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Cadrail Program Features and Information

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The original railroad CAD program.

Since 1990 Cadrail has provided all the extra drawing tools and features that will satisfy advanced users. However, beginners can create simple drawings quickly and grow into the harder parts of railroad design.

You get a rock solid, all around drawing tool for all your drawing needs. Design railroad layouts, buildings, bench work, schematics or anything else you need. Cadrail is not only a great CAD program its a great desktop publishing program too.

 

This is a powerful CAD program with many different railroad design tools. You can create track plans of any size and shape. There are easy to use drag and drop tools that allow you to snap track sections together end-to-end and align them automatically. Flexible CAD tools let you create complex shapes that your train will run on and that you can build.

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Requirements

Sample Drawings

Demo Program

 

 


Click the picture for
an enlarged view.

 

Plan, Profile, and 3d views let you add elevations to your drawing so you can see things from any angle.

 

Auto Alignment tools make it easy to snap together complex figures and shapes. Just drop one object onto another and the ends automatically come together.

 

Cadrail includes easy to use snap-together, drag and drop tools plus Hundreds of Powerful CAD tools that let you draw anything you want. Add your walls and bench work to the drawing. Make a detailed building elevation or trestle template. Do wiring diagrams, and track schematics. Your only limited by your imagination and skill.

All of the CAD drawings
you see on this
web site were made
with Cadrail.

 

Click for enlarged view...

It's not just for track!

 

 

Turnout Objects (Switches) make working with yards and other complex shapes easy. Just drag and drop in a turnout. Cadrail automatically rotates it into position and cleans up any connections. An extensive set of tools is available for complex combinations of yard ladders, sidings and crossovers.

 

Highly Accurate. When you are done tweaking that yard ladder two inches to the left of that bridge foundation, you will KNOW that it's going to work and you have maximized use of the space.

 

 

Turnout Objects
and special yard tools
make track work easy.

 

Run Trains on your drawing to get a better feel of how your trains will operate.

Printouts to any scale. Cadrail supports ANY scale and ANY units (English, metric, etc) on any device supported by Windows. Print your whole layout or any other portion at any scale ratio you select. Print any area you select at full life size on multiple pages.

Extensive Libraries with thousands of shapes you can use for things like layouts, buildings, bridges, scenery, track and other stuff.


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Filled polygons
add to realism.

 

You get a full power, fully functional application with all of the famous Cadrail features. Excellent 200 page printed manual with examples. Extensive interactive computerized Help file.

It takes a little extra time to learn a real CAD program. But once you get on board there is no limit to what you can draw. Here are some samples of what you can do.


Unlimited layers
and styles.
Show rails and ties,
cross-hatch, filled, etc.

 

 

 

 

Why Choose Cadrail?

Ever since you felt the thrill of watching a long string of cars making their way to points unknown, you had the railroad bug. Now you want to start your own railroad empire and do it right the first time. Cadrail can help.

 

 

Get back the accuracy you are losing on paper. You will see that extending a 24" radius curve from that switch makes the curve hang an inch over the bench work at the other end, before you have to tear up the track and start over.

Did you ever wonder why the train always derails where you start that curve? It looked OK when you "eyeballed it" but the train just doesn't seem to make it through that last bend. Cadrail can help solve these problems.

With Cadrail you can load a library of pre-drawn figures and then drag and drop them into your layout. You can cut the yard out of that layout, paste it into the other, and never look at a copy machine. You can resize the entire layout by a factor of 0.333333. Then you can ask the computer, how far is it from here to there? The answer comes back to the thousandth of an inch.
It won't be easy. CAD programs take time to learn. You must first learn to use the computer, then learn to use Cadrail. If you are already experienced on the computer and are familiar with what CAD is about, then Cadrail will be easy. If not, you have some learning to do. You can expect to spend 3 to 20 hours exploring all of Cadrail's powerful tools and reading the manual.

Once you are up to speed, the learning will have been worth the effort. You will get a perfect printout to any size. You will get very accurate dimensions from the computer when you do start to build. As your layout grows, you can delete, copy, modify and experiment to no end with Cadrail. Try that on paper!

Keep in mind that once you have an accurate plan, you still have to build the layout correctly. Cadrail can help with that too. Having an accurate plan to start with will save many future construction disasters. When you draw with Cadrail, you follow the same principles as when you build the layout. To make a circular curve on your layout you locate the radius point and then swing out the arc using a compass or a piece of string. The tools in Cadrail are similar to those you always use.
What if you can't set a radius point because the furnace is in the way? Use Cadrail to get x, y, z coordinates along the curve at whatever spacing you want. Then, layout a grid on the bench work and plot the curve. Cut each riser using the elevations Cadrail gives you. Getting Ideas?

Every CAD drawing in this web site was made with Cadrail.

 

 

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