Dear colleagues, I have been asked to publish anything in order not to be deleted as member.
Since my first stay in UK I have been fascinated by scalescenes products. I bought several (houses, stations) and started to include them into my layout. As I am German and focused on German railroads I tried to find realistic solutions.
Within this forum I found a lot and made some progress.
I really appreciate your constructions, your ideas and discussion of problems and solutions. Thank you!

Hope this helps me to stay in as a member!

Have a nice day and fun with your model railway,
Bernd

G'day Bernd,

You will have to show of some of your model buildings, whether they be kits or kit-bashed buildings, we would love to see them.

Cheers, Gary.

Yeah come on lets see some photos.

Hi I would be really interested in seeing what you have done with scalescenes to make them suitable for a German themed railway

The thing that puzzles me about Scalescenes is copyright, it would seem that it's OK to adapt things you have printed, like say printing out two 4 house terraces and cutting one in half so you can make a 6 house terrace, but you can't ("legally") do the equivalent adaptation on the PC before printing, that is if you stick strictly to the terms and conditions.

You are not supposed to do any "editing" of the PDF files, so how are you supposed to say change colours, for example if bulding the main station building, the interior for  a Southern Railway station should be green and cream, also the exterior in local stone for me is a considerably different colour to that supplied, same would apply for the stone texture sheets.

Colours are easy to change in photo editing applications, as are actions like cut and paste, cloning  and other things. You may want to add  or remove a doorway or windows, shorten or lengthen a building to suit your location.

Cutting everything by hand can get to be a PITA if you are building a lot, if you have a plotter cutter, that can be solved IF you can copy the outlines,or the complete images of the parts to the plotter cutter software.

So where does one draw the line???????????

Mike, surely the line is already clearly drawn.  You buy the kit and make it.   If you want to print them off and do some kit-bashing, that's up to you, but surely the designer is entitled to have his original design protected.   It wouldn't be long before someone was making slight alterations in the design and then selling them on as his own idea.  It has happened in the hobby in at least one other area.  If you don't like the kit, as designed, it is your right to shop elsewhere.  

Terry

My point Terry is what is the difference between cutting a printed item in half and joining it to another part  as part of your kit bashing, compared to cutting and joining  the images on the PC, the end result is almost the same except one has a visible join; you could set the colour rendition of your printer to change the colour of an item or change the colour on the PC. Why is one method acceptable but not the other? Also what harm would there be in cutting out using a plotter cutter (which requires the shape to be imported into the software) compared to cutting by hand? Am I breaching copyright by assembling Metcalfe kits with etched windows and doors or is that acceptable kit bashing? I would suggest the answer might depend on if you own or work for Metcalfe or not!

We are talking about items for our own use, not for selling on. What is the position if a kit bashed item is included in an exhibition layout, or we post pics of it on the forum, that could be debatable, are we then technically breaching copyright by publishing it?

What about a club or area group where maybe 2 or 3 members will be building the same row of houses, can one member print them off and pass the printed results to the others to assemble,or must they all have a copy of the building on their PC?

If you took things to extremes then Dapol, Farish or Union Mills could jump on us for adding detail to their locos, no lamp irons, wire handrails,  no vac pipes, no filing down coupling rods to something nearer scale thickness,  no renumbering nor adding a Westinghouse pump for a push pull conversion.

Remember the fuss in the Sataes a few years back when Railway companies wanted hefty payments from Bachman, and other manufacturers for using their liveries on RTR models.

Yes one can shop elsewhere, always assuming there is anything remotely like what we want, not everybody wants to scratch build, but many will want something a bit different than Metcalfeville or Scalescenes Town.

[user=1397]Dorsetmike[/user] wrote:

What about a club or area group where maybe 2 or 3 members will be building the same row of houses, can one member print them off and pass the printed results to the others to assemble,or must they all have a copy of the building on their PC?

As regards the above quote Scalescenes state that the software can not be shared or words to that effect.In the case of a club i'm sure that would not be allowed,on the other hand if your friends came round to your house and assembled them for you that would probably be ok.

John Wiffen, Mr Scalescenes,  is a member of this forum so I have sent him a PM so he can answer the questions posed above.

While waiting for an official response, have a read

http://scalescenes.com/faqs-page

When you purchase a Scalescenes product you are purchasing a license to print the kit or sheets as many times as you like for your own personal use. If you have the ability, of course I'm happy for modellers to edit the kits (digitally or other wise) for a non-commercial personal project.

If you are part of a club and are purchasing a Scalescenes product,  you are purchasing a license on behalf of the club. In this situation you can print the kit or sheets as many times as you like for use on club related project. Clubs = exhibition layouts/articles :)

John

[user=1397]Dorsetmike[/user] wrote:

If you took things to extremes then Dapol, Farish or Union Mills could jump on us for adding detail to their locos, no lamp irons, wire handrails,  no vac pipes, no filing down coupling rods to something nearer scale thickness,  no renumbering nor adding a Westinghouse pump for a push pull conversion.

Wouldn't this just mean that you would void warranty…?? I'm sure most manufacturers would be happy for you to super detail their locomotives. Just don't do it when it is still under warranty.

Cheers, Gary.

There's a whole forum dedicated to this subject (possibly more).

http://www.protomodeller.com    

Super detailing isn't an issue for manufacturers.

If you have the ability, of course I'm happy for modellers to edit the kits (digitally or other wise) for a non-commercial personal project.  

Many thanks for that John.

I just tried importing a Scalescenes PDF into the Zing plotter cutter software, "Make the Cut"  it works up to a point, it displays just about everything bar the text, I'll need to do a bit more investigation comparing a print out to the MTC page,

As I see it this would be ideal for cutting the card, then print the colour parts to paper or label stock and cut them by hand, it is possible to print and cut  from MTC but getting registration spot on every time can be a PITA. Plus many printers can not handle thicker card.

Main task is going to be separating print from cut so there are print pages and individual cut pages that can be imported to MTC (which doesn't seem to like importing multiple pages). I'm not sure what imports are possible on other makes of plotter cutter, perhaps somebody with other machines can check their software inport options.

That'll give me summat to do tomorrow, cos there won't be much food prep time for chrimbo dinner for one, just about all of it will come out of the freezer straight into the oven or pan.