The side wear option determines the primary method of measuring gauge-face and field-face wear.
Rangecam supports two methods of measuring side wear. The default "floating-point" method measures side wear at the Gauge Point Reference Distance below the worn top of rail. The "fixed-point" method measures side wear at a set distance below the unworn top of rail. For the "fixed-point" method, a different distance below top of rail may be specified for different rail weights. This is done using the Rail Table Maintenance Dialog (see Rail under Database Maintenance).
If Floating is selected, the primary gauge wear and the field wear measurements are calculated using the "floating-point" method, and the alternate gauge-wear measurement is calculated using the "fixed-point" method. The opposite is true if Fixed is checked. In this case, the primary gauge-wear and the field-wear measurements use the "fixed-point" method and the alternate gauge-wear measurement uses the "floating-point" method.
Both primary and alternate gauge-wear measurements can be charted, displayed in the Profile View window, or referenced in the Profile Query. Only the primary gauge measurement is used for trending, rail replacement forecasting, segment performance comparison, and calculating combined wear.