Review: IMSI TurboCAD Deluxe 12

From its humble beginnings as low-cost design software, TurboCAD has developed over time. Now at version 12, TurboCAD Professional has risen up the ranks by launching a head-to-head competitor for Autodesk's AutoCAD.

But along with an increase in power, TurboCAD Professional carries a price tag (£599.99) that rivals AutoCAD's. Manufacturer IMSI is marketing TurboCAD Deluxe 12 (£79.99) – a cut-down version of TurboCAD Professional – to cater for those on a lower budget.

New to version 12 are two tools; a point marker that lets you number objects automatically and an option for simple extrudes.

Also new is the LightWorks 7.5 engine. This provides access to many brand name and custom effects via the LightWorks Archives, plus flicker-free rendered views when moving, rotating or zooming and a new ‘reflected’ gradient brush for 2D.

Also available is the custom setting of density levels for scattering mediums, scaling for image backgrounds and export to Gif and Png formats with transparent areas.

Export to Pdf has been revamped and TurboCAD Deluxe now supports 28 standard file formats, including improved Dwg, Dxf and Dgn.

TurboCAD Deluxe 12 is supplied on a single CD and is accompanied by a weighty 496 page generic paper manual, which fails to differentiate between the two versions.

On launch, TurboCAD displays full-screen by default. Most of the TurboCAD window is occupied by a tabbed drawing pane that allows switching between a Model space and a Paper space.

The Model space is a boundary-free working space where the individual elements of a drawing can be constructed. They can then be transferred and arranged as a finished drawing within the boundaries of the chosen paper size in the Paper space.

To the right of the Drawing pane is a narrower Tools selection area. The two panes are surrounded by dense menus and readouts on all four sides.

Overall the look is severe and quite daunting. There are a couple of online tutorials, accessible from the help menu, covering the new user interface and basic editing, but these are not enough to get the new user started.

The online help itself is a Pdf of the generic paper user manual, so there is no context sensitivity and help search is limited to Acrobat. Clicking on Help results in an error if you don’t have the Adobe Acrobat reader installed and there is no installer for the reader on the TurboCAD CD.

By the time a program such as TurboCAD reaches version 12 you would expect a powerful help system that provides an easy entry point for new users. It is unfortunate that this is not the case. In contrast AutoCAD help provides a relatively smooth introduction for new users.

However, to buy AutoCAD 2007 you are looking at a cost of about £3,000 compared to £600 for TurboCAD Professional. For an extra fee, Avanquest offers one-day TurboCAD training courses and online tutorials can be purchased from TurboCAD expert Don Cheke.

There is also an extensive range of 2D and 3D course books and training CDs for sale on the Autodesk website, which is perhaps an indication of where the resources to build a good help system have gone.

3D design programs are not the easiest software applications to get to grips with and TurboCAD, with its steep learning curve, is no exception. TurboCAD Deluxe certainly seems to be good value for money.

Should the asking price prove a deterrent, a free trial version of the software is available for download.

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