Anyone recommend track building software for MAC?

AJ - I use Railmodeller on my MAC -- I haven't used it in a few years, so the version I have is not up to date (but I just fired it up and it still seems to work on my MAC using Mojave OS - 10.14).  I think the latest version is 6.0(+) and its about $40.  Here's the website:  http://www.railmodeller.com

The developer lives in Germany and has been quite helpful answering questions, etc.  He's also been quite good about honoring my license whenever I've needed to upgrade.  From the looks of the website, it looks like he's added new features, track libraries, etc.  I use it for S-gauge (Flyer).  I adopted it several years ago, so I don't really recall what other apps I looked at - as you note, the apps are a bit more limited in the MAC world.  Like all software, there is a bit of a learning curve, but you can build some pretty simple layouts fairly quickly.  Complicated ones are, uh, complicated.  One feature that was added in the past few years was to have multilevel tracks so you could have elevated crossings, for example.

- Rich

I also use RailModeller Pro - works good for what I do, but my plans end up being fairly simple.

Big sheet of butcher paper, a ruler, and some pencils ... great way to do a layout drawing plan.

Other options are:

Empire Express - Which I would probably use if I had to pay for new software today.  I used their older trial version years ago and loved it.  It was very simple to use but was accurate.  I don't know how it compares now, but from the looks of it they just updated it to work on a modern version of MacOS.

XTrkCAD - It's free and open source.  I tried it and was able to do a couple things in it, but it was unstable and had a steep learning curve.  That was a few years ago and it has been updated a few times since.  Being free it would be a good place to start.

Now what I did was I ran SCARM on my Mac using PlayOnMac.  But this was before SCARM left beta, so it was still free and unlimited in what it could do.  I couldn't do 3D view, but I was fine with that as I didn't need it for my layout design.  You should still be able to do it this way with the current version of SCARM unless they have changed some of the core coding.

Of course if you use Boot Camp or one of the many Virtual Machine software packages to run Windows on your Mac (Which it sounds like you don't.  But I'm including it for completeness.) you can run any Windows compatible rail software that way.  But jut having a Mac doesn't mean you have options as I have listed some native MacOS things you can do above.

I use Railmodeller Express which is free http://www.railmodeller.com/express-edition-en.html

Brendan

Thanks guys!

RailModeller.

While I still prefer to sketch things out, I have had RailmodelerPro for about a year now.  I enjoy using it.  I have 34 versions of my yet to be layout stored in Finder.  That would have been alot of paper and probably more than one large eraser, if I had drawn all those by hand.

I also have the track template to use with paper and pencil.  It's good but still not as accurate as the computer.  

I use a Mac.  I run VMware Fusion, a Windows 7 virtual machine and RR Track.  Full disclosure, I work for VMware so I get the software free.  It works like it's running on a physical Windows machine.  I had to plug Fusion because I work for VMware but in reality, any of the virtualization software that works on a Mac should allow you to run Windows with any flavor of Windows track planning software.  The down side: not only do you need to purchase the virtualization software but you will need a Windows license too.  The screen shot below shows the MTH DCS software but you'll get the idea.

Tony