As a Planner, or as a Planning student, you’ll undoubtedly have to make some street cross-sections. And while I may be a geek, making cross-sections is crazy fun! You’ll have to fit a whole bunch of different elements into one street, while trying to make everyone happy – drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, urbanists, engineers (impossible).
Typically this is done in CAD, and then often rendered in Illustrator. But if you want to skip these steps, and throw together quick street sections, I highly recommend streetmix.net. It looks good, and has a bunch of different elements – bikes, planters, walk-up apartments, and even old creepy chain link fences (this is a City making tool after all).
Give it a go, and let me know what you think in the comments.