Mon 17 Jul 2006

Could I recommend the 3rd PlanIt railroad CAD program?

Posted by Daniel Swearingen under 3PI , Model Railroading , Product Review
[3] comments / Leave a comment 

I’ve had several people write me and ask if I think they should buy 3rd PlanIt because they like the plans I was able to make with it.

3rd PlanIt (3PI) (http://www.trackplanning.com/) is a CAD system strongly optimized for drawing model railroad track plans. I’ve been using it off and on since 2000 or so. I was a semi-experienced AutoCAD user many years before that.

The Good:

  • I designed my layout and continue to maintain the plan as I build in 3PI. It has been stable and productive for me to use. I use version 7.10.006 which was released March 2, 2004.
  • I find the feature set of 3PI powerful and fun to use.
  • If 3PI was being maintained I would recommend it highly.

The Bad:

  • No updates were been released between early 2004 and early 2007.
  • 3PI is the product of one man, Randy Pfeiffer. I truly believe his work is very good (again — I’m a happy user) but it can be a problem when a company is essentially one person. Occasionally Randy gets committed to other tasks such that purchase orders sometimes do not get processed in a timely fashion.
  • NOTE: (February 2007) Version 8 has been released!! In April 2005 the next version, 8.0 was coming “soon” and Randy Pfeiffer gave a detailed view of what he had been running into as he implemented threading to 3PI. I’m a Win32 C++ developer myself and his commentary looks legitimate. See his posting at the Yahoo! Group 3rdPlanIt : 3rd PlanIt Users Group

Bottom line:

NOTE: (February 2007) Version 8 has been released!! I like the product. It took a long time for Version 8 but it looks good. I can now recommend that other people buy 3PI.

 

3 Responses to “Could I recommend the 3rd PlanIt railroad CAD program?”

  1. Daniel Swearingen Says:
    July 29th, 2006 at 5:52 am

    After I wrote this (and independent of my writing) there was a flurry of activity at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/3rdPlanIt/ where Randy wrote that he had been having some medical problems but was looking forward to getting back to coding. I think it is fair to say a bit of a flame war ensued.

  2. rosemary Says:
    May 7th, 2008 at 9:21 pm

    I am a new comer to the CAD experience. Would this program be something I could learn easily and use. I’m comfortable with computers and photo programs but I am not an architect. Please can anyone advise

  3. Daniel Swearingen Says:
    May 8th, 2008 at 7:11 pm

    Hi Rosemary,

    Per my updated review, 3rdPlanIt is now fully updated and supported. I’d go to the 3rdPlanIt website and download the trial version and try it out. If it works for you then you can buy a license key to convert the trial version to a full version.

    Best Regards,
    Dan