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All-purpose CAD program appeals to the cost-conscious.
TURBOCAD PROFESSIONAL IS ONE of many applications on the market that strive to be CAD Swiss Army knives. It handles both 2D and 3D as well as nongraphic tasks such as pricing and scheduling. It also provides application-specific tools for mechanical designers, architects, and other users. Its biggest competitors are products such as AutoCAD LT and VectorWorks. All members of this trio carry street prices in the $700-$800 range, so it's fair to compare them.
In April of 2004, I did a fairly in-depth review of TurboCAD 10.0 online for Cadalyst at http://manufacturing.cadalyst.com/turbocad. Rather than reiterate the findings in that article, here I'll focus primarily on the improved aspects of 10.2 and how they compare with the TurboCAD competitors mentioned above.
Interoperability Enhancements
IMSI claims improved STEP and IGES interoperability in v10.2, so I went ahead and tested a few files. A STEP file that gave v10.0 trouble came over much cleaner in this upgrade, but another, more complex file had some edges where tiny sliver surfaces were created. As for IGES files, even fairly simple models still imported with many of these slivers in between the faces. A very complex IGES that wouldn't import at all in v10.0 still looked pretty bad in v10.2, but at least there was something to work with. IMSI has not added options to control model tolerances, which usually help. By comparison, AutoCAD LT doesn't come with IGES or STEP translators. You have to purchase additional software, which I couldn't acquire in time to test. VectorWorks has no way to import STEP files, and models translated via IGES had most of the same problems as TurboCAD's.
3D Dynamic Editing
For quite some time, clicking on a 3D shape in TurboCAD has automatically exposed drag handles as well as the x, y, and z axes for that selected object. These handles allow the user to dynamically move, scale, and rotate the component without having to select a specific tool (this also works on 2D shapes). Though this dynamic editing is very interactive, visually dragging in this manner usually means a lack of precise control. However, in v10.2,...