3D Railroad Concept and Design 1.0
Company: Abracadata
Estimated Price: $99.99
http://www.abracadata.com

Remember the fun of making and running model train layouts? Want to do it again? Remember the expense of wasting materials and redoing layouts because you didn't get something quite right the first time? Want to avoid that?

3D Railroad Concept and Design will help you do that and more, by giving you the tools to create and test your model railroad designs in your computer before you spend the money to buy the materials to build an actual layout. It comes with a large range of pre-made track, buildings, and scenery to allow you to fully design your layout. 3DRRC&D lets you do bridges, hills, tunnels, multilevel tracks, and even spiral helix track designs.

After your design is complete, you can scroll around it for a three-dimensional view, and even run test trains on it to check for errors such as alignment problems or elevation mismatches. Once your virtual layout meets your desires and passes the virtual operational test, you can print out detailed layout, parts, and hardware lists--including prices. The included materials library helps with manufacturers' pricing information, which you can edit to ensure that the prices on the final printout are up-to-date.

The layout can be scaled to change from one standard model railroad type, for example, HO, to any other. HO is the default scale.

3DRRC&D is one of several railroad enthusiast programs available or planned by Abracadata. Train Engineer Deluxe is currently shipping, and 3D Railroad Master is due to be released soon. Visit the Abracadata website for the latest information about which programs are available.

Requirements and Installation:
3DRRC&D requires a PowerPC Mac, System 7.5 or higher, 24 MB RAM according to the CD-ROM case (32 MB according to the user's manual), and 15-80 MB of hard drive space according to the CD-ROM case (80 MB minimum according to the user's manual). The CD-ROM must be present to allow access to the extensive 3DRRC&D data. A monitor set to at least 256 colors and at least a 2x CD-ROM drive are also required.

3DRRC&D has no separate installer. To install, just drag the 3D Railroad folder from the CD-ROM to the desired location on your hard drive. This gives you the full 80 MB installation. You can delete folders of items you don't need, such as scenery, or, if you need to save space, just install the folders you want to use.

All Aboard!
3DRRC&D is a pretty complex software package, so getting proficient takes some time. However, the manual has a short tutorial to get you started. You can also gain additional experience by editing or customizing the four sample layouts before jumping in on your own.

Very complex layouts may be constructed in a relatively short time, especially if you start with one of the samples. For instance, I opened a sample layout that had a large oval with a spur that extended out to one side. I enlarged the size of the layout base to give more room, selected and copied the entire sample layout, pasted, rotated, and moved the copy, and then joined the two spurs. This doubled the size of the layout and gave me two connected ovals.

For those of you who are familiar with object oriented drawing programs such as Adobe Illustrator or AppleWorks drawings, the concepts of the objects in the 3D railroad layout will be familiar. For those of you who are not, just think of the objects as separate computer modeled objects that have size, color, etc.

The sample layouts that come with the program appear to be located on an island in a lake, with tree covered and snow topped mountains in the distance in the 3D view.

Bumpy Rails
I found a few areas of bumpy rails in the program and the users manual, but nothing that would derail the train.

The user's manual has an unusual and confusing layout, in that the menu command explanations are in the third section, after the explanation of the basic (and some not so basic) features of the program, and after the tutorials. I found myself having to repeatedly refer forward to the command explanations to get through the tutorial. Even worse, the tool bar descriptions are located in the back of the manual, after the list of manufacturers. With the strange layout of the manual, it almost makes sense to go to the back and read the chapters towards the front!

I also found one menu command that, although listed as a command in the appropriate section, had no explanation (Get Lost Items). Also, several menu item explanations just repeat the name of the menu item as the functional description, and so are not at all useful.

One small subsection in the manual is about rotation of objects around the origin, but the point around which the object rotates is set by a mouse click anywhere in the model, and has nothing to do with the center of the object or with the center of the entire model, which origin would imply. This section should be read as if it said "Rotate around set point."

I didn't discover that the program had layers until I was writing this review, since the layers tool bar is not visible by default, and even then the layer tool bar is located in an entirely different area of the screen than the manual says. Layers allow one to put different items on different layers, such as track on one, buildings on a second, and scenery on a third. This makes editing easier, since items that may be located near each other but that have different functions can be isolated on their own layers.

I also had problems because I did not install the sample layouts at first. I tried to load several samples from the CD-ROM, but they would not load. I got an alert which disappeared so quickly I could not even ensure that it contained text. It appears that the program will not load data files from the CD-ROM, even if the program is run from the CD-ROM. However, the manual does not mention this limitation.

The "Zoom In" feature in the View menu always relocated the center of the viewed area to a point near the top left corner of the layout, even when an object was selected in another area of the layout before zooming. The screen redraw when using Balloon Help was very erratic, with the previous balloon remaining until the new one appeared when pointing to a new tool in the tool bar.

Although 3DRRC&D has standard Macintosh menus and dialog boxes, the Windows origins of the program shows through in a few places, especially in the manual. Occasionally, the user is told to "Press the right mouse button" or to hold the "Control" key rather than the "Command" key (when the "Command" key really is the proper key).

The Abracadata website has an update to version 1.11 for the Windows version, but has no updates for the Macintosh version at this time.

Summary
In spite of the problems with the manual, and the minor problems with the program interface and file loading, I would recommend 3DRRC&D to anyone who wants to design a model railroad layout. The program is powerful and relatively easy to use once its quirks are understood. The included sample layouts help in understanding the features and capabilities of the program.

MacMice Rating: 3.5

David Price
GCSPhotoBug@WWBChat.com