Illustrator Plug-in

Plugin

Been there, done that, XTrkCAD is better suited.

MR does their layout illustrations in the magazine with Illustrator. It makes the drawings much prettier because of the Illustrator capabilities. But when it comes to working with track to design a track plan XTrkCAD has better functionality.

Create in XtrakCad,

From Here to There

Copy/paste from XTrackCAD into Illustrator doesn't work. At least not with XTrackCAD 4.0.3 and Illustrator CS6.

You can however, export from XTrackCAD in DFX format which Illustrator can open. The caveat with this approach is Illustrator puts each and every line segment on a separate layer. Not XTrackCAD components mind you, but each and every individual line. Example: for every tie there are 4 layers (2 long sides, 2 short sides). A single turnout or a short length of track will generate a huge number of layers all by itself. While it is possible to combine the Illustrator layers into compound paths it is not at all practical. Plus, I highly doubt the Illustrator track planning plugin will recognize the compound paths as native track components.

Best to pick one or the other and stick with it. Designing a track plan - XTrackCAD, 3rdPlanIt, etc. Making a beautiful illustration of an existing track plan - Illustrator. My take on the subject anyway.

Well.... I'm on a Mac and

Well.... I'm on a Mac and work on a daily basis with Illustrator. Don't have the time to learn a new program.

Plugin

Install the plugin and you are off to the races.

thanks Allen

Thanks for the link. I missed it in your first post. It works good enough for some playing around. 

By the way: used to the metric system I'm still struggling with the scale settings. 

For an example: 1:10 scale (5 cm = 50 cm) what would be the right settings?

Regards,

Rob

The Netherlands

Any System You Like

In Illustrator under < Edit> < Preferences> < Units and Measurements> .

I mean something else.....

I now how I can set measurements from inch> cm. But how do I set the scale of the turnouts. It says "scale in feet" and then I can choose between 1 - 7/8 - 3/4 - 5/8 - 1/2 - 7/16 - 3/8 - 5/16 - 1/4 - 3/16 - 1/8 and there I'm lost.......

Art board scale

That is the scale of your drawing (Illustrator art board). If your art board is 1:1 with your benchwork then you would select scale = 1. If your art board is 2:1 then select scale = 1/2, and so on.

Oke, thanks. I'm trying to

Oke, thanks. I'm trying to figure out what the above means so maybe I come back on that.