Turbocad 16

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

I’ve been given Turbocad 16delux 2D and 3D by a landscape designer who admitted defeat and changed to Autocad.

 

I’m assuming this will be the answer to all my design requiremenst for a good few years, but where to start? Any tips?

 

Neil

 

 

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

Yes buy some A2 sheets of paper, learn to draw ,then design. PS this is not for you but for new would be designers.

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Bin it.

 

Then download the free copy of Draftsight off the web, do a Google on Draftsight

 

Download the manual and look at al the tutorials on Youtube

 

The Draftsight community is very good and also very large and helpful .

 

John S.

[WindyParticipant @windy30762]

Hello Niel, some years ago when I was given a very old computer to learn on Turbocad 6.5 Pro was bought for a few pounds.

 

For a not very academic person it was a steep learning curve.

 

I now have Turbocad 16 pro and for most of my drawing the 6.5 was adequate.

 

Personally I think these more modern programs have too many bells and whistles for amateur use.

 

When I started D.A.G. Browns book CAD for Model Engineers was very handy for a novice to learn basics.

 

Nowadays for 2d drawings it is quicker for me to use CAD than conventional drawing methods.

 

Windy

Edited By Windy on 25/06/2011 19:53:33

[Sub MandrelParticipant @submandrel]

The usual agreement then…

 

Gordon, I got a ‘B’ in Geometric and Engineering Drawing back in 1979, it would have been an ‘A’ except I’m hopeless at not smudging pencil marks

 

Neil

[Steve WithnellParticipant @stevewithnell34426]

I’ve a copy of AutoCad 16 which I upgraded from 14 in the mistaken hope it might be more usable. It has loads of functions, but for me it’s simply doesn’t do what CAD is supposed to do and that’s make drawing easier. I think it’s a horrible package to the extent that I’ve been using Powerpoint for simple sketches.

 

I will try Draftsight, because I do have a need for a drafting package.

 

Steve

[Jim NolanParticipant @jimnolan76764]

Neil,

Last thing I would do would be learn to draw that will probably anchor you in a 2D world with the rest of the cave men drawing bison with three heads.

CAD requires a different mind set so you might as well start from scratch get some of the tutorial books watch the YouTube demos and don’t expect to be getting anywhere fast. Persevere and you will be surprised how you will develop.

jim

[WearyParticipant @weary]

I use TurboCAD 15.

To get me started I bought a book & CD from Avanquest UK: TurboCAD 2D Training Guide, which is generic for all versions of TurboCAD, there is also a 3D equivalent.

I self taught using this book which is structured with a series of training exercises and would not have been able to use the programme without it as I had no CAD experience whatsoever and I did not find the programme at all intuitive.

 

I got the training materials from Paul Tracey, who I found to be very helpful, at Avanquest UK.

His telephone number: 01962 835081

email: ptracey@avanquest.co.uk

 

I would suggest you contact him (or maybe his replacement if he has moved on) as he was able to give me advice (and a discount) on the publications that would be useful.

 

Here is a clicky linky to some turboCAD uk training material on turbocad.co.uk (who seem to be Avanquest UK). But I’m sure that a search will find some other materials. There is some training on youtube.

 

Best of luck & regards, Phil

 

[WearyParticipant @weary]

Deleted repeated post!

Edited By Weary on 25/06/2011 22:42:37

[WearyParticipant @weary]

Deleted repeated post.

Edited By Weary on 25/06/2011 22:43:12

[Stephen LeacockParticipant @stephenleacock91334]

Solidworks all the way here (contains DWG editer which is just like autocad )

[Stephen BensonParticipant @stephenbenson75261]

I bought Turbocad 11 a few years ago because it was accepted by the British Horology Institute as I was doing their distance learning course at the time.

I had used Autocad at work so did not follow the tutorial and got in a complete mess but I had some drawings to do for the course so started again this time using the tutorial and it all started to make sense.

I have since upgraded to Turbocad 17 and would not use anything else now I think if you have used another package this puts you at a disadvantage as each CAD package has a different core mindset so you have to unlearn a lot of stuff to change packages.

Edited By Stephen Benson on 26/06/2011 09:03:56

[SpurryParticipant @spurry]

I have used Turbocad since version 2, and would not be without it. I can draw anything I need for my cnc 2D work, saving the files as DXF’s for machining.

 

Autocad was tried and found to be dreadful, so quickly reverted to Tcad. The IMSI (Turbocad) forum is very helpful and help is only a mouse-click away.

 

Pete

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

Cad is like religion and Marmite

 

What works for one will not work for another because people see problems in different ways.

Some can see in 3D graphics and some are relegated to seeing in flat form and other just can’t see things – no disrespect here.

 

As Stephen says if you have used another program you have a mindset on how these work and changing can be hard.

I get to try and review quite a few different programs and also have the same problem. Where a lot of programs differ is how they select commands.

 

Older programs that had their roots in DOS used what is known as a command line interface where you typed your command in a line at the bottom of the screen. Sounds slow and old fashioned but using short cut’s and macros [ more later if needed ? ] it’s very very fast.

 

Later on when Windows came out a lot of programs took advantage of drop down menus and also allowed you do move and dock tool bars where you wanted, personally I find that very slow and it clutters a drawing up. I much prefer a large blank page to draw on as you would with a sheet of paper.

 

I personally find it very frustrating to have to click a box, type in a vaule, then click another box etc

 

Some of the older ones when they moved onto windows also kept the command line to give the users a choice.

 

I personally don’t like Turbocad as I paid for 4 versions, every one promising that they had incorporated a command line interface when they hadn’t and I don’t like liars who do this just to make a sale, again my personal choice.

 

The whole CAD market is changing, for far too long thee programs have been over priced and a law unto themselves. Autocad in the UK is currently around £3,000. Solid Edge and Solid Works are around £5,000 and you also have to pay a yearly maintenance charge to keep current on bug fixes.

 

But now onto the scene comes the 2D versions of Solid Edge and Solid Works completely free to get you to upgrade later.

 

However if you want to go straight into 3D, Alibre do a cut down version for free which can be upgraded to entry level for $99

 

Whatever your choice it’s not going to come overnight, you have to learn at it and persevere but it will pay back very quickly. I very often find it’s quicker to draw a problem out that work it out mathematically.

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

I recently had to produce a 2D drawing in dxf format. My usual drawing program (LibreOffice Draw) doesn’t output dxf files, so I downloaded a whole host of freeware titles to do the job – DraftSight, LibreCAD , QCad and FreeCad amongst others. All ran on both Windows and Linux systems, as I needed them to be compatible with both the desktop and laptop computers I have. I found QCad to be the best (for me). LibreCAD is very similar and is alledgedly a whizzed-up version of QCad but has a bizarre set of green icons which I hated, and no operational manual, as yet. DraftSight, by Dassault Systemes, is by far the most comprehensive of the programs I tried, but too complicated for the simple drawing I needed to make. Plus, at my age, the learning curve was just too steep! Like most things in life, you gets what you pays for and what suits one person doesn’t necessarily suit another. Look around, try out the freebies and see what suits you and your purpose best.

 

John

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

Hi All

When starting with any cad program the complexity is often the most difficult hurdle to overcome. The CAD program designers have to cater for the entire market from mechanical drafting to Architecture Etc.

One way of getting comfortable with a program is to learn a subset of the commands first, just the ones you need.

For Mechanical drafting:

In the options make sure the program is set to draw in milimetres or the measurement unit you wish to use.
Set the command dimscale to 50 to get you started. (You can change it later if need be)

Line, Circle and ARC and the means of positioning them will get you started. AutoCad has the command line. So you can type those commands directly without even finding them in the menu.
The first letters can be used L C and A instead of typing the whole word

Then learn the fillet, chamfer and offset commands.
F CHA and F can be used instead of typing the whole word

Dimensioning is pretty easy from the menu you just pick the points (You may need to set the Dimension scale from the command line “Dimscale&#8221

Text can be a little fiddly to get the scale right the command shortcut is T.

Printing in Autocad can be done from the “Model” view to get you started.

Once you feel more confident and have mastered the above. You will use “Layout” The tabs along the bottom of the drawing. Imagine them as separate pages of a particular size you want to print one or more views of your drawings on to scale.

All the above is for AutoCad however other programs will be similar. Mastering a dozen commands or methods is not that hard. After that you can add complexity as required.

Cheers

John

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

There are two main ways of drawing.

 

Precision drawing where every line and origin point is entered precisely, usually by typing in on a command line or drop down box the required length etc.

 

Then there is the Old Fogey way where you draw two lines at 90 degrees to one another and then proceed to offset these lines to become construction lines, later they are trimmed , filleted, chamfered etc to form the part you are drawing.

 

Sounds familiar ? Well that’s just how most of us were taught using a drawing board all those centuries ago.

 

Some are better / faster / more comfortable with method 1, others with method 2.

 

How easy it is to draw in CAD is also down to how the program is setup. John mentions “Dimscale” above as an example, often called other things on other programs. In CAD you always draw full size and do not scale. We only used to scale drawings to fit on the paper but the computer doesn’t need to do this with zoom commands etc.

 

So say you are drawing a part for your O gauge locomotive and said part is 20mm square roughly and you have a few drawing to do all similar.

You start a drawing, draw say the square, set colours for different line types, set text size and dimension sizes so they are relative to the part, you don’t want massive letters on a 20mm long part.

Once you have got these settings done, delete the drawing and save the blank drawing as a template.

 

Next time you want to draw in O gauge, open this template and immediately rename you new drawings as “Widget O gauge ” etc and all the setting has been done for you and you still have the original template for next time.

 

It’s small things such as this that whilst costing initial setup time will pay back in spades over a short period of time.

 

There are also whole libraries of pre drawn parts available for import which can save you hours later or you can save parts of an existing drawing as a part for reuse.

Take a look at Traceparts

Over a 100 million pre drawn parts already done for you for free.

 

Nuts and bolts if you ever have to draw one as opposed to using a library file, you only draw once then import or copy.

Edited By John Stevenson on 27/06/2011 07:36:52

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

Hi John
I was not suggesting that parts are drawn by drawing two reference lines then offsetting them is always the right way to go.

Another way to draw lines In AutoCAD; if you select a point then move the mouse pointer in a particular 90 degree separated orthogonal direction (Ortho must be turned on by pressing f9 to toggle it on or off) at that point you can enter the actual length of the line and press enter and it will snap to that point, always quicker than entering X Y coordinates.

I think that your suggestion of draw offset and trim as being “Old fogey” is not quite right. I suggest it is an easier entry point for a beginner. As experience is developed the new user will no doubt use more advanced methods.

Upon reflection I should have added Osnap to the beginners toolbox (Type Osnap at the command line in ACAD) this will bring up a menu of the available automatic snap points there are over a dozen. F3 will turn the functionality on or off. Turning on “end” and “mid” is a good start; it will make the program snap to the start or middle of a line. You can also enter them directly just before you start drawing an object to tell the program to start at that point.

The Grid F7 and snap to grid F9 I have deliberately left out of this discussion I always leave them turned off. Although it appears to be the easy way to draw it does not usually help as the world is not designed in equally spaced points. Being trapped on effectively a piece of graph paper is a no no.

The main thing is to have a go. Not all programs have a command line so if the one you have does not you can do everything from the menu system All programs will have the basic functionality I have detailed.

Cheers

John

Edited By John McNamara on 27/06/2011 08:08:00

[John Stevenson 1Participant @johnstevenson1]

John,

I was just offering different ways of drawing and let the user see what suits him / her self

I wasn’t advocating one method over another but trying to keep it simple.

 

As you say the main thing is to have a go, like most things it has a learning curve which can be as steep as you like depending on software and features, the trick is to start off with the shallowest curve possible as fewer folk will fall by the wayside.

 

John S.

[Jim NolanParticipant @jimnolan76764]

Posted by John Stevenson on 26/06/2011 11:14:37:

 

The whole CAD market is changing, for far too long thee programs have been over priced and a law unto themselves. Autocad in the UK is currently around £3,000. Solid Edge and Solid Works are around £5,000 and you also have to pay a yearly maintenance charge to keep current on bug fixes.

 

Totally agree John they should be wearing masks as they are all bandits. I have now upgraded both Solidworks and AutoCAD LT in recent years. The versions were separated by a number of years and in truth the “improvements” were superficial to say the least.

As to the Solidworks subscription it’s just a way of holding you to ransom. Recently my computer died. After Dell repaired it I could not get Solidworks to load and then I could not get the service packs to download. So I needed a bit of help the resellers reply was sorry your subscriptions not up to date!

Jim

 

[John McNamaraParticipant @johnmcnamara74883]

Have to agree re the upgrade policy of the big CAD companies.

For Architecture Autocad is now being pushed out of the way (By Autodesk the maker of ACAD) towards Revit this program uses a completely different user interface and the compatibility between the two programs is inadequate.

For Engineering the push is to Autodesk Inventor.

By continuously moving the cheese see the link below for a good read…. They keep the users under control and behind the 8 ball. And the training companies (Which is what the resellers really are; they make little from the program itself they want you to buy expensive training) in business.

If you don’t pay the upgrade fees every year they charge 50% of the full price of the program for an upgrade and that is only for N years then you have to buy again. You are trapped.

Cheers

John

 

http://mrlassen.wikispaces.com/file/view/Who_Moved_My_Cheese.pdf

 

 

Edited By John McNamara on 27/06/2011 11:59:07

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