开云体育

Wayne,
I have my layout in both LE and CPE. It took me a while to fully understand the differences. It took a lot of help and patience from people on this forum answering my questions to figure it out. (Thanks to Ken, Dave and others). I finally got it cleared up in my mind when I thought of LE as a wiring diagram for a circuit where all the pieces must link to each other for it to work. Cannot drop a turnout into LE without it physically connecting (on the panel) to the rest of the track. Connecting it makes it part of the "circuit".? With everything connected, you now have a circuit that allows all the pieces (turnouts, signals, etc) to work together. ? Meanwhile, in PE/CPE, nothing needs to be physically connected on the panel unless you want it to look that way for your viewing. Each individual piece operates according to the parameters you assign to that piece. You can drop a turnout anywhere then click on it and watch it change without it being directly connected to anything on the panel. However, you can connect all the pieces together behind the scenes with scripts and Logix to make a change to one item impact another. Example...WHEN turnout #20 changes from closed to thrown, THEN light #88 changes color to green or red or whatever per the rules you set up in Logix. In effect, PE/CPE is also a circuit but it relies on the rules, scripts and Logix behind the scenes...not on the face of the panel.
I built my layout in LE first but I don't care for the way it looks since I don't have physical control panels on my layout and I rely on JMRI panels (on an iPad) to operate everything. Instead, I built my panels in CPE and I like them much better for control panel viewing on an iPad. If you get real creative, you can build your CPE panel in all sorts of colors. On mine, when I change a turnout, the track color for the useable route changes to blue while the unusable route turns to red. This allows me to look at my iPad panel and quickly see what route is open depending on existing turnout settings. Not very prototypical but it fill my needs as a single operator.? I will keep my LE panel up to date but I do not plan to jump into more advanced JMRI features such as blocks and signals where the LE panel is needed.