Products
RailCOMPLETE® is a BIM tool for railway infrastructure design, built as a plugin for AutoCAD. It covers the full breadth of railway disciplines — from track alignment and signalling to overhead lines, earthing, and telecom — in a single integrated environment.
What makes RailCOMPLETE different from other CAD tools is its architecture. The software is built on two layers that work together:
The generic software
RailCOMPLETE itself is a domain-neutral BIM engine. It provides the core capabilities that every railway project needs: track modeling, object placement, property management, typed relations between objects, model checking, table editing, 3D export, and Lua scripting. This engine is identical in every country and every installation.
On its own, the generic software does not know what a Norwegian main signal looks like, what properties a French switch has, or which rules govern Finnish axle counter placement. That knowledge comes from the second layer.
Learn more about RailCOMPLETE’s features
DNA — Definition of Network Assets
DNA is the collection of customization data that tells RailCOMPLETE what kinds of railway objects exist in a particular country, how they look, how they behave, and what rules govern them.
When a user creates a new BIM project, RailCOMPLETE loads the national DNA and from that point on, consults it for everything: which objects can be placed, what properties they carry, what validation rules apply, and how they should appear on drawings. The same generic software, loaded with a different DNA, becomes a specialized tool for a different country.
This separation is analogous to how Excel is the same software everywhere, but the spreadsheets differ per company and per country. RailCOMPLETE is the engine; DNA is the data that drives it.
DNA Editor
The DNA Editor is a dedicated desktop application for creating, editing, and maintaining DNA files. It replaces the manual XML editing that agents have historically relied on, providing a visual, structured environment with real-time validation, integrated Lua editing, and full import/export to RailCOMPLETE’s XML format.
The DNA Editor is currently in development and will soon enter an open beta phase.
Learn more about the DNA Editor
Why this architecture matters
Most railway CAD tools are either generic (and require heavy manual setup per project) or bespoke (and locked to a single country’s standards). RailCOMPLETE’s two-layer approach avoids both traps:
- Consistency — Every planner on the same network works with the same object catalog, the same property definitions, and the same validation rules. The DNA enforces this automatically.
- Adaptability — Entering a new country does not require rewriting the software. A new DNA is developed to encode that country’s standards, and the existing engine supports it immediately.
- Shared investment — Core software development benefits every user worldwide. National customization costs are carried only by those who need them. This makes world-class BIM tooling economically viable even for smaller railway administrations.
Explore further
- RailCOMPLETE features — Object Manager, Relations, Model Check, 3D, Lua scripting, and more.
- What is DNA? — The full explanation of how national customization works.
- DNA Editor — The authoring tool for creating and maintaining national DNA files. Currently approaching open beta.
- Glossary — Key terms and definitions used across the documentation.