TurboCAD Query: Maintaining Rendering Acrss File-types?

I use Fusion360, and make all the parts of a 'thing' as components - bodies are very different things - in the same file, so this

is saved as one thing even though it contains most of the parts necessary to build a working engine. It means each part can be built where it's going to be used, using the actual geometry that it fits which saves a great deal of extra design work. To me, saving each piston/rod/camshaft/throttle spindle/etc as a separate file would be like saving a novella as separate paragraphs.

I use the same process in Designspark Nick, but I was wondering about Nigel's TurboCAD files. I don't know anything about the design process in TC.

I obviously can't say what Nigel does, but in TC there are loads of options for componentisation. If you want, you can create all the components in different files. I don't do that, but occasionally the scope of what I'm doing will change, or maybe I'll steal something from a previous design and use it in a new one. In this sense TC supports cut and paste.

You can cut anything from one document and paste it into another. You will have issues if you cut and paste between metric and imperial drawings, but you can convert the units at the source or destination before the transfer and then there are no problems.

My version of TC happily deals with step models which is quite useful for me because I do a lot with electronic components and most will have a step model of some kind. Also it will deal with dxf and dwg files so models for sheet metal fasteners are usually available online.

Within TC itself, there is an idea of promotion of entities. Lines and arcs combined promote into polylines. Closed polylines on a plane become surfaces. Surfaces can be extruded into solids. Solids can be interfered with one another into ACIS solids.

You can create other kinds of solids outright. Obviously there are spheres,cylinders and boxes, but you can also do donuts prisms and cones. There are also different extrude schemes like simple extrude, rail extrude (using a 3d polyline), spin. Also available is lofting which will interpolate a solid between two different facets.

There are a few "novel" construction tools, but the most useful is the "gear contour". If you want to make straight or helical gears, either DP or Module, you can just fill out a form and it will give you the correct gear outline which you can extrude into a straight cut gear, or twisted extrude into helical or herringbone.

When you promote objects as described previously, it is different from grouping them. Behaviourally it is similar but a group is just a group. You can do new things when you promote objects, but a group just preserves and protects positional relationship between any grouped entities.

TC has two modes of operation 2D and 3D, each has it's own selector. the 2D selector is a reference point and a rotation handle. The 3D selector is a reference point and three rotation handles, one in each axis. The 2D selector is constrained to the current workplane, but the 3D selector works anywhere in 3D space. The 2D workplane can be moved anywhere within the drawing but usually you set it either to a facet of some object or the "world" orientation. If you want you can define a random plane with three points. There are other schemes for setting the workplane.

Beyond groups, there are blocks, symbols and then parts.

Blocks work within a drawing. You might have multiple instances of a screw. The drawing contains a block which is a kind of subdrawing, and can be placed multiple times in the main drawing. If you edit the block then all instances in the drawing change. Then there are external references. These allow you to place another drawing (document) into the present one in the form of a block. External references are somewhere between blocks and symbols, but both are manipulated through the block palette.

Then there are symbols. Symbols are drawings one file per symbol which you can use in any new drawing. These symbols are just drawing files, but they are called up with the library palette. Not that I have tested it, but  think an external reference will update immediately the external reference changes. I think a symbol is different because the entire content of the symbol is inserted into the drawing as a group. You can explode a symbol in the drawing and change it, but I don't think you can do that with a block.

Finally, there are parametric parts. TC supports the Ruby programming language. You can create symbols which have parameters. You could describe a cheese head screw with variable length. You write a program which defines how to draw the screw. When you place the part, it asks how long the screw should be, and that becomes the screw you wanted. Don't ask me how to do this! I think I probably could, but it would take me a while to figure it out.

Ruby is not a programming language I have used. I can't remember what exactly I was doing but I did do something programmatic a while back. For me it was simpler to write a program that outputs a dxf file. I wrote than in C which is the language I use most. It's not actually as hard as is sounds for simplistic needs. I think I might have been laying out logarithmic graduations - like for a slide rule. DXF is a simple text format so it was easiest to generate the lines as a DXF file and import it to TC.

Edited By Andy Ash on 07/04/2023 01:30:23

Thanks Andy.

I can't say that makes any sense to me! I am so used to the quick and easy design process in Designspark, that trying something different isn't easy. Designspark lacks a lot of features, but it mostly does what I want to do.

I found it enlightening though.

One way of comparing cars is to drive them, but this only works because vehicles have a standard control interface. (Admittedly small differences like right or left hand-drive, automatic and manual transmission, and how to turn on the lights cause consternation!)

However, when driving a car, it's often useful to have an understanding of what's under the bonnet. My father-in-law needed a new clutch every 20,000 miles because he didn't understand how they worked and couldn't comprehend that his driving style wrecked them. Nothing wrong with his driving, he assured me!

CAD is nowhere near as standard as driving a car. There are wide variations. Newcomers are faced with a huge number of buttons that either appear and disappear or stop working depending on context, different terminology, different workflows, and multiple ways of achieving the same end, some of which limit what can be done later.

CAD software that's easy to learn is inevitably too simple for complex work, whilst CAD that supports complex jobs, isn't easy to learn.

Having read Andy's description I now understand why TurboCAD seems so alien to me. It's because their approach differs from what I'm used to! FreeCAD, Fusion360, and Solid Edge have much more in common with each other, and I think I see the same basics in Alibre and Solid Works. May be a mistake trying to explain TurboCAD to Nigel, because the gap between what he has and what I know is too big.

Dave

Having looked through the varied replies and picking a few points made....

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My original question was about exporting drawings intact from TurboCAD. That's now sorted: I discovered how to save them as images directly, by TurboCAD's own file menu.

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Regarding tuition, that needs a tutor or recourse to very expensive trade courses run for the companies for which CAD is primarily intended. So that's out for me.

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Yes, different "makes" of CAD can differ considerably, but the CAD publishers themselves imagine their customers already know the principles common across most CAD packages; so need know only the specific controls.

It's worse when the designers invent jargon without explanations or etymology. With what is "Synchronous Mode", synchronised, if anything? In what order are drawings "Ordered"? Siemens gave me the impression of words owing their all to how SolidEdge works, and nothing to their real meanings. This obfuscation is one reason I abandoned SE as a potential TurboCAD replacement = another being Siemens' garden-path approach generally.

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I abandoned Alibre not simply for missing two issues of MEW.

It was a mistake to learn from scratch totally new software I would soon have to buy; whereas I had made some progress with the TurboCAD I had purchased fully and I think more cheaply. Two or three years later, I tried again with SolidEdge (Community) but soon hit problems I could not overcome. When I realised how much I would have to absorb even to match my weak level of TurboCAD, my brain's survival instinct automatically dismissed SolidEdge as Impossible.

I've probably reached my maximum level for TurboCAD, enough to make fairly useable orthogonal drawings and rare, very rough, very simple 3D sketches. I accept irregular, infrequent attempts are not a good way to learn but that's what happens when each attempt ends in failure!

I don't know what "componentisation" is - apart from an assault on the language - but Andy Ash's knowledge of TurboCAD is far beyond what I could reach. I recollect seeing the term "parametric" elsewhere but I don't know what it means and I doubt its value to me. If I want to draw several screws I just draw one and copy as needed. I wonder if he uses a different edition to mine, as I don't really recognise his descriptions of rotation handles and workplanes in 2D. To me the orthogonal workplane is just "World" , essentially the flat background, like on paper. You can't make a 2D object a workplane because all objects are on one plane. You can in 3D mode; usually to construct one object on one face of another by making that facet the workplane. Note the phrase 'you can'. I can't.

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Those cut-away pumps seem to have attracted some interest, even a compliment, very rough sketches though they are.

I knew they could never be Haynes Manual quality but were enough for their purpose. I had helped build the lift-pump on which I based a drawing to help discussing if that pattern would work in another application. (No, it wouldn't.)

I could draw them only because their parts are mainly simple cylinders, each set on a common axis. That made for easy assembling by co-ordinates from the part's original, arbitrary drawing positions. I do not know if Alibre and SE work like that. Something like a centrifugal pump would be impossible for me in any 3D CAD.

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Drawing gears does not require drawing the teeth unless designing the teeth, which is unusual in model-engineering. Notwithstanding that large-scale CAD programmes offer gear-tooth routines, we normally need only the pitch and periphery circles. A text-note can quote the numerical details. That was normal on works drawings. Businesses did not pay draughtspeople to depict hundreds of teeth needlessly! Even if CAD just uses a bulk copying routine, it is one CAD aspect I need not worry about.

Similarly with screws, unless designing some very unusual thread, probably for power-transmission or material-moving; not a standard, static fastening.

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TuboCAD offers Blocks to facilitate repeated parts or sub-assemblies. (In his CAD primer, DAG Brown uses tender wheels and their axle-boxes as an example.) However, they are extremely difficult to use and cannot be disassembled, e.g. to modify, without creating havoc. Best avoided: I copy the parts instead.

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Someone said I can't draw chamfers. I can, but not fully, not in my TurboCAD version. The Reference Manual and tool menu are very clear on that.

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I am well aware of the traps to avoid, such as trying to think in orthogonal manual draughting mode when using 3D CAD, and I do manage that.

Also, I do realise there is huge gulf between drawing in 2D or 3D a simple part like a plain disc flywheel, and drawing the whole engine. The difficulty is worst when assembling unsymmetrical parts with few, or no, common axes or vertices. It is far easier to draw the entire assembly orthographically.. TurboCAD lets you draw parts in place in a 3D model by its "Workplane by xxx" tools. I don't know if this is similar to as Nick and Lee suggest with Fusion and DesignSpark, but irrespective of software "make", this level is far beyond mine.

TurboCAD has a trap known to catch beginners. It tries to insist on 3D but allows you to draw orthographically instead; but you must decide at the start and stick to it. Changing mode in mid-work is horribly easy to do; and it creates havoc.

Glad you got sorted Nigel.

I understand about staying with a piece of software you are used to. Like you, I don't get on too well with SolidEdge, but I wonder if I would feel differently if I had installed it a couple of years ago. I used it for a recent project designing a display stand for an oboe feather (not a feather from an oboe bird, but a peacock feather used to clean the inside of an oboe). I needed better text control than my cad programme offered. I have DesignSpark as my first port of call. Not as powerful as SE, but easy to use.

I wasn't very good at technical drawing in school, and some years after I left, I sold a lathe to a man I didn't know, but I recognised the name. My old TD teacher! When I told him my name he prodded me in the chest and said "I REMEMBER YOU!" Caps represent loudness here. He calmed down and bought the lathe anyway.

Hi Nigel. I would say that you have got a pretty good handle on how TC works. I wouldn't maximise my own abilities beyond saying that I've been using the thing for a long time, but not continuously. If you were to divide my knowledge amongst the years it has taken to gain - I don't think it would leave me looking very good.
The strange thing is that I read what you are writing and I can see exactly the same barriers I had in the descriptions of your own difficulties. I thought it was just me, but from what you are saying I think now it is probably the tool.

The one thing you said that stood out was that switching from 2D to 3D mode sends everything haywire.

I remember that, really well. TurboCAD in the early 90's was actually two different software applications. 2D and 3D. You couldn't even move a drawing from one application to the other. You had to decide of you were going to do one or the other. If you changed your mind, you had to start again. The separate 3D software was virtually unusable in an era where the humble mouse was only just emerging for ordinary people. The mouse-wheel no-one had ever heard of!

I think the 3D software then was the basis for the whole package now, but it didn't have the 2D capability originally. Counter intuitively the 2D software didn't look any different back then as the current software does now. It has been steadfast. Although people were using the original 2D software I was one of those that didn't realise that the 2D behaviours were added to the 3D software. From memory the 3D software didn't get the 3D selector until the 2D behaviour was added to it.

It is really important to think that the modern TC software model space is just one thing. That world plane, is just one in the 3D space. You can put the plane anywhere you want. Any angle, any position, anywhere in the 3D space. Even if you only ever do 2D drawings, they are 2D in a 3D space. If you only know about 3D then someone can take your 2D drawing and leave you looking at a single line. Your drawing is still there, but you're just looking at the edge of your drawing.

There is an option that causes the workplane (WP) to be drawn in to your drawing as a red dashed line. It doesn't matter how you zoom or angle the WP, the red lines represent a square drawn on the surface of the current WP. It is important to realise that you can move both the WP and your view of the WP. If you look obliquely at the WP then the square is drawn obliquely. The red lines don't actually exist in your drawing. They're just drawn in like a laser light that you can just turn on or off.

Contd.........

When you draw a 2D line, it goes onto the current WP. You can happily do a valid 2D drawing looking at the surface of the paper as if it were on top of an isometric cube. You ask to draw a square, but it looks like a rhombus until you view it from above like a 2D drawing. There can be multiple WPs in any drawing at any time. In principle there can be as many WPs as there are 2D entities. Although you can define specific (named) WPs there is no actual need to explicitly define them at all.

To qualify as a 2D drawing, the general TC3D drawing must contain no 3D entities. Moreover, there must only be one WP on which all those entities exist. In my mind at least, the angle at which you view the 2D drawing does not change the 2D/3D status. If there is more than one WP or a 3D entity, it can no longer be fully represented on a sheet of paper. A 2D drawing is a special case of the general 3D TurboCAD drawing.

TC tracks every 2D object drawn, it remembers which WP a 2D object is on. if you are just casually editing a drawing and there are two different 2D objects on different WP's then TC will switch the current WP automatically. When you add a new 2D object, it will go into the drawing on the WP of the object you last touched. Touched, means snapped to, moved or selected etc. If you don't have the red guide plane switched on, you have no way to know where the current WP is unless you keep track in your head.

There are issues with this. If you don't realise, it's like the world of TurboCAD has gone nuts. Nothing seems to be right any longer. This is worse than a TC bug, of which there are some. It feels like a major headache because snaps go to the wrong place. Lines jump in random directions. Haywire!

As you get used to it, you get a sense of when the software is going to switch planes. From time to time you realise that the WP red lines aren't switched on. Sometimes they vanish on their own. I don't know why. I think that's actually a bug. Gradually you find yourself able to know when the WP will and won't be working in your favour. It becomes easy even though the WP red lines aren't there. Sometimes now I even forget to switch them on, until I get into something more difficult.

When the WP is not where you want it, there are lots of different ways to control where it goes. You just need to remember that once you set the WP explicitly, you mustn't touch anything that might not be on your intended new WP. If you do, your explicit selection disappears. Once you draw one 2D entity onto a new WP it is easer because others will tend to go onto that WP on their own. You can almost think of the WP as a semi visible cursor for 2D entities in a 3D space.

Once you master the WP, the 3D selector will feel like a gift instead of a burden. I can see from what you said, you have an excellent understanding of the 2D selector. The 3D one is identical with one truly beautiful difference. Snaps on 2D objects only work on the same plane as that of the entity that owns the 2D selector handle. Snaps with the 3D selector handle work anywhere in 3D space. If you select snap to intersection and use the 3D selector, you can move a 2D object onto an intersection between two lines on another WP.

Apologies in retrospect for typos!

Edited By Andy Ash on 11/04/2023 22:42:37

Thankyou Andy.

What variant of TurboCAD do you use?

Mine is "2021 Deluxe - x64 " ; but I think this is the basic edition of 2021, hence such limits as no full chamfering and filleting tools.

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I am afraid I do not understand TurboCAD (or any CAD) as far you credit me with! I know what it can do, but not how to ask it to do that. I cannot reach your level with it; but by my weakness, not its strength.

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I prefer TurboCAD for its 2D/3D capability rather than the default 3D-first approach used by Solid Edge, etc. I can make the proper drawings relatively easily; leaving rendered isometric images for occasional use where dimensional accuracy, aesthetic quality and practical value are not important.

For the 3D-first way adds a vast extra load of specialist CAD knowledge, before you can use it to help designing items to make, for which the orthographic drawings are still necessary. I do know you can derive the elevations from a 3D CAD model - you don't draw the thing twice - but this is the long, hard way round.

So, the 3D mode is merely an option. Those rough 3D pump pictures were to aid discussing a particular physical problem. I cannot use 3D to design those pumps - or a machine-tool accessory, let alone my steam-lorry. Yet I lose nothing because TurboCAD offers a direct orthographic bypass to the 3D barrier.

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TurboCAD is as capable as Fusion, SE or Alibre for renderings like Nick's car-engine (above); and including the engine's internals even if those become hidden. For the experts....

I know the different CAD makes are very different in approach but probably equally hard or easy to learn, as that depends on your ability, not the product. The only influence the makers have is the nature of any tutorial and reference material they might deign to cobble together. As I have pointed out, they aim their primary sales at industry, not hobbyists, so assume the programmes are taught in proper, comprehensive, formal courses.

I am though surprised that the majority of model-engineering CAD users seem not to use TurboCAD even though it is just as powerful as its rivals (perhaps more in certain respects), offers a direct 2D/3D choice, and has been readily available by simple single-purchase for a long time, since well before the others showed up.

Its UK agent, Paul Tracey, has stopped advertising TC in the magazines, and he was not at the Harrogate show as fas as I know; but I don't know why this is.

I used to use TC but only ever in 2D. When I first bought a copy (cheap, found in a closing-down sale of a software place in the US when on a work trip!) I thought it was great. And it was - better quality drawings in less time than I could otherwise manage. I'm a scribble on the back of an envelope kind of model engineer otherwise. I upgraded a few times but never to a point where I found the 3D part usable. I worked, with difficulty, through the tutorials but never managed to do anything of my own. 2D was fine, though - until I started more ambitious drawings when I found the ability to go back and change things lacking. Anything significant to change and it was easier (for me) to scrap it and start again.

Then I found OnShape, which was a revelation in terms of 3D CAD. I did some drawing office training many, many, years ago so was at least aware of some of the principles but not enough to make unlearning too hard when picking up 3D. I've tried to help a few people get going with 3D CAD and I try to emphasise that you are not trying to create a set of engineering drawings, but to build a 3D model from which the software creates the drawings later. OnShape was OK, but at that time a bit limited, and along with a few other ME colleagues we all more-or-less at the same time found and started using F360. Much better! And the CAM was a bonus. 2-3 years ago I moved to Solid Edge as being more powerful in the CAD department, although I still export models to F360 for CAM. I found F360 to start getting a bit fragile when building more complex assemblies and SE seems to work better for me. I use 3D modelling rather than 2D drafting because I am building a loco to a published design and building the computer model gives me so much more insight into how the bits go together than just looking at the 2D drawings. And it's needed anyway to use CNC, so not wasted effort.

Anyway, as a model engineer. I moved away from TC because I could never get past "drawing in 2D only" and even then struggled to get the flexibility and ability to edit that I have found with the newer tools. 3D suits me much better, and I haven't had any particular problem adapting to the 3D modelling approach.

You keep saying that 3D first requires extra and specialist knowledge, but so does 2D draughting - much of it even more arcane, hard to explain and demonstrate. It doesn't take much knowledge or ability to start just knocking bits off a cube to get what you want, but it isn't particularly efficient whether it's on a screen or the bench.

Nick's engine image isn't a rendering, but straight from the design space. I don't have the artistic knowledge to use the settings to create pictures that don't look like cheap cartoons, and won't get any value from proving that again.

That engine started from a single sketch of three circles and two lines that define one crank journal:

with copies made, offset and jointed appropriately to create the whole crank. That offset was defined as a parameter and reused similarly for the bores, valves, ports, throttle butterflies and many other parts. Definitely not the long way around! The most difficult bit was creating a plausible exhaust manifold using 3D splines...

Since I finished it, Fusion gained a tangential joint so even the valves are now animated by the cams, which shows the clearance. Each part is defined as the appropriate material - aluminium for the block, steel for the crank, brass for the butterflies etc - and Fusion suggests the whole assembly will weigh 3328g.

If I ever do get around to building this, the block and head will require more thought, as they could only be made by casting - the block would be better split into separate, machinable crankcase and cylinder blocks, just as the cam boxes are separate to the head.

If I'm honest, a single cylinder engine is all I really need to make, as a four cylinder(better yet a V6) is just lots of tedious repetition.

With the complete model available, separate orthographic drawings with all their compromises won't be necessary to make many of the parts.

It's been pointed out in this and several other CAD related threads that switching from 2D to 3D design requires a difficult change of mindset. Though I expect Nigel will deny it, I think his latest post confirms he's not made the jump yet. Not his fault and nothing to do with intelligence. When 3D-CAD first arrived in drawing offices, something like 20% of the most productive draughtsmen had serious conceptual problems with it. A sort of mental inversion is required, plus accepting that most tried and trusted technical drawing techniques are irrelevant. Worse, they have to be consciously ignored.

In 2D-mindset 3D is a barrier, software that goes the long hard way round to produce something unwanted. If this perception was correct no-one would use 3D-CAD. Fortunately for designers everywhere, the 2D-mindset view is wrong; 3D isn't an option, it's a step-change improvement, that makes lots of 2D work unnecessary. 3D-CAD simplifies many operations, the output is more comprehensive than just 2D drawings, and the method is highly time-efficient. Though I use them all, for anything other than trivial work, 3D-CAD easily outperforms 2D-CAD, which leaves manual drawing board methods in the dust. Denying this basic truth is a waste of time. Unfortunately 3D-CAD is skilled work and there's a lot to learn, even if a 2D mindset isn't blocking the road.

The statement that TurboCAD is as capable as other programs is misleading. There are 4 different versions of TC ranging from Deluxe (with limited 3D), to Platinum (full throttle). The main advantage of Deluxe is it provides a strong alternative to AutoCAD-LT (2D), plus a limited 3D capability limited to surfaces. This is why it can't do chamfers - a surface is a zero-thickness skin stretched over a wire-model. It looks like a 3D solid, but isn't, and you can't chamfer a surface! TurboCAD-Platinum does Solids, chamfering is a button click, and I suspect many of Nigel's other struggles would disappear if he paid for the full version.

Just a guess from the product description, but I think TC's roots are an alternative to the once super-popular AutoCAD, the original 2D par excellence. Later 3D features were added to a product set offering a gradually improving range of capabilities. Compared with SE and Fusion they seem very limited in TC deluxe, and far more comprehensive in Platinum. I guess what puts most amateurs off is the cost of TC in full strength. I found trying a demo version hard work, probably because I too have a mindset!

In my exploration of 3D-CAD, I liked FreeCAD but saw clear advantage in Fusion. Fusion came with features like the implications of being in the cloud, so I switched to SE which had obvious benefits for me. Not as easy to learn, but more than I need, with no cloud issues. I can't see anything about TurboCAD that would cause me to switch. TC would be in a strong position had I started with AutoCAD in the distant past, but I didn't, and it's expensive.

Dave

I looked at prices, and relatively, TurboCAD is not much different from its competitors but we do need look at the versions offered and there is a huge jump from TC's lowest to highest. I used the manufacturers' own sites.

TurboCAD Deluxe (lowest in the range) £80 (with certain tools as well as a few, major functions removed)

""" Professional 300

""" Platinum 400 (to nearest £, from £xx.99s)

Fusion 360 Free hobby use, but lacking what stripped from its commercial version, roughly £500/year?

SolidEdge / Solid Xxxx No prices given, to subsidise their extravagantly bloated web-site.

Alibre Atom £240 in VAT; £334 in VAT with 1-year "maintenance" - but these were still the 2019 prices!

I suppose it depends what you want. TC Deluxe looks so cheap I wonder if I missed a preceding "1".

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Mindset?

I don't have a "mindset" , in any number of dimensions, but I wish people wouldn't assume I have.

The Technical Drawing I studied at school included three-dimensional topics such as Interpenetrations, "Lines In Space" (the teacher warned us those are very difficult), Helices and Isometric Projection.

Equally, in Maths, I found 3D graphs (x, y, z) easy perhaps thanks to familiarity with Ordnance Survey maps, engineering-drawings and of course, our 3D world. It was the abstract stuff that baffled me, like the Matrices I met some decades later.

In my last few years at work I met orthographic parts drawings with coloured 3D images in the corners to show what the article would look like. Over the years I had become familiar with isometric sectional and assembly drawings in various ways.

So I knew what CAD could do for me, if I could learn it, even before I bought it.

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I knew I had to approach its as its own field of knowledge on top of knowing engineering-drawing methods, as if expanding knowing Yorkshire geographical name elements to learning conversational Norwegian.

The reason for my liking TurboCAD's 2D/3D option has nothing to do with "mind-sets" or any other cod-psychology diagnoses over t'Net! Believe it or not, I do know how I think, how I succeed or fail to learn, anything - not just CAD or Mathematics or Languages - and importantly, recognising my limits.

It is very simple: learning ability, a matter of understanding and sheer bulk memory.

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We need dimensioned drawings in the workshop, and these are usually orthographic; however made. TC wants you to create them from a 3D model; just as Fusion, SolidEdge and Fusion dictate; but unlike those, gives you a direct 2D/3D choice.

That helps me only because I find 3D CAD modelling very hard to learn; and although still difficult, TurboCAD's orthographic mode is much easier. I found Alibre and SE no easier; plus having to learn completely new systems from almost nothing, made a combination too much to take.

It's as simple as that! Learning limits. Not some anti-3D motive.

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I think we all have natural limits to what we can learn, to what extent. Mine are low and very random. I found 3D graphs easy and matrices (weird boxes of numbers) impossible, to understand; yet both are mathematics topics. Similarly I taught myself the drums moderately well, can probably still knock off a paradiddle or two, but failed to learn the piano and guitar - all musical instruments. While despite the same equipment and methods, I can visit one cave but not another of comparable overall nature and difficulty if the latter contains an obstacle possibly very short, but still too difficult for me.

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If I fail despite all attempts, my mind's self-defence is instinctive locking-down as "impossible" ; and It need not be a big obstacle or entire field of study. Sometimes I have broken through the barriers, or they did not exist at first, only for them to return later and impregnably. I cannot explain it, but if my brain is of the same biology as anyone's, I imagine I am not alone in this.

So, I can't make much progress with 3D CAD not because it is 3D CAD, but simply because it is very hard soft-ware. (!)

Yet I had hoped to learn it to the advanced level you all find easy, accept as normal and might even take for granted, so I can use it to help my engineering.

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Incidentally, I looked briefly at Fusion 360, but its only tuition materials were videos, no use to me.

However, I learnt you do not need save your files on Fusion's default Internet account (why "The Cloud" ?). You can (at least, could) save them locally.

There is a serious home-security aspect to saving any material on-line, but it rather amuses me to think of some Beijing or Washington agent puzzling over your beautifully-tinted 3D drawings for a Myford ML7 accessory or miniature locomotive cylinders.

I use TC 2016 Platinum. I have had no desire to upgrade to a newer version, but I always keep my eyes peeled for second hand deals. People do want to move on, and when they do, they can get something for their old licence. I just had a look and TC is cheaper this year than it has been previously, so perhaps they're yielding. Maybe at the price I might be tempted.

The one thing that I think my version of TC lacks is kinematics. The modern CAD packages do that in the blink of an eye, and I wonder if that is why the price of TurboCAD is yielding. It isn't critical for me, I just need to be able to model solids. I work out loci and envelopes by other means, but I'd be keen to use it if it were available at a price I could afford.

Edited to add;

I was just looking at the current annual price not the perpetual one. It's the way they lay out the website.  I wouldn't buy the annual licence, and the perpetual one is more than a 1k GBP. I couldn't justify that for the use I will give it. For 1k GBP I'd expect the kinematics to be there, but lots of people don't need it and will make money using the software even without it.

I still like the way TC works though. I suppose it's just that I've been using it so long.

Edited By Andy Ash on 12/04/2023 20:34:06

It seems to me that TurboCad is better at 2D than 3D, whereas the cad programmes I have used are the other way round. I have considered downloading a 2D cad programme, but I don't think I would get much use out of it as I don't need detailed drawings. Dimensioned sketches will do me, and good stl files to produce 3D prints.

Thankyou Andy. I'd guessed you have a more powerful version than I do.

'

Lee- not sure if TurboCAD is "better" at 2D than 3D but it's certainly easier.. The Users' Forum Gallery is full of superb 3D images, some more art-work than design drawings, so the higher-rate editions are not lacking anything. It does date back to when AutoCAD had much of the field to itself, with the 3D modelling capabilities built later, though.

AutoDesk is AutoCAD's maker, also that of Fusion 360 and a variety of other, more specialised CAD goodies; all very much industry-only. Its own website says all its products are subscription only. Full AutoCAD (2D and 3D) is nearly £2000/ year but a cheaper 2D only version is also sold. Fusion 360 is presently on offer at just over £400 / year for its 3D CAD / CAM / PCB facilities ! I don't know what gives the huge price disparity, and this to commercial users.

However, we can, it says of F360, have:

What this means in range of functions I don't know, but it might exclude the CAM and other aspects.

I do have a copy of AutoCAD 2000 on CD, but have not tried more than a cursory look as I had even less idea about CAD when I was given it with no literature. I might try again, on my XP computer, out of interest. Some of the TC 2D-mode commands might be similar; and it may be what D.A.G. Brown used when he wrote his CAD primer.

AutoDesk boasts about "cloud based" and all that. I once asked our works IT manager if a company like ours, making marine security equipment, would consider any such software. I knew it used SolidWorks on PCs on a very heavily protected system. He laughed and replied, "Not likely! ".

Edited By Nigel Graham 2 on 12/04/2023 21:08:18

Nick Wheeler -

Sorry, somehow I missed your explanation of how you drew the engine.

Thank you for showing it - it is a very interesting description although I am not familiar with Fusion's methods and terminology. I am impressed, and do respect your ability there.

It will be interesting too, to view progress on building the actual engine.

I'm a bit puzzled by your last paragraph though, about not needing orthographic drawings, and their "compromises" (which are?) for making many of the parts. Does that mean you can simply split the drawing into component parts and dimension them for workshop use, still in 3D model format? Or can you use CAM methods needing only the appropriate files?

How can a 2D representation of a complex 3D object not be compromised? That's true whether it's of a view from the top of a hill or parts for a toy train. Written descriptions of the same things would be equally compromised.

As for the drawings, I suspect the only part I'd want on paper is the crankshaft, and that's mostly to get each bigend journal clocked correctly. Most of the rest of it could be dimensioned on the relevant face of each isolated part on the screen as needed without any extra work. Many of the decisions how to make the part are covered by how it was modelled originally, which is why I suggest that just chipping bits off a piece of virtual stock isn't the most efficient way of using CAD. These are just some of the reasons why the time spent learning the basics are a worthwhile investment; I couldn't do any of this in 2D, let alone on paper.

I don't have any need for anything more than the free version of Fusion; the main things I would gain would be to edit linked files in place, be able to work on more than ten files at a time(you can change the ten you want so it's annoying instead of a problem) and more advanced CAM. I don't currently have a CNC, so that last one isn't even an annoyance. Fusion's files don't have to be stored in the cloud, and my weird stuff is of no use to anybody else. But the cloud basis is an excellent reason not to use it commercially.

I still think the barriers you struggle with are because it doesn't work quite the way you think it should and don't have anyone to give you the jolt needed to get around that - like thumping an old TV when the picture started to roll. The same might apply to me with Turbocad, as I struggled with it on and off for years without producing a single usable piece of work. Many other users, including you, report the same problems. Some of those are simply down to the complexity and power of such programs; I can't do complex stuff in Word for example as I've never needed more than arranging a few paragraphs.

I was a twenty year+ user of TurboCAD 2D and was very happy with it. I would have been delighted to have been able to migrate to 3D CAD using TurboCAD and surely that would have been the logical route to take?

However, I found TC extremely difficult to use in "3D mode" and finally accepted that either it wasn't capable of what I wanted of it - or - I simply wasn't capable of learning how to make it do so.

I now have 3 years of Solid Edge under my belt and have absolutely no regrets on making that choice. SE has been a very good investment of my time and effort.

Regards

IanT