Deltariuns's Quick and Easy Guide on Database Editing and Swapping Fixtures between Bodies
Based off an exchange between @Dorifto_Dorito and @Secrane
Here’s an older guide on database editing.
Let's say you have a car and you want to copy its fixtures over from one body to a longer variant. Maybe you have a C-class and you want to make an E or even S-class. You have two options: painstakingly recreate the car fixture-by-fixture on a new body and mindbreak yourself in the process, or literally copy and paste one thing and have all the fixtures from the old car on the new car, all for a fraction of the time!
To show you the power of database editing...
I took this SUV:
And sawed it in half stretched it!
Incredible, right? To do this we’ll need to use DB Browser for SQLite. You don’t need any coding experience to do this, but follow my instructions closely because if you make any mistakes here it won’t be pretty. Let’s begin.
Disclaimer: I have not tested this extensively. I'm guessing that this works best between body families with different wheelbase variants OR between two similarly-sized bodies. Please be sure to back up your database in case you make a mistake. Do this at your own risk; I won't be responsible for any damage you do to your database if you mess things up.
Step 1 - Backing up your database.
In case you screw up, you risk losing all the cars you've made. This has yet to happen to me but I'm not gonna find out for myself.
Open your file explorer and go to Documents > My Games > Automation.
Make a copy of Sandbox_openbeta.db and put it somewhere safe. This contains all your cars.
Step 2 - Selecting the "donor" car and the "recipient" car.
Find the car and trim you want to make a longer/shorter clone of, and name the trim something you'll remember. This original car will be the donor, or the car from where I will "copy" the fixtures.
For demonstration's sake, I'll start with this SUV and name it "Donor."
What you want to do now is make a new car. Select the body you want to use (again, ideally it would be the same body family but a longer/shorter wheelbase for the best compatibility) and finish engineering/building it. For example, my original car has a 133" wheelbase and I want to make it longer, so I would select the 148.8" wheelbase version as seen below.
Remember to name the trim of this new car something you will remember. This is the car on which you will "paste" the fixtures you "copied" from the other car. Once you've selected the new body and finished engineering it, exit the game.
Here is what I have so far; my goal is to transport the fixtures from the "HT V8 Donor" car to the "HT V8 Recipient car.
Step 3 - Opening your Automation database with SQLite!
Open the DB Browser for SQLite and you'll see a screen that looks like this.
Click "open database."
In the file explorer window that opens, navigate to Documents > My Games > Automation and select the Sandbox_openbeta.db file.
It should look like this now:
Click "Browse Data." There should be a drop-down table under it, and what you want to do is click "Trims."
Once you click "Trims," you should see a bunch of stuff that looks like this.
You'll see a bunch of numbers but if you look at the fourth column, you'll see that these are just all your cars and bunch of data associated with them in the columns further down to the right.
Step 4 - Locating the donor and recipient cars, and copying the fixtures!
The cars here are listed chronologically based on when you made them, so the most recent stuff will be at the bottom, including the recipient car you made earlier in step 2.
I scroll down to the bottom and lo and behold, there are the two cars I'm looking for.
Next, take the scroll bar on the bottom of the screen and scroll all the way to the right. What you are looking for is a column named “fixtures.”
I've marked it here, and I have also circled in blue the cells for my donor and recipient car in this column. The top cell is my donor car, and the bottom cell is my recipient car.
This fixtures column contains what I am assuming is a list of all the fixtures on the car, and their location.
Follow these next steps carefully.
First, locate your donor car, or the car with the fixtures you want to copy. You can click on its associated number on the left side, and it will light up the entire row, which makes things easier to see.
Now scroll all the way to the right and find the cell in the "Fixtures" column.
Right click it and hit copy.
Now, locate your recipient car, or the car which you want to paste the fixtures onto.
Now scroll all the way to the right and find the cell in the "Fixtures" column.
Right click it and hit paste.
Once you've done that, click "Write Changes" at the top.
Now we need to see if it worked. Hopefully it did, and if it didn't, hopefully you backed up your database, which is the first thing you should've done; it's the first step!
Step 5 - Open Automation
Moment of truth. Everything we've done so far will be put to the test right here.
Goodness gracious, great balls of fire, it worked!
Why does it look weird? Well, we’re copying the exact positions of the fixtures from the previous body and pasting them onto this new, bigger body. Therefore, the fixtures will have to re-conform to the new body, and fixtures you have on the side of the car will most likely be out of place. So you still have some work cut out for you in repositioning these fixtures onto the new body, but it’s still far less work than remaking the design from scratch.
Another thing to note: since 3D-placed fixtures do not conform to the body by nature, they might be stuck inside the body, so remember to drag them back out manually.
I hope this guide was of use to you! I tried my best to make this easy to follow, and feel free to ask me any questions you may have about this process, but keep in mind that it's something I don't understand very well myself, and I won't know how well this will work on drastically different bodies.
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