In railway industry projects, the need to describe and share the railway network becomes indispensable. To this end, a format called RailML, based on XML, has been developed. A track plan editor has been designed to help users implement their track plan, from initial design to commissioning, whether for new projects or simply for the need to upgrade assets. The CLEARSY TRACK EDITOR is an editing software that allows track plans to be drawn and ultimately managed in this RailML format.
Description
Users can draw tracks, link them by their ends or with points to define the topology of the entire track plan. Project-specific railway signalling objects with specific or generic attributes are created to define the desired track plan. In order to assist users in their design, numerous control mechanisms (consistency, uniqueness of IDs) are integrated as well as auxiliary information on the data, such as their states, their stages in the design process of the different objects (such as Draft, Design, Verified …) or information on the properties of the objects.
In graphical or tabular view, the tool provides access to the data so that the user can create his track plan in a rather simple/instinctive way. Functionalities are also implemented to allow users to define the content of technical rooms, cabinets, pin to pin connections between each piece of equipment in order to be able to generate the cabling plan of the whole track.
Finally, for the management of the graphic part, besides the fact that the Track Editor has all the characteristics of a drawing tool (copy/paste, undo/redo, keyboard shortcuts,…) it is also able to manage object formats such as Autocad or SVG provided by a client or directly created in the tool.
From a technical point of view, the tool, which has a T3 safety level and is designed using the Qt framework, is configured with XSD files describing the standard RailML format. All object types that can be managed by the tool are extracted from the XSD, which makes the tool very easily adaptable to any type of project.
Benefits of the solution
- Configurability of the tool: Via the XSD, the customer can configure the elements of his track and constrain it while respecting the standard.
Use of RAILML : The majority of manufacturers manage their data via the XML format. The transition from XML to RAILML allows the manufacturer to import existing projects into the track plan editor and thus obtain a graphical representation that can be modified/iterated. - Link with formal data validation: CLEARSY is working on the creation of the CLEARSY DATA MANAGER, which links CLEARSY’s expertise in this type of tool for generating data to another of its core activities, formal data validation. The CLEARSY DATA MANAGER can thus display the KOs detected in data validation and for each of them, identify by a tick on the concerned track plan element(s) and thus allow the user to correct the KO directly.
- Experience feedback: During the different projects carried out on this type of perimeter with various manufacturers, CLEARSY has today a solid experience feedback (maintainability, performance, design Rex) and a very large panel of functionalities that can be proposed for the design of a track plan editor.
