In the wake of pondering up-dating my PC to WIN-10 (ghastly thought but probably necessary), is my pondering whether to follow that with Solid Edge Community Edition. It seems to have favourable reviews here – but I recognise those are from users far more skilled in CAD than I.

I would need keep TurboCAD as I would still need my [filename.tcw] drawings I assume not transferable between competing makes of programme – even if they survive the OS change!

Basically I want some idea if SE would be easier for me to learn than TC is proving. Don't get me wrong. TurboCAD is fine; a very powerful and flexible programme for the experts displaying their superb, very complicated, rendered images on the Users' Forum. Unfortunately it is too difficult for me beyond fairly simple orthographic drawings and even more basic pictorial (3D) efforts of no practical value.

So to give me some guidance, I'd be grateful for advice on….

1) Does SE(C) offer the immediate orthographic / isometric choice or is it purely isometric-first or only (as with Alibre and Fusion) ?

(TC does give that choice – essential if the isometric mode is too difficult!)

'

2) If only 3D-first, is it easy to produce the orthographic workshop drawings from the isometric picture?

(If that is actually possible in TC, I have not discovered how.)

'

3) Does its isometric / pictorial method use an equivalent of TC's tangle of work-planes, origins and 'reference points' for assembling an isometric image from its objects?

(I don't know if all CAD packages use that.)

'

4) Is it a straightforward matter to assemble the 3D image from its entities, espcially if those are not symmetrical?

(TC tools for this are all very difficult to choose and set correctly. Rotating the view often reveals I have made an optical illusion, with the entities apparently joined in one view actually floating somewhere else.)

'

5) Does SE(C) use a single, cohesive 3D-object format? I do not mean by which generating tool you select, such as 'Extrude' or a library 'Primitive', but the resulting object's class of internal mathematical characteristics.

(TC objects seems to be in at least 3 classes, probably according to the selected tool although I have not discovered the pattern. Consequently each reacts in its own, often very strange ways to further editing and manipulating. Sometimes they just disintegrate into irretrievable facets!)

'

6) Printing: straightforward or a maze of printer, paper and image setting menus?

(TC uses a tool called 'Viewports' to copy the 'Model' image to a secondary 'Paper' page; but the whole business invokes several different printer and paper menus – some lacking the ISO-A sheet sizes – with no guarantee of the intended result. Moreover, unless you know exactly how to avoid it happening, making the image fit the paper not only creates a random scaling factor, but also applies it to the values, not just font size, of the dimensions.)

'

7) Given some experience in TurboCAD, albeit much less in its isometric mode, might trying SEC be worth it (assuming of course having converted the OS first.)?

'

I should say I bought TC in the first place because I knew its advantages over manual draughting and thought it might help me advance my steam-wagon project that's been dragging on for far, far too long. There are no drawings available for it anywhere, just a few old photographs. I'm not sure it's helped me that much – I tend now to make bits to fit and look right, not necessarily to drawings.

I realised pictorial 'models' are not much use for making things in the workshop, but wanted the option as an 'extra', for producing assembly drawings or the odd non-engineering drawing. For example, I used it once to create some geological diagrams.

Thank you Gentlemen!

I tried Fusion and Alibre – the latter by the MEW offer a couple of years or so ago. The impression both give was that they are used by creating a 3D 'model' by default, though you can (I guessed) take off elevations from that. Later of course they started mentiong £££, but I had already paid fully for TurboCAD!

I am not likely to draw for CNC or 3D printing work, even by someone else. So file-type matters only if I need transfer files from TC to anything else.

On the somewhat mixed messages regarding SE Community's licence life, what will happen after Microsoft do stop supporting WIN-10? If it is. I met a wall of confusion between MS promoting it and various IT journalists denying it! The point though is that Siemens will not release anything for operating-systems MS no longer support.

On learning software, I cannot use videos, seeing them as just demonstrations. I have better luck with static (printed or .pdf) material, and TurboCAD came with a separate CD of progressive tuturials in pdf form, created by Paul 'The CAD' Tracy from whom I bought the set.

At the time, TC was the only real engineering and architectural CAD make, easily available at a sensible straight-purchase price, to the amateur; and was regularly advertised in our magazines. (Why is it not now?)

I am not worried about animations. If I cannot draw a complete machine in 3D statically, I could never animate it.

'

On specific points –

That you can use SE in 2D or 3D mode is reassuring!

TurboCAD's 3D's assembly routines probably are similar internally to any CAD programme, but with different tool names and operating methods. My difficulty in TC is in manipulating isometric entities properly on the complicated Workplane and Reference-point system, leading to my having to use laborious co-ordinate calculations that I am supposed to leave the box of sums.

This is compounded by TC seeming to use at least 3 different sets of mathematics for solid entities, giving them different reactions to the editing tools.

Having chivvied the objects into place, I would guess Joint and Mate have their parallels in TC's Assemble and Add tools. Assemble makes two objects suggle up to each other pixel-on-pixel along the joint plane, but you can still separate then intact. Add fuses them into one and they cannot be reverted.

Assemble of course leaves the part free to be adjusted, or copied across the same drawing. I do not know how to copy any part of one drawing to another drawing. It might involve the ambiguous Group / Explode tool pair that are not the reciprocals they seem on the tool-bar. Explode breaks a polyline into lines, but Group is a special version of Add to create a unified entity, and I do not know its real purpose and operation.

As far as I know TurboCAD, at least not 19 Pro, does not have a dual-file system equivalent to "Parts" and "Assemblies". Every part of each drawing resides in the single drawing-file, unless that makes hidden, satellite files for Layers, Groups and pre-sets.

I know Viewport is to copy part of a "Model" drawing to the "Paperspace", but it has confusingly vague command names. It is very difficult to set the printer, paper and image sizes, and the intended scale. It is very easy to make the image too small, randomly, taking the dimension values with it. The scale menu assumes only 1:1 or smaller scale, allowing reducing an entire GA but not magnifying the small fittings.

I wondered if SE might have a much simpler and more direct method, so provided the image at wanted size will fit the paper anyway, it is easy to set the system to give that.

++++

Overall, my first priority will be to keep the computer going for as long as possible, because from past experience I cannot trust WIN-10 to accept my existing software, data files, e-posts, web-site links and registrations, etc. If it does, I would then have to think about loading SolidEdge, but it does seem from your collective observations I might not gain anything. I would have to learn a completely new CAD system and completely new OS (WIN 10), but I would need some idea of my chance of success before trying it. Hence trying to compare TurboCAD and Solid Edge.

Gary –

I take your point about TurboCAD's origins but without your previous experience, I take TurboCAD 19 Pro as it comes, without worrying about IMSI's software design methods. Though I would have appreciated a much better "Help" section!

It is fairly clear that TC reserves Layer 0 for itself, I think for construction-lines. It took me a long time to work out what Layers are and how to use them though. Unless I misunderstand him, D.A.G. Brown's generic guide to CAD says Layers can be used as an assembly-copy tool, giving tender axle-boxes as his example. I don't know if or how that works in TC though.

Thank you for the Viewport properties tip. TC allows any standard paper sizes, logically enough. Except it makes copying, scaling and printing a drawing from its original Model Space life about as hard as possible; muddled by several different paper-size lists of which some give only American ones.

Often I find its easier to copy and paste the drawing and to Hell with Viewport – but it still risks altered dimensions, and raising Hewlett-Packard's common, mystifying printer error-message about printing boundaries or something.

'

Certainly right about climbing a steep learning-curve; though I recall reading that a +ve-going parabolic arc in any learning means little progress at first then accelerating advancement! Not harder and slower but easier and quicker learning; having grasped the principles. dl / dt and all that. My curve follows no known mathematical law and often dips, reaching only foothills to inaccessible summits. Besides, as a poor climber with an unreliable head for heights (as would aver any of my caving friends of over 40 years)…. as in reality so in metaphor.

'''''

Nicholas –

Thank you.

I am not trying to force 2D restrictions on 3D. I know they are very different, and that a 3D design model is not merely pictorial. It forces restrictions on me, stopping me from doing what it lets its expert users do: design complex assemblies by 3D "models" that then become the source of the parts drawings.

I recognised the isometric modelling that CAD can give before opting to buy it. As well as all the other advantages, I wanted to be able to create isometric views of parts and complete assemblies. At the time I did not know if you can take off elevations for workshop use. I now know you can, but not how.

You refer to "parameters" for copying repeated parts – referring to a method specific to the CAD programme you use? The word is not in TurboCAD, but TC probably has equivalents much more efficient than the way I operate it.

I know what an expert CAD user can do, but I need be realistic about what I can learn. Your engine is perfectly possible in TurboCAD, but reaching that skill level is not possible in me.

So I am asking advice to help me judge if I might use CAD to better advantage by using a different make, easier to learn.

In any case, I cannot use SE unless and until I install Win-10; but I do not know what problems that will create.

+++

The drawing below is probably the last isometric CAD attempt I have made so far, and many months ago.

It is a general view of the 4" scale steam-wagon I have been taking far too long to make. There are no drawings for it, just a few old advertising photographs from 1908. This drawing reached my CAD skill limit, but despite parts removed, the construction stage is roughly that of the photo below it.

I took that when trying to design the boiler-mountings I made eventually to a rough pencil sketch and bits of steel clamped to the chassis. The red bit in the photo is tentatively the outer plate for the transmission assembly.

The drawing's two floating bits are a bunker and its floor, extended as the footplate. I took many attempts to draw that sub-assembly as neither a solid block (nowhere for the coal) nor lacking a floor (chassis rail visible in plan, the coal landing on the ground).

The brown cylinder is the firebox, the boiler shell being a T-piece standing on its side. The wheel discs are not really solid but pairs of rose-pierced plates. The yellow block represents the water-tank (brass). The rear axle is correct by dimension but looks too far forwards. The disc behind the wheel is the differential, converted from a car unit to traction-engine pattern with through and cannon shafts, and fitted with chain sprocket

I could have added the seats (two rectangular boxes) and symbolised the engine (another box, between the seats and behind the boiler). Detailing the wheels, adding the Ackermann steering-gear, springs etc – out of the question. All that lot is nearly as far as the vehicle itself has progressed.

This drawing conveys far less than a photograph of the made parts. As a TurboCAD 3D model – merely an exercise; scrappy, unfinished, best deleted. As a design drawing – dimensionally right but useless. Its only value is as a self-assessment of ability.

Experimenting though, I was surprised to find that TurboCAD will dimension a scanned photograph – but 2D only so useable only on planes perpendicular to the view. Nevertheless I used this to obtain some approximate dimensions for the engine-case.

So, how is the default 3D angled projection described on the package you use?

I was sure TurboCAD does call it Isometric.

So I have just opened a TC 3D drawing to see. Yes, the three oblique-view options are all called "Isometric_ xxx " where " xxx " is the view's compass-bearing.

I recall from my brief brushes with them, Fusion and Alibre defaulting to similar obliquity so assumed these too would use the label "isometric", or just not label the different view angles at all.

Sometimes my 3D drawings took on Escher-like characteristics when revolved, so I would tack a tiny sphere to the default nearest, lowest corner as an orientation guide.

'

Going back up-thread a bit…

Dave –

I should have said a while back I can use TurboCAD's 2D mode well enough for my own use, blissfully ignoring fancy font standards, formal title blocks and such. (My titles are just simple text-boxes; big letters, nothing special or consistent.)

You highlight the problems of moving to 3D when you've only ever been used to drawing orthographically. I think that's more for professional than amateur draughtspeople, due to the far greater exposure to it. I used 2D drawings professionally but never made them.

Manual drawing calls for considerable skill at times, such as in designing cams or interpenetration-developments, but I'm not sure it was necessarily harder than learning CAD. The skill was different but at possibly similar level. Also the manual methods were all so well-established that a few easily-obtainable reference-books would help you, when occasionally encountering something unfamiliar. I have such books and even if >50 years old, what they show is intrinsically unchanging. Unlike obscure commands in a manual for one, relatively short-lived, computer programme.

So the skill has moved from understanding the plotting to understanding operating the plotting software.

===

Indeed, can I use TurboCAD for just such a purpose, on my project ?

My wagon's boiler is a T of 2 cylinders of different diameters; and made (by Western Steam): photo above. I need though, lag it. So how to develop the cladding sheets? Four options:

1) By CAD. Drawing the boiler shell and cladding, as assembled cylinders, is simple enough for me even in 3D; but does not give the developments.

2) 'Excel' to calculate edge co-ordinates along the unrolled sheets. Making the speadsheet is easy; but deriving the many formulae?

3) Manual development, on paper, having revised from one of my old text-books the method I learnt – well, was taught – at school half a century ago. Make a card test copy of the graph, to go over the fitted crinolines, which may be wooden rings, before cutting any metal.

4) This occurred to me today while out scran-foraging! Mark the crinolines' edges at regular intervals. Fit them, aligned mutually and with the shell. Measure from each division to the rule's contact on the associated crinoline (mm easier than inches here). Transfer the measurements to the card test-sheet, join the dots.

SO

Method 1) – Clearly out: gives a neat drawing but not the answers.

2) Accurate answers if it were possible. Which it is not.

3) and 4) Feasible, 3) perhaps simpler and quicker.

'

I still don't know if SE would be easier to learn than TurboCAD, to a more useful level. Occasionally I still try TurboCAD's 3D option I must not call Isometric whatever IMSI says; but do not believe I could ever reach the sort of level Nicholas shows above, with his car engine.

Incidentally I think we may have misunderstood how we each work. Nicholas seems to describe making the entire drawing part by part, from part drawings; before shaping any metal. I make some components from simple 2D drawings, then bolt them – the bits of metal – together so I can draw the next bit. I have not drawn anything in entirety, beyond some scrappy 2D sketches. Sometimes I have to scrap parts made perhaps several years ago but now causing unforeseeable problems: frustrating but that's how it goes. I thought using CAD – having seen its possibilities at work – might help me reduce such problems. Clearly not.