Anyone one know what software Model Railraoder uses for the track plans in the mags?
Don
I believe that Kalmbach uses general high-end drawing tools (Illustrator, last I heard) for drawing trackplans, not any of the specialized model RR CAD products. That’s why they look better then virtually any CAD output. (well, that, and they are professional artists)
Contributors send in track plans in a variety of formats, including hand-drawn. For example, for my recent article in MRP 2008, I did the track plan drawings in 3rd PlanIt, but the Kalmbach artists skillfully redrew them. I usually send them a variety of formats (.dxf, .pdf, etc.), but I don’t know if they use any of those native files or simply use them as templates over which to render the final plans.
The end result is great looking track plans, but it’s errors-in-errors-out in a very few cases, where poorly-rendered input from an author results in a Kalmbach published plan that has obvious errors and could not be built as drawn.
Byron
Model RR Blog