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MR Insider Weekly: October 20, 2014
Drew, what drafting/CADD program does Rick use to do the trackplan drafting and the scenery layers for those great MR track plans? The people in the drawings add such great scale to the layouts and show activity which is essential in any drawing.
2nd the request for what application is he using.
Yeah, I’d like to know what program Rick is using.
What’s up with the life size cardboard cutout in Ricks cube? Looking forward to seeing the trackplan, Rick you always do a awesome job with all of the trackplans in the various MR magazines.
Would very much like to know more about what program Rick is using and perhaps an in-depth “how to” in creating a track plan.
Thanks!
Thank you for all of the kind comments about the track plans. Sometimes it’s a bit of a puzzle to fit everything into a given space, sort of reverse-engineering what the author built in order to recreate the layout as a track plan, but always gratifying when things fall into place and it’s always educational to explore the details that make each layout unique and relevant for some location or time period.
The software I use is primarily Adobe Illustrator. Besides art and railroads, I do a bit of computer programming, so I created a number of small utility programs such as one that allows me to drag shapes of a given size and scale into an Illustrator document. For turnouts, crossovers, curves (with and without John-Armstrong-formula easements), etc., I wrote a plugin for Illustrator that adds tools to draw them to scale as shown in the video, plus a few other specialized plugins. CADtools from Hot Door Software is also an essential tool for drawing accurately and to scale in Adobe Illustrator. For the scenery, I use a combination of Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter, where using a tablet and stylus is a must for control over subtle changes in brush color and texture, which makes it much like paint on canvas. Trees and shrubs usually come from a custom “image hose” I made with various sizes, shapes, colors, and types of trees (deciduous, pine, autumn).
As for the cardboard cutout—it was a stand-in for my son when he couldn’t attend his cousin’s wedding, and I just keep it here at work to liven things up. soon I’ll be flying out west for HIS wedding and plan to bring it along so he can be his own wedding crasher! Shhh, it’s supposed to be a surprise…
Rick Johnson l Lead Illustrator l Kalmbach Publishing Co.