IMFD and TransX allow you to visualize, but you need to understand what you are doing. Interplanetary travel is not a one step procedure. Depending on what you want to do, there are different sets of problems, and both MFDs are like calculators to help you with any of them.
Ive been through that tutorial and Im quite familiar with staging on transx....as for IMFD, Ive used it some but I tend to prefer transx. Sometimes I do some of the mechanics on paper first to see if a trip is plausible (that takes a lot of time)... Im just looking for a quicky toy that will sufficiently approximate the positions of the planets at later dates to simplify the process. Say I want to go in for a series of resonant kicks form venus to eventually end up near vesta. That kind of procedure often leads to finding an appropriate starting MJD that looks like it will do the trick, tweaking the stages, and finding that after two solar orbits, vesta is not quite where I hoped it would be. I can visuallize a "click and drag" orbital plot that will help the initail planning...not the actual stages, those obviously require a lot more consideration.
It would go something like this:
From an ecliptic plane view of the solar system..you start out with your deltaV from earth and a velocity vector with the appropriate orbital plot.
Now you can drag that vector so that it sweeps out various possible orbits for a given deltaV...
Select the next target body and drag the vector until your orbit approaches it....now of course as you drag the vector the point of closest approach with your target moves accordingly (just like transx...just quicker and more user friendly, not more accurate by any means)
the encounter will place a new vector at the point of your closest approach. That second vector will of course grow and shrink in magnitude and direction as you move your orbit closer and further from the body.
There would be a new "post-encounter" orbit plotted from that vector..maybe in a different color. When you are happy you can lock the first stage of the trip and start plotting the second stage by tweaking the new vector and so on...
It would be very fluid with lots of variables changing at once...position of the planets, mag/direction of the vector(s), shape of the orbit. Sounds like a lot but I think people on here might find it very useful for some rough preliminary planning. Then work out the details later on TransX of IMFD.
