I HAVE HEARD OF A COUPLE OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF SOFTWARE
FOR DESIGNING TRACK LAYOUTS. I NEED TO FIND OUT WHERE I
CAN GET THEM
CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP
THANX
JRRY
Well, I use a Mac exclusively, so the design software I have is called Empire Builder. It’s made by Haddon Software and is available for $35 at www.haddonsoftware.com. It doesn’t have all of the fancy 3D stuff that the others do, but it’s a great program and you cant beat the price. I can do a lot with it. They dont, however, have it available for the PC. There are half a dozen companies that make PC design software and I would start with either flipping through an MR magazine or doing a Google search for “train layout design software”. Good luck!
jt burke
THANX, JT, FOR YOUR HELP, I USE WINDOWS XP AND I’M NOT SURE IF YOUR
PROGRAM WILL WORK,BUT I CAN GO TO THAT WEB SITE AND SEE IF THEY
HAVE ONE THAT WILL WORK FOR ME.
THANX AGAIN
JJ
3rd PlanetHave been using it for 3 years. If you follow the tutoral is is easy. Don’t try and WING-IT I did and wasted about 3 mo. Works on any scale and does wonders with counting track and such. It is about $100.00 downloaded or less. The exact link is in MRM.
JJ,
First of all, welcome to the forum! [:)] This is great place to come and both receive and give a lot of information on model railroading.
Secondly - now this is NOT mandatory, just customary on the forum. I want to encourage you to consider using upper and lower case letters on your posts, where appropriate. ALL caps are somewhat more difficult to read and they usually convey a raising of the voice. I only use caps to emphasize a point that I really want to make.
Thirdly, on the topic of layout software. There are some good products out on the market. CADRail and 3DPlanit are probably two of the most popular and can actually handle 3D views and animation. They do come at a price.
Atlas makes a free download called Atlas RTS (Right Track Software). It’s limited and kind of quirky but it can do some nifty things with it if you take the time to learn it. I still use this to try out new ideas for my layout.
RTS does use Atlas sectional track in it’s library. You can access the download page by going to http://www.atlasrr.com. The download link will be on the left side of the page. (Although when I went to the link that I gave you above, I found myself at the download page automatically.) Anyhow, click, register, download, install, and you’re ready to go. It’s worth a look and playing around wth it a bit.
JJ, hope that helps…
Tom
[#welcome] Jrry, glad you stopped by.
I vote with Tom. Atlas RTS is weird but it works if you have a little patience. And its free. Finally got all to work and it has some neat extra features so you can build a yard ladder, and more.
Check it out.
Tim
Try XTrkCAD, it’s free and very good. Computes elevatoin for you automatically and has the entire Atlas track library. Also, you can run trains on the layout after you’re done to see if you will run into any trouble with your design.
I’ve used RTS from Atlas and thought it was fine until I tried XTrkCAD. Not going back to RTS. 
I’m using XtraCAD as well and I find it far superior to Atlas RR. I have not found the need to actually pay for one of the more expensive programs.
To save you the possible frustration of not being able to register for the Atlas software:
They do something non-standard when they e-mail you the link to the download page. If you simply click on the link, it may not work. What you need to do is select the link and cut-and-paste it into the Address bar. From what I’ve seen, this problem is probably dependent on which e-mail program you use.
I found the Atlas program perfectly adequate for my design work. I’m not trying to document a layout in MIL-SPEC for the government, after all. As has been pointed out by other forum members, once you’re actually driving spikes, you have to “fudge” the design a bit anyway.
The program itself is highly oriented towards Atlas sectional track products, but it does allow the use of flex track. (This is one of those things most users have trouble with, by the way.) Once you get the design down, it will give you a list of track pieces you need to build it.
I have used both Atlas RTS and XtrkCad to design my layouts, and with a little practice, both are relatively simple to use and understand.
My current layout, a 4x8 was designed with Atlas RTS and used Atlas track exclusively. My new 6x8 two level layout, which I hope to begin soon, was designed with XTrkCad software using the Kato HO Unitrack library.
Pictures of these designs are at the site in my signature which may give you some ideas on the versatility of these software packages.
(By the way, both of these software packages are free downloads.)