Here is my first experience with XtrackCad. I drew it a couple of years ago and bought everything needed to build it, but it was said to be busy. I even have all the wood frame pieces cut and ready to be assembled, but everything is being stored in boxes right now including all the buildings and scenery. It three levels with a very small yard and I have a removable 48”x12”, 9 track staging that attaches to the right side. I’m busy building on another layout now and will probably start up again on my “Cactus Flats” layout in a year or two. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I love XtrackCad.
I use XtrackCAD and like it. I'm not up to speed on some of the particulars like showing benchwork, but I'm on a rectangle, so I guess that doesn't matter. A complete instruction manual would be nice. My only bug type problem with it is it's tendency to zoom in or out uncontrollably. I'm using a Mac with a magic mouse if it matters. It's kind of frustrating to be working on something and then have the whole layout disappear into a small rectangle in the lower left.
I have really tried hard to use and like XTrkCad over the last few months but it is, for my purposes rubbish. Simple operations like moving a switching array a few inches seem to be impossible without removing and rebuilding, adding new track to endpoints seems to work very rarely especially when elevations are involved. It took me 4 hours to join two fixed radius curves with 15 feet of straight track and even then it was a compromise as the track would always get drawn outside the room by at least a few inches. This is supposed to be a relaxing and fun hobby, Xtrakcad is just frustrating.
I had the same problem when I first started. It is different playing field that is for sure and until you get the basic concept you will never get it especially if you maintain a negative attitude. I tried on and off for a couple of years without success. I kept going back Atlas RTS which I already was comfortable with, but then I wanted to do a layout with Unitrack and RTS just could not do what I wanted, plus I wanted more structures and with XTrkCad I could make anything I wanted. I was determined to draw my dream layout and decided to spend a week of doing nothing else but learning XTrkCad. People were suggesting thing like setting the sticky settings and then things started to fall in place. Pretty soon I was an expert and I was whipping things out left and right. I was even making my own turnouts like the Atlas code 55 curved turnout that wasn’t available at the time, but was promised to come out. Now I have all the Fastrack turnouts in my collection as well. Believe me once you figure it out, you wouldn’t be going back to anything else. There is one thing that RTS has that I wish XTrkCad had and that is the 3D elevation view. That is really handy. If XTrkCad had that, nothing could compare with XTrkCad. I’ve even tried some trial programs that cost big bucks and I was disappointed. I do have to say one thing and that is once I learned XTrkCad, a few other CAD programs that I was struggling with suddenly fell into place. Oh I just wanted to add that now that I understand it, I can draw any 4x8 layout in under an hour and most in less than 30 min.
Have you tried the Atlas RTS? It doesn’t have the flexibility as XTrkCad and it’s mostly for Atlas track, but it is easy to learn and it’s free.
I'm sorry you've had such a frustrating experience with the program. There is certainly a rather steep initial learning curve, and it isn't necessarily intuitive even for experienced CAD users (because it doesn't work quite the way they expect). Have you tried the online tutorial? It's not a panacea, but it seems to have helped many others get past some of the issues you describe.
TwinDad is right, and I'm speaking from the point of view of a programmer with a lot of experience with vector drawing tools. Once I figured out a few things (like the ability to rotate track pieces by holding down the SHIFT key), it all came together very fast. Now I can knock out track plans in no time. Stick with it and try out the tutorial. I think you'll be very happy you did! :tb-biggrin:
It's not so much a "negative attitude', but frustration in trying to get to first base. I maintain any program should get the users started without reading a overly long manual. Common, obvious operations should be easy to find and execute. This is any PC program. Graphics programs are the worst with way too many icons most of which you have to guess, try and then try to remember what does what. Ok, what time are you coming over?? Yes, but here is a perfect example of what I just said. I, for the life of me, can't find out how to remove (delete) track pieces once they are added to the plan. Something very basic and what should be simple. The context menu shows the option, but it is grayed out. No offense, but you are already 3/4 of the way there unlike most of us. I have little problem making through the Windows Registry, but graphics programs just plain suck.
I understand completely as I also felt the same way a few years ago. The only real reason why I didn’t write it off completely was the fact that there were so many fantastic layouts drawn by others, so I figured that it had to be me. I can’t remember who it was now, but I was posting the same frustrations that you are when someone mentioned something to me that suddenly turned on the lights. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I’ll search through my old posts and see if I can find it. I’m not saying it will help you because at the time I was already a pro with RTS. i also found that by taking apart another drawing from somebody else can also be a learning experance. i had downloaded a drawing from Yahoo XtrkCad groups http://groups.yahoo.com/group/XTrkCad/ and started moving things around and it really helped.
I see my the message history the popularity has fallen off continuously from the 1st half of '07. I will talk additional 'looks' at these programs.
Here is one of the posts of my frustiation http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=104865 Don't know if it will help, but it shows how i felt at the time. laugh: UPDATE: I just reread the post and I don’t think this is the one I was thinking of and I can’t find it. It might have been at cs.trains.com which is where I used to post before I found TrainBoard.
I use "Anyrail"............it has a free-ware version to try out (although, not very versatile.) I learned to use this program in an evening of messing around with it, well enough to design a large "N" scale "Unitrack" layout. It has multiple track libraries, and is very easy to use. I am by no means an "expert" with it, but I can use it well enough to do anything I need. No manuals, no frustration, it's all good :tb-cool:
Seriously. Do the tutorial. I understand that well designed software packages should have intuitive, easy to use interfaces. But there are two realities that must be taken into account. Even the best designed user interfaces cannot accomodate the thinking of all types of people. There will inevitably be some set of people who simply think differently from the designers, and for that set of people, the program will not work as well as a differently-written program. You can't please everybody. The second part is that, like with most open-source programs, XTrackCAD was not written by a dedicated (as in full-time-paid) professional team of programmers with usability and marketing and other experts weighing in on the various design aspects. As best I can tell, it was written by a handful of guys in their spare time. It works, and it works well, once you figure it out, but I've yet to see anybody say it was intuitive to figure out at first. When you consider the price, though, it's hard to beat the bang/buck ratio. IF you can get over the learning curve. The folks behind XTC do realize that it's a bit quirky. But there's only a couple of people actively working on it, so progress is slow. The next release will have some significant under-the-covers changes that will make some things easier, and will create a platform from which we can improve some other things, but it will take time.
Oh, I understand. I just need 2 hours to get the hang of it. I feel that it has incredible potential. I already use Atlas RTS and I feel that XTrakCAD has more possibilities as well as more libraries.
I had tried it, and there are a lot of issues that made me abandon it. It was faster and easier to create the layout in Pro -Engineer.
Just out of curiosity what kind of issues? I can’t remember how many layouts I’ve drawn, but I’ve drawn layouts in O scale Lionel and MTH Track, N-scale Atlas Code 55, Code 80 track and Unitrack. The only issue I know of is polygon color issues when transferring between Windows XP & Vista, which isn’t a problem at all when only using one or the other OS.
XtrkCad can be used for other things besides Layouts I Designed and built a shed in my back yard using XtrkCad.
