Topic: Help finding software?

[Quemaqua]

Okay, so I really need to do some planning.  The idea is I need to do city planning.  As in... building a city.  I'm looking for software to assist me with this because using graph paper has more or less gotten utterly ridiculous because of the size of the project.  But I have no idea what to even look for.  I really just need something that's going to give me a huge canvas of some sort that'll let me draw lines around for buildings, streets, etc.  It doesn't have to be 3D, but it doesn't have to be 2D.  I just need something simple that'll help me more or less make a really big-ass blueprint to which I can refer when needed.  Simple is better than complicated.

Anybody have even the slightest idea where I might start looking?

[iPPi]

SimCity?

[TheOtherBelmont]

I remember the Interior Design students at my school using AutoCAD, I don't know how hard it is to use and how complex it gets though.

[Quemaqua]

Believe it or not, I actually considered using SimCity and just turning on cheats.  But I don't really think that's going to be the most convenient way to go.  =)  And yeah tet, I had a brief relationship with AutoCAD a long while ago, but it was for stuff that was pretty different and I didn't learn a whole lot.

[idolminds]

http://www.citycreator.com/

[Antares]

I was actually going to suggest SimCity as well, but you wouldn't really have exact control over what happens.

Any full CAD program is probably going to have a learning curve steeper than it would be worth for this kind of thing.  I really have no idea what would work well.

[Quemaqua]

Fun link, idol.

Yeah... what I really want is just something easy I can graph with, but the only fucking graphing programs I can find are for like cross-stitching and crap.  I just want something to more or less simulate graph paper, but that makes it easy to throw notes on (for things like street names, building names, etc.) and have various levels of zoom on a huge grid space with no limit.

[idolminds]

Again not what you're wanting, but this is pretty sweet. Unfortunately its $40.

I'll look for what you're talking about now...

[idolminds]

You know what might work? Inkscape. Its all vectors so its scalable/zoomable (from 1% 25600%), can display a grid, and is fairly easy to use. Just draw shapes and stuff, use the text tool to name them...whatever.

*EDIT*

Oh neat, a manual.

[Antares]

How about this? simplified CAD software with downloadable building models.

[Quemaqua]

Thank you both for the suggestions.  I can't really get a good sense of the CAD program.  Hard to tell without giving it a whirl, which I may do.  And Inkscape isn't a terrible thought.  All I really need is the ability to draw basic shapes, and if it's got a grid.... that could work.  I still won't be able to search for individual streets or anything like that, but that isn't necessarily such a problem.

Thanks for the ideas!  It's a hell of a lot more than I came up with in the half hour or so I was looking.

EDIT - Damn.  Inkscape is cool as hell.  Why haven't I been using this just in general for like... forever?