TurboCAD v17 has now been out for about two months now and I’m pleased to say that it all seems to be working perfectly well. The only small snag that emerged has a work around above and only occurs with Windows 7, fine with XP.

Below is a link to trail versions of the Professional version, I believe it expires after 14 days. Also a patch for Deluxe.

There will be a chart showing the new features on this site soon, but you are welcome to call me for a chat about the developments.

01962 835 081 (1)

As v17 is now out, I can sell TurboCAD Professional Platinum v16 at half price, i.e. £500 and throw in a free training guide.

TurboCAD v17 Professional Platinum is at a 20% discount bought direct from me.

TurboCAD Professional v5 for the Mac is £398, but £320 direct.

NEW TURBOCAD PRO 17

With over sixty Performance Gains

TurboCAD Pro 17 and Pro Platinum 17 also contain dozens of new features and productivity improvements. The seven most noticeable developments are:

• View wireframes up to 60 times faster. A new drawing engine takes advantage of GPU-based graphics cards so speed increases dramatically in wireframe and 2D mode.  Larger files will pan, orbit, and zoom in and out smoothly.
• Work with the latest AutoCAD® files. Added support for .DWG 2010.
• Better Google™ SketchUp™ workflow. A significantly improved COLLADA (.DAE) export feature includes instances so that blocks and architectural objects will be read by SketchUp as components.
• More powerful Xrefs. We’ve added Xref clipping for dozens of file formats and allow binding of Xrefs, which can then be exploded and edited. Xref layers are easier to manage, even with layer filters.
• New possibilities are available with 3D patterns. Rapidly design mechanical parts with repetitive structures. Apply patterns to spheres and cylinders, radial patterns, 3D arrays, or patterns along a curve for shapes that couldn’t easily be drawn before.  Arrayed patterns such as ventilation holes, keypad designs, and more can also be designed and merged with other objects.  (Platinum Edition.)
• An improved Wall tool now allows for definition of intelligent relationships between walls to link or not link, clean or remain separate, in any combination.
• Create any style of door or window easily. ACA compatible Door and Window Muntins expand options for parametrically creating the exact object types for your design.  (Platinum Edition.)

And for a limited period we are giving away a very useful plug in called Drawing Compare. This tool detects differences in edited or updated drawings. Simply impose your original drawing over the edited version and the changes are immediately highlighted.

Availability and Pricing

TurboCAD Pro 17 is now available for £895.

TurboCAD Pro Platinum 17 is now available for £995.  (For a limited time, receive Drawing Compare plug-in with Pro Platinum 17 purchase, a £83 value.

For more information or to upgrade contact Paul Tracey, 01962 835 081, ptracey@processflows.co.uk.

Importing New Materials

LeMog – 3d Textures

This is a site from where you can download free images and use them either as pictures, perhaps for a backdrop, (there are caves), or import them into your materials palate enabling you to wrap the images around objects. There are some very useful images such as old woods, tree trunks, water, stone walls, wall paper and all sorts of fabrics. The site is at www.lemog.free.fr/lemog_v5/index.php?cat=4

Or you can just google LeMog

Importing pictures into you materials pallet is easy, although I find the instructions in the manual confusing, so I’ve broken them down to my own list below.

1. Copy the image into your ‘My Pictures’ folder.
2. Via ‘View’ open your ‘Materials’ pallet.
3. At the top of this pallet is an icon saying ‘Edit Pictures’ – select it.
4. If you are adding a material to an existing ‘Category’, then select it.
5. If you wish to create a new ‘Category’, select the ‘New Category’ icon to the right of the ‘Categories’ box.
6. This will automatically open a dialogue box prompting you to name your new category.
7. Select the ‘New Material’ box and name your material.
8. Using the folder image to the right of the ‘Find Image’ box, locate the image.
9. In the white box on the left hand side of the ‘Material Editor’ there are five icons.
10. The top icon should read ‘Wrapped Image’.
11. The bottom icon should read UV
12. You may need to increase the scale of both the U and V. I generally deal in mms so I type 40 in each box initially to get an idea of scale, it can always be changed later.

A tip here to ensure that you see a preview is to click in the ‘Review’ box between each of the actions above. I don’t think that it should make a difference, but it does seem to.

I’d be very interested to hear of any similar sites, if anyone knows them. The annoying thing that I find with many of these sites is that they start off saying ‘free symbols’, but when you find the one you want, they try and sting you for a few quid.