When to use the orthographic editor vs. the perspective verification view, and the footprint / schematic 2D styles.

2D and 3D modes

The editor is one R3F scene with two cameras. The mode toggle on the top bar swaps which one is active. Nothing else changes — you can edit in either mode, and pieces, selections, joins, and snapping all behave the same.

2D mode (orthographic, top-down)

Use 2D for planning. It's what most of your time will look like:

Pieces draw at their true millimetre dimensions, no perspective foreshortening.
Track uses the standard plan symbology: each piece is outlined in black, with a black cap line at every connector marking where pieces join — so you can read individual pieces and their joints at a glance. The colour-coded fill (piece kind, selection, off-board warnings, layer tint) stays underneath the outline.
The grid is visible and snap-to-grid is precise.
The minimap shows where you are at a glance.
Joins read cleanly — you can tell green from yellow from red without rotating the camera.

Footprint vs. schematic

A selector in the canvas's top-left corner — like AutoCAD's in-viewport visual-style control — switches how 2D track is drawn:

Footprint (default) — the sleeper outline described above, drawn at each system's real sleeper-base width (so wide integrated-roadbed track like Kato Unitrack reads broader than bare track). It looks like the physical piece seen from above, so it's the easiest to read when you're matching plan to plastic. It stays a clean band at every zoom — sleeper-tie detail lives in the 3D view, not the 2D plan. Special pieces are marked over the band so they read at a glance — an uncoupler gets a distinct ring-and-bar glyph (it imports as a plain straight, so the planner draws its own), and pieces that carry their own marking from the import (a buffer-stop drawing, edge marks) show that.
Schematic — a thin centerline per piece, with no fill. It's the expert view for dense trackwork: in a busy yard the footprints merge into one blob, while the centerlines stay legible so you can follow which route connects where.

Both are the same editing surface — selection, snapping, dragging, and connections behave identically; only the drawing changes. Your choice is remembered on this device, and the selector hides in the pure 3D view (there's nothing 2D to style).

Customising the look

The Schematic appearance section on your profile lets you tune how 2D track is drawn:

Line weight — how thick the schematic centreline is. The default is bumped up from the old hairline; make it thicker or thinner to taste.
Track colours — a colour for every piece state: the per-kind defaults (straight, curve, turnout/crossing/slip, structure), plus selected, validation error, warning/off-board, incompatible, and the placement ghosts. A reset button puts them all back.

The colours apply across both 2D styles (the schematic centreline and the footprint bed fill); the line weight is schematic-only. Your settings save to your account and follow you across devices, and are kept on the device too so they work offline.

3D mode (perspective)

Use 3D for verification. It's where you check that the plan will actually build:

See grades from an angle. A 2% climb on a curve is invisible top-down; in 3D it's obvious.
Spot clearance issues — does that overpass really clear the train below?
Walk around the layout the way a viewer will see it on the baseboard.

Track in 3D draws as a real superstructure: two raised steel rails at the system's true gauge, running on timber sleeper ties at the system's tie spacing, sitting on the roadbed — so a piece reads as the model track you're holding rather than a coloured slab. The detail is built efficiently (one or two merged meshes per piece), so even a large layout stays responsive. This is still verification, not presentation — the rails and sleepers are there to make grades, clearances, and joints legible from an angle, not to render a finished scene.

3D is not a presentation view. There's no train animation, no scenery rendering, no photoreal lighting. The point is engineering verification: does the plan build, and does it run trains without binding or bottoming out?

Switching back and forth

You're allowed to flip between modes mid-edit. Selection survives the switch, undo history survives, the camera roughly preserves where you were looking. There's no "save the 3D version" — both modes write to the same scene.