I’ve been playing around with a copy of 3rd PlanIt, which is CAD software for designing model railroad layouts.
Saying that 3rd PlanIt is CAD software is like saying that Notepad is a Desktop Publishing System. You can do basic CAD type stuff for laying out the room and framework, but it’s not CAD. (And I know what I’m talking about because I used to be a CAD jockey.)
That said, when you start laying down the track there are some cool features there. It’s pretty slick for track design, but it’s not always intuitive about how things work.
It does a nice job lining up switches and creating curves with easements, but the error messages don’t always tell you why it can’t do something.
Ah well, it’s software, and all software sucks.
It’s pretty fun to try and stuff my space full of what I want, and it’s much easier to move stuff around and be sure that it fits using this software.
Now if I could just find a design that works…
