"B> > > can any of you here give me an idea of a simple program "B> to work with that "B> > > isn't to complicated for designing an HO layout .The one "B> I have seems to "B> > > require an engineering degree .(2D railroad Achitect) "B> thanks in advance "B> >
"B> > I can't answer your question very well as I have an "B> engineering "B> > degree. I would suggest that although these programs are "B> daunting to "B> > begin with, reading the manual and experimenting a lot "B> will make you "B> > proficient. I know that Cadrail is a real drafting "B> program although "B> > the tools are railroad layout oriented. "B> >
"B> > The problem is that a simple program doesn't do much and "B> one that does "B> > a lot is complicated. "B> "B> And the ones that do a lot are more complicated than they "B> have to be, and aren't very intuitive. The human "B> engineering is pitiful. A lot of times, doing the simplist "B> of things requires that you do thing that you'd never think "B> of, or doing the simplist of things is just not possible "B> with the software. It's easier just to head over to the "B> drafting board, and draw.
Yes, definitately.
XTrkCad is simple and straight forward. It lacks various 'bells and whistles', such as 3D rendering, which I feel is not really needed or really useful for *model railroad design*, since it is often much more in the spirit of things to 'render' ones railroad in real live plastic, nickel-silver, foam, and hydrocal... All I need from a MRR Cad program is two things:
A 2D 'bird's eye' view.
The abilitity to print the layout at 1:1 on 8.5"x11" sheets.
The abilitity to do simple simulations (run trains) to check that siding lengths and yard leads are long enough and that there are no 'impossible' switching situations. (Hard switching situations are OK.)
XTrkCad does all of that. Plus supports layers and uses plain ASCII text files for its data files, which is seriously good icing.
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