Product Reviews

TurboCAD Mac Pro is an intriguing application from US developers IMSI. Generally, 2D drafting programs and 3D modelling applications have kept themselves firmly apart, the notable exception being formZ - a 3D modeller that happens to contain a 2D drafting suite. Because of its ancestry, TurboCAD Mac Pro could be considered as a 2D drafting program that also contains a 3D modelling application. The end result is, of course, the same.

TurboCAD has always been a 2D drafting program aimed more at the value-conscious Cad user, and by extension at the hobbyist or part-timer who needs to output accurate drawings. The 2D section is a mature and stable environment that covers most of the bases in the Cad world.

The most useful aspects are inferencing and snapping. While draftsmen would traditionally use a T-square and set square to produce drawings, inferencing allows Cad programs to relay a wealth of information on alignments, intersections, radii, tangents and so on to make it a breeze to produce Cad-accurate, properly aligned drawings.

Snapping can help greatly if the object under construction is built to a specified modulus (Grid snapping), or when drawing objects such as lines and walls need to cleanly attach themselves to other objects (Entity/Object snapping). You can also choose to filter your snaps - snapping only to end points, or cutting out snapping to tangents or turning them off altogether).

TurboCAD also uses Layers to organise drawings. Every new document has three layers: Layer 1 (for drawing), Dimensions and Construction. Dimensions is set up to hold your annotated dimensions, and these can then be turned off via the Layers palette to make the drawing more easily readable.

ADVERTISEMENT

The other default layer is Construction, reserved for Construction lines. These are non-printing and are used to guide your final drawing, much like guides in Photoshop. Oddly, there's no Construction Line tool. You have to place them by choosing them from a control-click menu and then use other tools to offset and duplicate them to where you want them. However, you can command-alt-click and drag to set them - a 'gesture-based' approach.

You can have up to 2000 layers in a drawing, and they can then also be grouped. This would enable you, for example, to place all plumbing layouts in one group, then in sub-layers for the different floors of a building. Drawn objects can also be grouped, but all the parts of grouped objects must reside on the same layer. In relation to grouping, TurboCAD Mac Pro has two selection tools: Select and Select Deep. The latter is a nice touch that lets you get at and select entities inside groups without exploding the group first.

The 3D capabilities of TurboCAD Mac Pro are based on the ACIS library - the one used in formZ. This means Nurbs, and all the trimming, splitting, lofting and stitching that go with that territory. TurboCAD Mac Pro also boasts true solid modelling in addition to surface modelling. While Nurbs modelling doesn't have the immediacy of the subdivision surface approach, it's far better suited to the sphere of TurboCAD. It enables you to build models that are Cad-accurate and so can be output to other programs and fed into systems such as computer-controlled lathes and machining tools via IGES, Step or SAT export.

The toolset is pretty comprehensive: you can create surfaces from curves, and all the usual ACIS favourites are there - net surfaces, ruled surfaces, skin surfaces and guide skin surfaces. You can even loft a skin surface between two generating shapes with a supplied guide line. Solids, again, can be derived from profiles using Lathing, Extruding and Sweeping and can have true Boolean operations performed on them.

TurboCAD Mac Pro packs in a lot for £200. In fact, the more we looked at its 3D capabilities, the more we were reminded of formZ, which costs around five times more. Photoreal rendering will have to be performed via output to other applications, but at this price, you can't much quibble.