TurboCAD
Encyclopedia
TurboCAD is a CAD
software application for 2D
and 3D
design
and drafting
running on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows
operating system
s.
and mechanical
design. Both editions will create ACIS Solids or TC Surface objects. The Basic editions contains a limited set architectural and mechanical tools, whereas Platinum contains all the tools (600+).
For less demanding users, a less expensive TurboCAD Deluxe 2D / 3D version is available. Its 3D tools are TC Surface tools and has a limited amount of Architectural and mechanical tools.
For users needing only 2D functionality, there is the much less expensive TurboCAD Designer. With the exception of TurboCAD Designer, the other TurboCAD releases support both 2D drafting and 3D modeling tools.
by Hendrik Vermooten and Hein Oosthuizen. Initially hardware support was for a very specific device configuration: Hercules monochrome graphics cards
, HP7475 plotters and keyboard for data entry. This first version of TurboCAD fit on a single 360kb floppy so that it could run on the original IBM PC. The source code also fit on a single floppy disk
along with the 30kb required by the “development environment
”: Turbo Pascal 2.0
.
The timing of the release of TurboCAD was about the same as that of Generic CADD in the United States
. Both TurboCAD’s and Generic CADD’s marketing objective were the same – create a viable, low-cost competitor to AutoCAD
. But because Generic CADD launched in the U.S. before TurboCAD, it received much more positive press about its low price (approximately $600 originally) and quickly achieved a large and very loyal customer base. The release of Generic CADD in the PC market was at that time, the biggest ‘CAD event’ since AutoDesk had reinvented CAD pricing with its initial release in 1981. South Africans Philip Copeman and Michael Cartwright worked on redesigning the product and introduced it to the United Kingdom
market as TurboCAD in late 1986. This was done under the brand Pink Software and the other three stake holders were John Glennie, Digby Prior and Janine Copeman. Support was added for more video card
s (EGA, Olivetti
, etc.), input devices (Summagraphics digitizer and later, the first Microsoft Mouse). The cost was £99. TurboCAD was of course a DOS
product with limited device support, an area where Generic CADD was strong at the time. Martin Sacks, the first US distributor, got Digby Prior, a ton of plotters and printers, and a driver writing utility in the same room in Los Angeles which was a turning point for the product. Martin also created the first CAD symbols included with the product. Initially, in order to be able to support dot matrix printer
s, a stand-alone printing/plotting utility, FPlot was sold as an add-on to TurboCAD. Later, TurboCAD included native printer drivers for a vast array of dot matrix, bubble jet and early laser printers. This is also when Rob Berry started working on the product as a tech writer.
and Generic CADD had enjoyed with their CAD/Mouse bundle. Logitech had OEM’d the Generic CADD product as First CAD. Milan Systems bundled the IMSI Mouse with TurboCAD. IMSI (International Microcomputer Software, Inc) also purchased copies of TurboCAD from Milan Systems and sold the bundle itself.
In 1990, IMSI released its first own-developed version of TurboCAD, version 2 for DOS. IMSI had licensed the source code from the original developers, Pink Software, and programmer Kurt Diesch set out fixing bugs and adding output support, as well as increasing functionality to compete with the other under $500 CAD programs on the market at that time - Generic CADD, Drafix and Design CAD 2D). Later Kurt ported the code from the original Turbo Pascal to the later object oriented version that would eventually morph into Borland Delphi
. This resulted in a major improvement to the DOS user interface
.
In the United States, TurboCAD was initially marketed through high-tech, direct sales publications such as Computer Shopper
and InfoWorld
magazines. Computer Shopper proved to be the consistently profitable publication in which to advertise and monthly full-page ads were run in this publication for the first two and a half years from TurboCAD’s introduction in the U.S. Computer Shopper ads not only established a strong and loyal end user base, but they also helped established a loyal dealer network.
as a means of cost effectively increasing its user base. The decision to do this was influenced by taking the TurboCAD Upgrade mail piece and mailing it to rented lists of software buyers (non-TurboCAD owners). Over the period of 1993 through 1995, direct mail became the main channel of sales for TurboCAD. Revenues for direct mail sales of TurboCAD grew to over 20 million dollars a year by 1993, with successful prospect direct mail campaigns being sent out on a nearly monthly basis in the U.S., Canada
, UK and Australia
. In 1993, IMSI released the first Macintosh versions of TurboCAD – Standard retailed for $195, while Professional retailed for $495 and offered 3D, wireframe functionality. This technology was purchased from Santiago Montufar’s company, Pegasus Software
In 1993, IMSI began to outsource the development of TurboCAD. Following a trip to Russia
by Martin Sacks, IMSI hired 3 Russian programmers to begin work on TurboCAD Windows v2. Included in these 3 original hires were Victor Bazarov, who then came to work in San Rafael for IMSI, and Alex Presniak who went on to start SoftDev on behalf of IMSI. In 1994, Michael Cartwright moved from South Africa to join IMSI in California and, along with Peter Zingg, led the TurboCAD for Windows v3 rewrite. Together they were also instrumental in IMSI's early offshore development successes. The v3 rewrite was a major architectural change for the product. The code was ported from Delphi to C++. The UI was reformed to be "Office Standard" compliant. IMSI made the strategic decision to release v3 in both 16 and 32 bit versions giving users the best of both worlds during the rocky transition of the market from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. Since then, Alex Presniak and many of the same Russian developers (Sergey Nazarov, TurboCAD team leader; Leonid Robin, SDK development) have continued to work on the TurboCAD code.
By late 1994, the success of the direct mailings had peaked, with an established user base of over a quarter of a million TurboCAD owners. From that point on response rates and ROIs (returns on investment) began to decline, due to over-saturation
of the direct mail market and increasing printing and postage costs. As such, IMSI decided to reestablish its presence in the reseller market for TurboCAD.
TurboCAD quickly became a favorite of the reseller channel, being successfully distributed through key software distributors such as Ingram
, TechData and Merisel, and being sold in retail locations such as MicroCenter, Fry’s Electronics, CompUSA
and Software Etc. Concurrent to its penetration into the computer software reseller channel, were the development of strong educational reseller and direct to school sales channels.
. In 1994, the first French
version was created, in 1995, TurboCAD Japanese
was launched in partnership with Sumitomo Metal Industries
and the first Chinese
version was created for the Taiwan
ese market by Noah International in 2001. Spanish
, Czech
, Polish
and Italian
versions have also been created over the past 7 years.
solid modeling kernel and the LightWorks
photorealistic rendering engine.
A Plug-in to the TurboCAD engine was first developed in 1999 by SoftDev. This VBA
-based application was Animation Lab. Animation Lab is now up to version3. Since then, in collaboration with SoftDev a Beam Analysis tool (2001) and a 2 ½D CAM plug-in (2002) have been developed. 3rd party plug-ins have now also been developed: a surface modeling plug developed by Jerry Simington (2003); a Mechanical CAD symbols plug-in developed by Cadalog Inc. which accesses the CADsymbols.com website (2004); and a parametric furniture (cabinets, tables, chairs) generator, developed by Spinar Software (2005).
From 2003 through 2005 significant enhancements were made to the TurboCAD Professional product. Specifically, Spatial’s Deformable Modeling engine was enabled in version 9.5, while D-Cubed’s 2D Constraint Manager was added in version 10.5. TurboCAD Professional’s price is now $895. Also, in June 2005, IMSI re-entered the Macintosh market with the launch of TurboCAD and TurboCAD 3D. These products were private-label licenses from CADSoft Solutions.
In June 2006, TurboCAD was purchased from Broadcaster, Inc. (formerly IMSI) by IMSI/Design, LLC, a corporation put together for the purpose and led by Royal Farros and Greyhawk Capital Management.
In 2006, the ability to unlock additional functionality through special Serial number and Activation Key pairs was introduced with TurboCAD v12. Collections of Architectural and Mechanical features were ‘packaged’ together and sold successfully to TurboCAD Professional owners. Architectural features included architectural object types (windows, doors, stairs and rails) based on AutoDesk’s ADT product, meaning that while TurboCAD could now read an ADT (DWG) file with these architectural object types, AutoCAD itself could not!
With the release of TurboCAD v14, the retail price of the Professional version product eclipsed the $1000 price point, with the basic Pro version retailing for $1295 US, and the Platinum Edition (additional Architectural and Mechanical features enabled) retailing for $1495. TurboCAD v14 also include the first Terrain Modeling functionality.
TurboCAD 15 was released in March 2008.
TurboCAD 16 was released in July 2009.
TurboCAD 17 was released in March 2010.
TurboCAD 18 was released in March 2011.
Computer-aided design
Computer-aided design , also known as computer-aided design and drafting , is the use of computer technology for the process of design and design-documentation. Computer Aided Drafting describes the process of drafting with a computer...
software application for 2D
2D computer graphics
2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them...
and 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
design
Design
Design as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
and drafting
Technical drawing
Technical drawing, also known as drafting or draughting, is the act and discipline of composing plans that visually communicate how something functions or has to be constructed.Drafting is the language of industry....
running on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s.
Windows versions
TurboCAD Pro Basic and Platinum editions contain general drafting tools, as well as tools for 3D architecturalArchitecture
Architecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
and mechanical
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...
design. Both editions will create ACIS Solids or TC Surface objects. The Basic editions contains a limited set architectural and mechanical tools, whereas Platinum contains all the tools (600+).
For less demanding users, a less expensive TurboCAD Deluxe 2D / 3D version is available. Its 3D tools are TC Surface tools and has a limited amount of Architectural and mechanical tools.
For users needing only 2D functionality, there is the much less expensive TurboCAD Designer. With the exception of TurboCAD Designer, the other TurboCAD releases support both 2D drafting and 3D modeling tools.
Mac versions
The Mac versions of the software are built on a separate codebase and are not directly comparable with the Windows versions. TurboCAD Mac Pro contains both 2D and 3D tools, while the standard version is for 2D drafting only.Early Days
TurboCAD was originally developed in South AfricaSouth Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
by Hendrik Vermooten and Hein Oosthuizen. Initially hardware support was for a very specific device configuration: Hercules monochrome graphics cards
Hercules Graphics Card
The Hercules Graphics Card was a computer graphics controller made by Hercules Computer Technology, Inc. which, through its popularity, became a widely supported display standard. It was common on IBM PC compatibles connected to a monochrome monitor . It supported one high resolution text mode and...
, HP7475 plotters and keyboard for data entry. This first version of TurboCAD fit on a single 360kb floppy so that it could run on the original IBM PC. The source code also fit on a single floppy disk
Floppy disk
A floppy disk is a disk storage medium composed of a disk of thin and flexible magnetic storage medium, sealed in a rectangular plastic carrier lined with fabric that removes dust particles...
along with the 30kb required by the “development environment
Development environment
In hosted software development, a development environment refers to a server tier designated to a specific stage in a release process....
”: Turbo Pascal 2.0
Turbo Pascal
Turbo Pascal is a software development system that includes a compiler and an integrated development environment for the Pascal programming language running on CP/M, CP/M-86, and DOS, developed by Borland under Philippe Kahn's leadership...
.
The timing of the release of TurboCAD was about the same as that of Generic CADD in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Both TurboCAD’s and Generic CADD’s marketing objective were the same – create a viable, low-cost competitor to AutoCAD
AutoCAD
AutoCAD is a software application for computer-aided design and drafting in both 2D and 3D. It is developed and sold by Autodesk, Inc. First released in December 1982, AutoCAD was one of the first CAD programs to run on personal computers, notably the IBM PC...
. But because Generic CADD launched in the U.S. before TurboCAD, it received much more positive press about its low price (approximately $600 originally) and quickly achieved a large and very loyal customer base. The release of Generic CADD in the PC market was at that time, the biggest ‘CAD event’ since AutoDesk had reinvented CAD pricing with its initial release in 1981. South Africans Philip Copeman and Michael Cartwright worked on redesigning the product and introduced it to the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
market as TurboCAD in late 1986. This was done under the brand Pink Software and the other three stake holders were John Glennie, Digby Prior and Janine Copeman. Support was added for more video card
Video card
A video card, Graphics Card, or Graphics adapter is an expansion card which generates output images to a display. Most video cards offer various functions such as accelerated rendering of 3D scenes and 2D graphics, MPEG-2/MPEG-4 decoding, TV output, or the ability to connect multiple monitors...
s (EGA, Olivetti
Olivetti
Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, printers and other business machines.- Founding :The company was founded as a typewriter manufacturer in 1908 in Ivrea, near Turin, by Camillo Olivetti. The firm was mainly developed by his son Adriano Olivetti...
, etc.), input devices (Summagraphics digitizer and later, the first Microsoft Mouse). The cost was £99. TurboCAD was of course a DOS
DOS
DOS, short for "Disk Operating System", is an acronym for several closely related operating systems that dominated the IBM PC compatible market between 1981 and 1995, or until about 2000 if one includes the partially DOS-based Microsoft Windows versions 95, 98, and Millennium Edition.Related...
product with limited device support, an area where Generic CADD was strong at the time. Martin Sacks, the first US distributor, got Digby Prior, a ton of plotters and printers, and a driver writing utility in the same room in Los Angeles which was a turning point for the product. Martin also created the first CAD symbols included with the product. Initially, in order to be able to support dot matrix printer
Dot matrix printer
A dot matrix printer or impact matrix printer is a type of computer printer with a print head that runs back and forth, or in an up and down motion, on the page and prints by impact, striking an ink-soaked cloth ribbon against the paper, much like the print mechanism on a typewriter...
s, a stand-alone printing/plotting utility, FPlot was sold as an add-on to TurboCAD. Later, TurboCAD included native printer drivers for a vast array of dot matrix, bubble jet and early laser printers. This is also when Rob Berry started working on the product as a tech writer.
Moving to the US
TurboCAD was first sold in the United States in late 1986 by Milan Systems of America. By then, Generic CADD had dropped its price to $99 for its basic CAD module and other companies such as CCS, had introduced CAD products like CCS Designer for as little as $49! TurboCAD was marketed both as a stand-alone title for $99, as well as a bundle with a mouse for $149. This marketing strategy closely followed the success that LogitechLogitech
Logitech International S.A. is a global provider of personal peripherals for computers and other digital platforms headquartered in Romanel-sur-Morges, Switzerland. The company develops and markets products like peripheral devices for PCs, including keyboards, mice, microphones, game controllers...
and Generic CADD had enjoyed with their CAD/Mouse bundle. Logitech had OEM’d the Generic CADD product as First CAD. Milan Systems bundled the IMSI Mouse with TurboCAD. IMSI (International Microcomputer Software, Inc) also purchased copies of TurboCAD from Milan Systems and sold the bundle itself.
In 1990, IMSI released its first own-developed version of TurboCAD, version 2 for DOS. IMSI had licensed the source code from the original developers, Pink Software, and programmer Kurt Diesch set out fixing bugs and adding output support, as well as increasing functionality to compete with the other under $500 CAD programs on the market at that time - Generic CADD, Drafix and Design CAD 2D). Later Kurt ported the code from the original Turbo Pascal to the later object oriented version that would eventually morph into Borland Delphi
Borland Delphi
Embarcadero Delphi is an integrated development environment for console, desktop graphical, web, and mobile applications.Delphi's compilers use its own Object Pascal dialect of Pascal and generate native code for 32- and 64-bit Windows operating systems, as well as 32-bit Mac OS X and iOS...
. This resulted in a major improvement to the DOS user interface
User interface
The user interface, in the industrial design field of human–machine interaction, is the space where interaction between humans and machines occurs. The goal of interaction between a human and a machine at the user interface is effective operation and control of the machine, and feedback from the...
.
In the United States, TurboCAD was initially marketed through high-tech, direct sales publications such as Computer Shopper
Computer Shopper (US magazine)
Computer Shopper was a monthly consumer computer magazine published by SX2 Media Labs, it ceased publication in April 2009.The publisher continues to run ComputerShopper.com, a related website.- Web Site :...
and InfoWorld
InfoWorld
InfoWorld is an information technology online media and events business operating under the umbrella of InfoWorld Media Group, a division of IDG...
magazines. Computer Shopper proved to be the consistently profitable publication in which to advertise and monthly full-page ads were run in this publication for the first two and a half years from TurboCAD’s introduction in the U.S. Computer Shopper ads not only established a strong and loyal end user base, but they also helped established a loyal dealer network.
Windows
With the release of TurboCAD v2 DOS and v1 Windows (in 1993), IMSI decided to start using direct mailDirect mail
Advertising mail, also known as direct mail, junk mail, or admail, is the delivery of advertising material to recipients of postal mail. The delivery of advertising mail forms a large and growing service for many postal services, and direct-mail marketing forms a significant portion of the direct...
as a means of cost effectively increasing its user base. The decision to do this was influenced by taking the TurboCAD Upgrade mail piece and mailing it to rented lists of software buyers (non-TurboCAD owners). Over the period of 1993 through 1995, direct mail became the main channel of sales for TurboCAD. Revenues for direct mail sales of TurboCAD grew to over 20 million dollars a year by 1993, with successful prospect direct mail campaigns being sent out on a nearly monthly basis in the U.S., Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
, UK and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. In 1993, IMSI released the first Macintosh versions of TurboCAD – Standard retailed for $195, while Professional retailed for $495 and offered 3D, wireframe functionality. This technology was purchased from Santiago Montufar’s company, Pegasus Software
In 1993, IMSI began to outsource the development of TurboCAD. Following a trip to Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
by Martin Sacks, IMSI hired 3 Russian programmers to begin work on TurboCAD Windows v2. Included in these 3 original hires were Victor Bazarov, who then came to work in San Rafael for IMSI, and Alex Presniak who went on to start SoftDev on behalf of IMSI. In 1994, Michael Cartwright moved from South Africa to join IMSI in California and, along with Peter Zingg, led the TurboCAD for Windows v3 rewrite. Together they were also instrumental in IMSI's early offshore development successes. The v3 rewrite was a major architectural change for the product. The code was ported from Delphi to C++. The UI was reformed to be "Office Standard" compliant. IMSI made the strategic decision to release v3 in both 16 and 32 bit versions giving users the best of both worlds during the rocky transition of the market from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95. Since then, Alex Presniak and many of the same Russian developers (Sergey Nazarov, TurboCAD team leader; Leonid Robin, SDK development) have continued to work on the TurboCAD code.
By late 1994, the success of the direct mailings had peaked, with an established user base of over a quarter of a million TurboCAD owners. From that point on response rates and ROIs (returns on investment) began to decline, due to over-saturation
Market saturation
In economics, "market saturation" is a term used to describe a situation in which a product has become diffused within a market; the actual level of saturation can depend on consumer purchasing power; as well as competition, prices, and technology....
of the direct mail market and increasing printing and postage costs. As such, IMSI decided to reestablish its presence in the reseller market for TurboCAD.
TurboCAD quickly became a favorite of the reseller channel, being successfully distributed through key software distributors such as Ingram
Ingram Micro
Ingram Micro, Inc. is a Fortune 100 company and the world’s largest information technology distributor, providing sales, marketing and logistics services for the IT industry in all corners of the globe.-Overview:...
, TechData and Merisel, and being sold in retail locations such as MicroCenter, Fry’s Electronics, CompUSA
CompUSA
CompUSA is a retailer and reseller of consumer electronics, technology products and computer services. Its headquarters are in Miami, Florida.Until its reorganization, CompUSA, Inc. was a wholly owned subsidiary of U.S. Commercial Corp S.A.B...
and Software Etc. Concurrent to its penetration into the computer software reseller channel, were the development of strong educational reseller and direct to school sales channels.
International sales
TurboCAD was first sold internationally by IMSI in the United Kingdom in late 1986. In 1992, IMSI took over Pink Software’s London office and re-launched the product back into the UK market. A year later, IMSI began successfully direct marketing TurboCAD in the UK. The following year marked the first sale of a localized version of TurboCAD, with both Windows and DOS version of TurboCAD being offered for sale in GermanGerman language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
. In 1994, the first French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
version was created, in 1995, TurboCAD Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
was launched in partnership with Sumitomo Metal Industries
Sumitomo Metal Industries
is a company with seat in Osaka, Japan. )It is the third largest integrated steel manufacturer in Japan withthree integrated steelworks and several other manufacturing plants.It is one of the largest manufacturers of Seamless Pipes and Tubes,...
and the first Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
version was created for the Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
ese market by Noah International in 2001. Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...
, Polish
Polish language
Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...
and Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
versions have also been created over the past 7 years.
3D CAD
TurboCAD gained limited 3D functionality with v4 in 1995 and a fuller implementation only in v5 when ‘Model Space’, ‘Work Plane’, ‘Camera’, and 3D Draggers appeared. Version 6 saw the integration of the ACISACIS
The 3D ACIS Modeler is a 3D modelling kernel owned by Spatial Corporation . ACIS is used by many software developers in industries such as computer-aided design , Computer-aided manufacturing , Computer-aided engineering , Architecture, engineering and construction , Coordinate-measuring machine...
solid modeling kernel and the LightWorks
Lightworks
Lightworks is an Oscar and Emmy award winning professional NLE system for editing and mastering of movies in 2K and 4K as well as television productions in PAL, NTSC and HD...
photorealistic rendering engine.
A Plug-in to the TurboCAD engine was first developed in 1999 by SoftDev. This VBA
Visual Basic for Applications
Visual Basic for Applications is an implementation of Microsoft's event-driven programming language Visual Basic 6 and its associated integrated development environment , which are built into most Microsoft Office applications...
-based application was Animation Lab. Animation Lab is now up to version3. Since then, in collaboration with SoftDev a Beam Analysis tool (2001) and a 2 ½D CAM plug-in (2002) have been developed. 3rd party plug-ins have now also been developed: a surface modeling plug developed by Jerry Simington (2003); a Mechanical CAD symbols plug-in developed by Cadalog Inc. which accesses the CADsymbols.com website (2004); and a parametric furniture (cabinets, tables, chairs) generator, developed by Spinar Software (2005).
From 2003 through 2005 significant enhancements were made to the TurboCAD Professional product. Specifically, Spatial’s Deformable Modeling engine was enabled in version 9.5, while D-Cubed’s 2D Constraint Manager was added in version 10.5. TurboCAD Professional’s price is now $895. Also, in June 2005, IMSI re-entered the Macintosh market with the launch of TurboCAD and TurboCAD 3D. These products were private-label licenses from CADSoft Solutions.
In June 2006, TurboCAD was purchased from Broadcaster, Inc. (formerly IMSI) by IMSI/Design, LLC, a corporation put together for the purpose and led by Royal Farros and Greyhawk Capital Management.
In 2006, the ability to unlock additional functionality through special Serial number and Activation Key pairs was introduced with TurboCAD v12. Collections of Architectural and Mechanical features were ‘packaged’ together and sold successfully to TurboCAD Professional owners. Architectural features included architectural object types (windows, doors, stairs and rails) based on AutoDesk’s ADT product, meaning that while TurboCAD could now read an ADT (DWG) file with these architectural object types, AutoCAD itself could not!
With the release of TurboCAD v14, the retail price of the Professional version product eclipsed the $1000 price point, with the basic Pro version retailing for $1295 US, and the Platinum Edition (additional Architectural and Mechanical features enabled) retailing for $1495. TurboCAD v14 also include the first Terrain Modeling functionality.
TurboCAD 15 was released in March 2008.
TurboCAD 16 was released in July 2009.
TurboCAD 17 was released in March 2010.
TurboCAD 18 was released in March 2011.