I’ve learned and used XtraCAD and I have no problem with vector based drawing systems. That being said, XtraCAD doesn’t render in 3d and I am planning a 3d Intensive layout.
From the images they both seem to do about the same thing, with 3rd Plan It looking a little more colorful. What else can 3rd Plan It do that CADRail can’t and vise-versa.
Am I right that 3rd Plan It has a larger library of buildings and can do engineer’s view of layout as well as 3d operations–but CADRail can’t?
Added: I actually tried a search and came up with only two posts. This is wierd because I know it has been discussed often.
For 3rd Plan-It, there is a large Yahoo group. There’s probably one for Cadrail as well. If I wasn’t already used to 3rd Plan-It’s quirks, I’d probably switch, or even better just go back to AutoCAD, as sometimes I find all the ‘artsy’ stuff just gets in the way. Although being able to operate on the plan is kind of nice - that 4x8 on my web site that I WAS going to build as my intial ‘test’ layout, for example - I spent a couple of hours running trains on that with 3PI, which prove to me that the design was good for more than just running the trains roundy-round.
–Randy
I don’t know if it’s worth it to you, but I’ve evaluated both and I like 3rd Plan It better. CADRail had some quirks that I just couldn’t deal with. In my experience, 3PI is a model railroader’s CAD system. CADRail is a CAD user’s model railroad system. 0.02.