on the inside, with a longer pit exit to allow exiting cars to get closer to racing speed, and to allow cars out on track more time to see exiting cars and act accordingly.

I'm not sure a secondary pit lane is entirely necessary, maybe over the other side of the circuit instead (constructed on the outside of the short-cut, with access from the old loop)??

Could you explain the brown road sections on the infield? I think they are short-cuts for different configs, but I'm a little confused

Like I said, a great first effort. These are only ideas, not necessarily to implement into this design, but maybe worth a thought for your next one.

I hope there's a next one!

[fintard96]

Thanks SkgThunder. This is not my first design, that one is a couple of pages back in the forum (yes, its been that long!).

So the brown roads are for the rallycross configurations.
I placed the pits on the infield because I thought that was general practice. The secondary pits - don't know why I made them but I suppose they could be used for the rallycross.

Thanks for the advice!!

[ScotsBrutesFan]

Looks interesting can't wait to load up the file and have a good look

[SKG]

Originally Posted by fintard96

This is not my first design, that one is a couple of pages back in the forum (yes, its been that long!).

Oops... my bad! Hi there.

Ah, the rally-cross configs make sense, another good idea! I've got circuit with a rally cross config that I've been meaning to upload for a while...

[Yannick]

The beginning of this thread reads almost like a Sketchup tutorial. Thank you for that. If I had the time for this at the moment, I'd even try it out on one of my own designs from the past.