Layout Design Software - reviews

[quinntopia]

Has anyone seen any reviews of the various layout design software programs out there?  I did my original plan using RR-track http://www.rrtrack.com/ which was okay, but now that I'm on a Mac (although I use VMWare and Bootcamp for some windows necessities, but don't like to have boot them up if I don't have to as the communication w/printers is not always good) I was looking at a program called railmodeller http://www.railmodeller.com/ which is nice in that its a native Mac application, and has a good UI, and Kato and Tomix libraries (and many more) which really fits my needs.  However, there does not seem to be any ability to add elevation, grades, terrain, etc... which is a deal breaker in my mind (at least in the demo i have).

I've tried to use Xtrakcad on a PC (can't get it to work on my mac) and found the experience and UI really irritating.

I was referred to Wintrack http://www.wintrack.de/ but the library misses Tomix, which is the piece I really need right now.  Its also PC only, which I can deal with for the right program I suppose.

Does anyone have any suggestions on what they've used, or encouragement to keep up the 'practice' with Xtrakcad?  I've seen some forum members post images of their track plans that look really sharp, and was wondering what they've used.

I have to believe someone has done a review of the various offerings and compared them side by side, but can't seem to find it myself.

Thanks

[CaptOblivious]

I use Railmodeler. I can't be bothered to purchase it, at $40, mostly because I just use it to doodle idly, so I just use it in demo mode. When something needs to be illustrated here, I use Grab.app to take a screenshot and post it here.

[scott]

I used Railmodeller, and paid for it--I'm convinced I made the money back in mistakes avoided, extra track not ordered, etc. Admittedly it took a bit of extra fiddling to deal with grades, but it wasn't too bad. Having the accurate measurements of the actual pieces (Unitrack, in my case) made a huge difference. And it's fun to fiddle with.

[Tenorikuma]

I used Railmodeller, and paid for it--I'm convinced I made the money back in mistakes avoided, extra track not ordered, etc. Admittedly it took a bit of extra fiddling to deal with grades, but it wasn't too bad. Having the accurate measurements of the actual pieces (Unitrack, in my case) made a huge difference. And it's fun to fiddle with.

Thanks for the recommendation. I'm on a Mac too and had no idea what was out there.

[quinntopia]

Wow, I'm surprised...2 solid votes for RM right out of the gate..!

Pilotfish, I'm glad you responded, as the pictures you posted of your track plan are some of the cleanest and neatest out there  :).   Railmodeller would be a slam dunk for me, but how do you deal with grades and elevations?  Or do you just ignore it (in truth, this isn't that big of a deal if you don't care about the '3-d' views of other products, and since I am not really 'building' a layout with railmodeller versus just building [where planning grades is critical] versus documenting an existing plan, I suppose I shouldn't make it that big of a deal)?

[CaptOblivious]

Grades can be a very big deal; I don't know of a way to deal with them with Railmodeler. I think RM's strength is that it is very easy to work with sectional track, and so one can very quickly get a good sense of how to put a particular plan together using sectional track. However, if I were planning a permanent layout, I would only use RM to generate the first draft of the plan; I would then use something else—maybe even pen and paper—to be very careful about grades and elevations.

[cteno4]

As my mac is my main machine (only go to the darkside when i have to) and its got the 30" monitor on it i have been using railmodeler for the last year or so. was happy to pay the $40 as its a good little program and seems to being looked after fairly well so i hope it will just continue to improve. i find it great for sectional track planning.

I use to use 3rdplanit a long time back on the pc, it went through a major revamp a year or two back and is a very sophisticated program, but i found not too easy to use at times. I did not upgrade as i had started to use Railmodeler. the new version of 3rdplanit sounds very deep with features, but maybe too many!

Also used Xtrak cad a lot on the pc and just got it sort of working on the mac. its uses unix x window system so its a bit funky in the mac interface, but i now can use the 30" screen with it. but for free it does a great job and once you get use to its quirks its pretty powerful and its free! what you have to do is learn how to use it, but make sure to create a cheat sheet for yourself as you will forget how to do things w/in a week of non use of it. i think this is where most folks frustration comes from with xtrakcad since its a tad odd in ui and function so takes a bit to learn it then very easy to forget it! once i get working on a project with it, things go pretty smoothly.

cheers,

jeff

[scott]

but how do you deal with grades and elevations? 

Well, it wasn't the neatest solution, and you've seen the minor problem I created for myself with clearances, but---I just figured out the horizontal run needed for the elevation gain I needed (if you select several  pieces of track in RM and "get info," it'll tell you their total length). Then I just color-coded that many pieces a different shade of that line's color so I could tell where the inclines went. I was lucky that I could usually make a combination of pieces that came pretty close to the 48" total length I needed in each case.

[serenityFan]

I used xtrkcad for my designs. It is free, and once you've got used to the UI, it is actually quite a breeze to use. Flex track layout is very easy to create, sectional takes a little bit more time as you lay piece by piece. It had kato unitrack sections, so it gave me the exact amount of unitrack sections to buy.

It also has the ability to calculate the required grades given heights data entered at some points on the layout...

[Martijn Meerts]

Been using railmodeller for quite a while and really like it. I tried lots of the windows programs as well, and wintrack is very good, but doesn't have any Tomix track library.

As for railmodeller, I paid for it, $40 is well worth it considering you get all the updates (big and small) for free. From what I've read, elevation is something that's planned with the next big upgrade, so it's coming. What I like about railmodeller as well, is that you can real easily add your own tracks, the raileditor is real simple to use.

Railmodeller is also going to be able to connect to railplayer (I think it's called that anyway), which means you can export your railmodeller layout plan and use railplayer to run trains on it. Last I tried I couldn't get trainplayer to run either my macbook pro or my mac pro, but a new version is on it's way (if it's not already released)

[quinntopia]

I finally went ahead and chose Railmodeller.  Despite its lack of grades, I like the interface and the library choices.   I updated my track plan and posted it on my blog if you're interested.  I did find some things were kind of weird; some of the track libraries are in German was a minor issue, but the biggest problem I had was that it seemed like I either counted the track on my layout incorrectly (which was easy to do) or for some reason the geometry didn't add up.  This only occurred on the 'straight' sections, which was kind of interesting.

The other problem is that there is no tolerance for any element of a track piece to be laid outside of the designated layout area.  For example, the Kato power feeder piece could not be placed along the edge because the image of this piece has a little wire symbol line that would extend outside the borders of the layout (same issue with the street crossings).  Kinda funky.

Anyway, pleased with how it turned out.

Thanks for all the tips that everyone shared!

http://quinntopia.blogspot.com/2009/05/layout-design-software.html

[scott]

Another thing I liked about Railmodeller is that it's easy to try out variations. When I wanted to add to one of my lines, it was pretty easy to work out how to make it fit:


(obviously I haven't built all of the supporting terrain yet....)

[SubwayHypes]

LOL i probably should have used something like this, i went in heads first when it came to building my track, i just order pieces off ebay as i "guess" i need them, definately wasted money buying extra track, but whatevs.

[Shashinka]

Another vote for XtrakCAD here also. I like it, and it runs fine on both my PC and Linux box. Plus if I ever go DCC I can plug it in to run my trains from my netbook as well.

[CaptOblivious]

Are any of the track planning software capable of exporting SVG files? I want to create some trackplans for the Wiki, but I'd really prefer to post those plans in SVG. Indeed, I'd like to create a "house style" for trackplans that we can use on the Wiki and in Tetsudo.

[Tenorikuma]

Since this thread is still live and I've been using Rail Modeller for a few weeks, let me do a quick review summary.

1. It may be a Mac app but it's not Mac-like. Toolbars are non-standard and the program is confusing in a number of ways.

2. You cannot open more than one track layout at a time. Why one earth this would be I cannot imagine, but it makes it impossible to have two documents open and copy pre-arranged sections from one to another.

3. Poor export options — you can't export to a vector format or export with a transparent background, for example.

4. "Magnetic" track snapping is half-baked. You cannot move more than one piece of track at a time and have it snap to an existing piece. If you want to move, say, 20 pieces of track over a few millimetres, you have to move each piece separately.

5. Lack of finish and bug-testing — the application cannot handle filenames with non-ASCII characters, and you cannot export a file called "layout.psd" if your file is already called "layout" because the app thinks these are the same file. (They aren't.)

Final verdict: 2/5
If there was any other alternative, I'd be using that instead.

[disturbman]

I don't know if anyone tried this one but I'm using AnyRail. It's a very simple and yet more or less effective Layout Design Software. I think I still need to really learn how to use it but it's definately simpler than Xtrackcad. And yes, it does have Kato's Unitrack in his library.

[alpineaustralia]

But which are the programs mentioned run on windows PC?
Everyone (except for me) seems to have a Mac.

[Martijn Meerts]

The best one I've seen for PC is wintrack. That one has amazing 3d views which easily allows you to pre-visualize the entire layout.

It's not cheap though, and might not have all tracks you want included.

[disturbman]

I'm using a PC and Xtrackcad and anyrail works fine with it. The other ones I don't know.

[scott]

4. "Magnetic" track snapping is half-baked. You cannot move more than one piece of track at a time and have it snap to an existing piece. If you want to move, say, 20 pieces of track over a few millimetres, you have to move each piece separately.

Actually, you can do this, but it took a little searching before I found it. (If I had read the documentation.....  )   But I had the same frustration you did, and thought, "there must be a way," and eventually figured it out.

In the menus, there are options to:

* select an entire section of linked track pieces
* select an end of a multi-piece section, and then clink an open end to move it to
* automatically find a 1- to 4-piece connection between two open ends

There are probably some other useful features I should mention, but I don't have that computer with me right now. I'll see if I can be more specific about where these commands are once I'm back at that computer.

FWIW, I was using RailModeller last night, and came up with some easy improvements to my layout, as well as a couple of maniacal expansions.

[cteno4]

Since this thread is still live and I've been using Rail Modeller for a few weeks, let me do a quick review summary.

1. It may be a Mac app but it's not Mac-like. Toolbars are non-standard and the program is confusing in a number of ways.

Unfortunately most track planning software seem to take some getting use to. I guess its the logic that most track planning programs have as most are not all that intuitive and feel a bit non standard till you use them for a while and get use to them. Railmodeler feels like most track planning programs i have used. it is only a $39 program for a very small market from someone that looks to be doing this on the side so cant expect all that much... track planning software is pretty complicated software, lots to keep track of and calculate. the history of a lot of the track planning softwares out there are pretty shaky. many are done by a lone programmer, not larger software companies with human interface designers, cognitive designers, etc so again you wont get a really slick product thats beautiful. sorry.

2. You cannot open more than one track layout at a time. Why one earth this would be I cannot imagine, but it makes it impossible to have two documents open and copy pre-arranged sections from one to another.

you can select the track you want (see below) copy it, close the doc, open the other, and paste it. pain, but doable. when i have to do something like this i select a large hunk and copy it to the side of the other document then select the parts i want from it and do the option drag to clone the piece i want out for use in the new plan.

3. Poor export options — you can't export to a vector format or export with a transparent background, for example.

xtrakcad cant do this and i dont think 3rdplanit could either. 3rdplanit has some cad export options for moving to a more sophisticated cad program for detailing, printing, etc.

4. "Magnetic" track snapping is half-baked. You cannot move more than one piece of track at a time and have it snap to an existing piece. If you want to move, say, 20 pieces of track over a few millimetres, you have to move each piece separately.

you can select multiple pieces of track by holding down the shift key and just keep selecting the track pieces you want. or you can select a contiguous set of track by holding down the option key and double clicking on one of the pieces of the track in the set and all will be selected. this is a trick to also show you where you may have a break in a strip of track.

you can have a piece of track (or a set joined together) automatically joined to another piece (or joined set) by choosing Connect Segment To... from the Arrange menu then clicking on the end of track you want to move over and join to another, then click onto the end of the section of track you want it attached to. this is the way to move hunks around w/o the magnetic snap. the magnetic snap is probably meant to be used when just adding one piece of track at a time.

5. Lack of finish and bug-testing — the application cannot handle filenames with non-ASCII characters, and you cannot export a file called "layout.psd" if your file is already called "layout" because the app thinks these are the same file. (They aren't.)

just being dumb with the extensions here and safe with the file names. osx is still getting use to how to handle extensions and programs are still doing odd things with showing them, not showing them, limiting your fiddling with them, etc.

another trick i do to help around finding stuff and changing track kinds all the time is to make a selection of track pieces at the side of my document that im using for most of the plan. then i just option click drag on the piece i want to make a copy of it and drag it over to my growing track and let the auto snap put it on. i find going back to the pallet and changing the track tool type all the time a drag...

Final verdict: 2/5
If there was any other alternative, I'd be using that instead.

There is Xtrakcad you can run on the mac now. its more unmac like than railmodeler as its a pc program ported to run in xwindows. it has its own quirks as well. I actually had a harder time getting going in xtrakcad than railmodeler. once you get going on xtrakcad you  get good at it fast (it is pretty powerful and has more features), but its best to keep a cheat sheet of how to do things as if you dont use it for a few weeks its one of those programs you get really frustrated with as you remember a feature, but only about half of how to do it and it makes you want to put your head through the screen!

cheers

jeff

[cteno4]

But which are the programs mentioned run on windows PC?
Everyone (except for me) seems to have a Mac.

also look at 3rdplanit, its a very sophisticated pc track cad program. almost too much it can do! big community using it and good user group.

jeff

[Tenorikuma]

Thanks for the comments, Jeff. An X-windows-based app kinda scares me, but I'll have a look at Xtrakcad.

The thing is, if Rail Modeller fixed the major annoyances, it could be a really nice app. Hopefully the developer puts my $40 to good use. :)

[cteno4]

Yeah, it took me like 3 installs and fiddles to get the new xwindows version of xtrak cad working. then its still an odd beast the way it runs, but is functional and has not bombed on me, but i have not pushed it on the mac version. just about to start converting our new layout design from railmodeler to xtrakcad today so i should be able to see how hardy it runs on the mac! doing our final plans in xtrakcad as most of the club is pc therefore xtrakcad is better to share and others to work on it. i was able to quickly and easily throw together our new layout plan easily with railmodeler. a few features in xtrakcad like layers is nice for our multiple track design also as it lets you just work on one loop in exclusion of the others when needed (ie pull the viaduct off to work on the ground level tracks.)

i do find railmodeler fine for poking around and trying ideas out quickly. once you get going in it its pretty fast. its not something that i would want to use to do a perfect layout or flex track with or cad level drawings. for that you need something like 3rdplanit.

you are stuck between the three worlds here, either its an opensource solution like xtrakcad where updates and mods are going to come in fits and starts from a volunteer basis, something simple and cheap from a home programmer like railmodeler, or something more expensive and professional, but made for as large a market as possible (ie pc and for high end freeform track design) like 3rdplanit.

send some polite feedback into the railmodeler developer, im sure they will love it if its constructive, helpful, and upbeat.

cheers,

jeff

[CaptOblivious]

Since this thread is still live and I've been using Rail Modeller for a few weeks, let me do a quick review summary.
4. "Magnetic" track snapping is half-baked. You cannot move more than one piece of track at a time and have it snap to an existing piece. If you want to move, say, 20 pieces of track over a few millimetres, you have to move each piece separately.

Railmodeller does allow you to join two segments of track all at once, but it's a menu option and not at all obvious at first. Choose Arrange -> Connect Segment To… then click on the end of the segment you want to attach elsewhere, then to the end of the segment you want it to connect to.

[Tenorikuma]

What I mean is, if you take one piece and move it to another, they snap together. If you highlight two pieces and move them both to another, they don't snap. So when I want to lengthen a section of a nearly-completed layout, I have to move each of the 20 pieces (or however many) one by one so they'll snap into place. If I don't like it, I have to move them all back one by one.

[cteno4]

What I mean is, if you take one piece and move it to another, they snap together. If you highlight two pieces and move them both to another, they don't snap. So when I want to lengthen a section of a nearly-completed layout, I have to move each of the 20 pieces (or however many) one by one so they'll snap into place. If I don't like it, I have to move them all back one by one.

Tenorikuma,

you can do this with the join command. say you have a layout you have made and you have a small yard ladder you want to joint onto the layout at a piece of track sticking off the layout. you just do these steps:

1) select the yard ladder by double clicking on any track piece in it while holding down the option key. this selects all the track that is connected together in the yard. if you find some that dont select this way you need to get them connected together. you can repeat the double click/option key trick until you are sure the chunk of track you want to move is all connected together.

2) go to the Arrange menu and choose Connect Segment To...

3) go to the end of the the piece of track of the yard that you want to have connect up with the stub on your layout and click on that end. when you hover over the end you will see the pointer change to a set of 4 little arrows point in to the center of the point area. it does not matter if the chunk of track you want to move is hilighted or not, you just do step 1 to make sure all the pieces of track in your chunk are connected together to move as one chunk. sometimes a piece of track will only be attached to one end even when both ends look like they are lining up with adjacent track ends. many times just selecting it and moving it a tiny bit will cause the connection click again and you will now find it connected at both ends.

4) then go to the end of the piece of track on the layout you want to have the yard attached to and click on the end of that piece of track (again you will see the pointer change over the end of the track). then your yard track will be attached to the layout! it will rotate the track if necessary to line the ends up.

this is sort of a step wise magnetic snap and actually is pretty fast in practice.

to reverse the process and remove the yard from the layout you can just do the following.

1) remove the section of track at where you want to remove the yard

2) double click on the yard ladder with the option key down to select the ladder

3) drag the ladder away from the layout some.

4) drag the connecting piece of track you removed in step one and re-attach it to the yard ladder

5) now you can double click/option key the yard to select it and move it or delete it or cut and paste it to another doc, etc

note if the beginning of the yard chunk you want to remove is a point you will either need to remove the piece of track in front of it (and then put it back later) or remove the point move the yard in two hunks then use the Connect Segment To... command to re-assemble the yard.

the one thing that that railmodeler does not have it the option of selecting groups once you have a group selected. what is needed is the ability once you have a group of tracks selected you can hold down the shift key and either option key double click on another set of track to add it to the selected set or hold down the shift key and rectangle select more tracks to add to your selected tracks. right now you can only add to a selected set of tracks by holding down the shift key while individually selecting pieces of track to add to the selected set.

cheers,

jeff

[Tenorikuma]

Thanks for the information. I thought the "join" command only worked for inserting extra pieces of track between the two "join-points".

[CaptOblivious]

The menu option is a little mysterious, and I agree that you should just be able to select a bunch of sections, and have them magnetically line up just like with one piece, but at least it's possible to do it one way or the other :D

[scott]

Thanks for the information. I thought the "join" command only worked for inserting extra pieces of track between the two "join-points".

That's what the  "join with sectional track" menu commands does. The "join segment to" command does what Jeff and Don describe above.

[cteno4]

Well, i spent a lot of sunday moving the new jrm track plan from railmodeler to xtrkcad on the mac. interesting process. Luckily i have 2 screens running on the mac so i could have the layout up on in railmodeler on the side while working in xtrkcad. i have xtrkcad running on x windows (x11) on the mac pretty well. still a few klunky things with it, but very functional. very hard to do any macros that are not just keystroke equivalents as the menus are all s/in x windows, not in the mac menu that macro programs would look for them in.

it took me a half hour to go back in and relearn all the little sectional track tips in strkcad and get them written down again (lost my last sheet with the pc when it went poof...). once that was out of the way it went pretty quickly. making shapes is a whole lot easier in railmodeler than xtrkcad as xtrkcad creates rectangles as 4 separate lines which you then group together, but once made you have to edit the separate line, you cant resize the whole group. the magnetic track snap of railmodeler is nice for fiddling on little things as you can play with it like you would regular track, just snapping and unsnapping sections of track till you get it the way you like. in railmodeler i would just have a little pile of pieces i would option drag copies from to quickly fiddle with something. in xtrkcad you have to continually delete sections and then rebuild with the track tool (trying to do the join command on each is tedious and the join command seems to be a little touchy in x windows and does not always complete.

but all in all once i got going in xtrkcad again it worked pretty quickly to rebuild the layout and do a second round fo adjustments to refine alignments and track lengths. i think i would still prefer to use railmodeler to do prototyping of a track idea. xtrkcad just has the big benefit of being able to share the track plan with the rest of the club which is mostly pc and have xtrkcad.

so i will still continue to fiddle with little ideas in railmodeler probably as its just easier with the magnetic track, but all the final plans will be in xtrkcad most likely.

cheers

jeff

[Martijn Meerts]

Railmodeller 4 was released today which adds support for layers and (finally) heights and grades and such. The 3D view was upgraded a bit as well so you can view the height differences in 3D.

It's still nothing like for example WinTrack, but then again, the cost difference between Railmodeller and WinTrack is rather big as well =)

[scott]

Great! And it'll run with 10.4, which means I'll still be able to use it--I was afraid it would jump up to 10.5 and I wouldn't be able to upgrade.

[scott]

Here's an early attempt at using the 3D function in RailModeller 4....I'm sure a better user and a tidier layout file with all the connections working out cleaner would give a better result.

[KenS]

Has anyone tried using the railset editor in RM 4 yet? I tried to edit a copy of the Unitrack set to add costs and mark unavailable elements, something I'd done a while back with RM3, but the editor didn't display the right pictures, and the changes didn't seem to happen, and when I tried re-entering the editor on the modified railset, it crashed with an error about missing layer info.

I could easily be using it wrong, since I haven't edited a railset in half a year, but I'm guessing there's a bug in there I need to report.

[CaptOblivious]

As I recall the railset editor hasn't been uodated to work with RM4 yet.

[RogMar]

Railmodeller 4 was released today which adds support for layers and (finally) heights and grades and such. The 3D view was upgraded a bit as well so you can view the height differences in 3D.

Ah.. finally!
Another update (4.1) now released, making the grading stuff a bit more convenient..
tinyurl.com/rm41up

Has anybody tried printing/exporting 3D views in RailModeller though??

cu -
roger

[Lawrence]

There is a chap who comes on to our ngaugeforum.co.uk who has designed a free program called SCARM, whilst still a work in progress, it is not bad for a one man band and is free.  It perhaps doesn't have all the bells and whistles of more established software yet but with a bit of effort can work quite well.  More info at http://www.scarm.info/index_en.html

[Mr Frosty]

Another happy user of XtrakCAD. I found it took a little while to get competent with it, but I now find it easy to use.

[cteno4]

roger,

thanks just got the update, nice to see it steadily improving. xtrak cad keep needing tweaks on the mac to keep it running on xwindows, so railmodeler has been great to replace it.

jeff

[keitaro]

i tried winrail 11 demo

it's not the easiest app to use IMO.

i'm tossing up atm to get win rail or anyrail.

as i am nearing the end of my layout i have been getting ready to look into getting software to start drawing up larger plans of my next intended layout for some fun.

Currently i have been  drawing it up in 100cm length x 80 depth blocks due to demo being piece limited and patching it together with paint. Still not sure i want to pay for anyrail i want a software that offers more than just the basics of track laying.

Any suggestions.

btw Tomix track.

[Martijn Meerts]

I would suggest WinTrack, except for the fact that they don't have Tomix track in their library. But for features it can't be beat, it even allows you to add all wiring in the program, and do a full electrical check.

(I'm still contemplating buying it myself, but it's a wee expensive, and the developers seem to be stuck in the 90s and refuse to make a downloadable version available ;))