Those have improved some in recent releases, and you can now build a curve to a specific radius fairly easily (I still had to break out a calculator at one point). The largest problem at present is that the tools for building curves with flex track are very poor. And the author's focus right now seems to be on adding new features rather than making some of the existing basics work better. It worked pretty well when I was using Kato Unitrack, but as the new layout is going to be based on flex track, the limits are much more apparent.
At heart it's a design tool for sectional track. This is a great design tool within its limits, but those limits are pretty severe. But as a time-saving tool that lets you focus on the "design" part, rather than all the fussing about with rulers, protractors, and string, it's pretty much indispensable.įor years I've used RailModeller Pro (the paid version there's also a more limited free one). I've done that, as did thousands of others before computers came along. You can certainly design a model railroad without it.
RAILMODELLER PRO NEGATIVE ELEVATIONS SOFTWARE
Good track planning software is really an essential tool. And I'm also planning to hand-lay at least some turnouts using the Fast Tracks jigs, although that turned out to be a lot simpler to design in XTrackCAD than I'd expected. If you weren't already aware, Japanese N is 1:150 scale rather than the usual 1:160 used in American/European N, and, oddly, for Japanese Shinkansen models, but I'm modeling normal trains for the most part.
Much of what I learned was basic, but some of it was very specific to what I'm doing, which is a flex track layout in Japanese N scale. This time I started knowing it was going to be a pain, but with the commitment to see that through. It's not at all obvious, at least not to me. I've made a few half-hearted attempts in the past, but was always turned off by the amount of up-front work needed to learn the dang thing. Today's post is about my latest (and more successful) attempt to learn to use XTrackCAD for layout design (see diagram above).
0 kommentar(er)
