TurboCAD

Infobox Software
name = TurboCAD



caption =
author =
developer = IMSI/Design, LLC
released = 1986
latest release version = v15 (Windows), v3 (Mac)
latest release date = 2008
latest preview version =
latest preview date =
platform = Windows, Apple Mac
language = English, German, French, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Czech, Polish, Italian
status =
genre = CAD
license = Proprietary
website = http://www.imsidesign.com/

TurboCAD is a CAD software application for 2D and 3D design and drafting running on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Windows versions

TurboCAD Pro, the 'professional' edition of the software, contains general drafting tools as well as tools for architectural and mechanical design. Additional tools are included in the enhanced 'architectural' or 'mechanical' versions of the software, while a 'platinum' version contains both the architectural and mechanical tools. For less demanding users, a less expensive TurboCAD Deluxe 2D / 3D version is available, and for users needing only 2D functionality, there is the much less expensive TurboCAD Designer. With the exception of TurboCAD Designer, other TurboCAD releases support both 2D drafting and 3D modelling tools. [ [http://www.turbocad.com/TurboCAD/TurboCADforWindows/tabid/555/Default.aspx TurboCAD 15 Product Page] ]

Mac versions

The Mac versions of the software are built on a separate codebase and are not directly comparable with the Windows versions. TurboCAD Mac Pro contains both 2D and 3D tools, while the standard version is for 2D drafting only. [ [http://www.turbocad.com/TurboCAD/TurboCADforMac/tabid/556/Default.aspx TurboCAD for Mac] ]

TurboCAD History

Early Days

TurboCAD was developed in South Africa By Stephen "Yogi" Russell in 1985 and was released to the market there in early 1986. Its original price was 199 Rand or about $100 at that time. And it was originally called InterCAD. It was originally developed by Hendrik Vermooten and Hein Oosthuizen. Initially hardware support was for a very specific device configuration: Hercules monochrome graphics cards, HP7475 plotters and keyboard for data entry. This first version of TurboCAD fitted on a single 360k floppy so that it could run on the original IBM PC. The source code could also fit on a single floppy disk along with the 30k required by the “development environment”: Turbo Pascal 2.0.

The timing of the release of TurboCAD was about the same as that of Generic CADD in the United States. Both TurboCAD’s and Generic CADD’s marketing objective were the same – create a viable, low-cost competitor to AutoCAD. But because Generic CADD launched in the U.S. before TurboCAD, it received much more positive press about its low price (approximately $600 originally) and quickly achieved a large and very loyal customer base. The release of Generic CADD in the PC market was at that time, the biggest ‘CAD event’ since AutoDesk had reinvented CAD pricing with its initial release in 1981. South Africans Philip Copeman and Michael Cartwright worked on redesigning the product and introduced it to the United Kingdom market as TurboCAD in late 1986. This was done under the brand Pink Software and the other three stake holders were John Glennie, Digby Prior and Janine Copeman. Support was added for more video cards (EGA, Olivetti, etc.), input devices (Summagraphics digitizer and later, the first Microsoft Mouse). The cost was £99. TurboCAD was of course a DOS product with limited device support, an area where Generic CADD was strong at the time. Martin Sacks, the first US distributor, got Digby Prior, a ton of plotters and printers, and a driver writing utility in the same room in Los Angeles which was a turning point for the product. Martin also created the first CAD symbols included with the product. Initially, in order to be able to support dot matrix printers, a stand-alone printing/plotting utility, FPlot was sold as an add-on to TurboCAD. Later, TurboCAD included native printer drivers for a vast array of dot matrix, bubble jet and early laser printers. This is also when Rob Berry started working on the product as a tech writer.

Moving to the US

TurboCAD was first sold in the United States in late 1986 by Milan Systems of America. By then, Generic CADD had dropped its price to $99 for its basic CAD module and other companies such as CCS, had introduced CAD products like CCS Designer for as little as $49! TurboCAD was marketed both as a stand-alone title for $99, as well as a bundle with a mouse for $149. This marketing strategy closely followed the success that Logitech and Generic CADD had enjoyed with their CAD/Mouse bundle. Logitech had OEM’d the Generic CADD product as First CAD. Milan Systems bundled the IMSI Mouse with TurboCAD. IMSI (International Microcomputer Software, Inc [ [http://worldcadaccess.typepad.com/blog/2004/03/can_turbocad_ge.html Can TurboCAD Get Respect?] ] ) also purchased copies of TurboCAD from Milan Systems and sold the bundle itself.

In 1990, IMSI released its first own-developed version of TurboCAD, version 2 for DOS. IMSI had licensed the source code from the original developers, Pink Software, and programmer Kurt Diesch set out fixing bugs and adding output support, as well as increasing functionality to compete with the other under $500 CAD programs on the market at that time - Generic CADD, Drafix and Design CAD 2D). Later Kurt ported the code from the original Turbo Pascal to the later object oriented version that would eventually morph into Borland Delphi. This resulted in a major improvement to the DOS user interface.

In the United States, TurboCAD was initially marketed through high-tech, direct sales publications such as Computer Shopper and InfoWorld magazines. Computer Shopper proved to be the consistently profitable publication in which to advertise and monthly full-page ads were run in this publication for the first two and a half years from TurboCAD’s introduction in the U.S. Computer Shopper ads not only established a strong and loyal end user base, but they also helped established a loyal dealer network.

Windows

With the release of TurboCAD v2 DOS and v1 Windows (in 1993), IMSI decided to start using direct mail as a means of cost effectively increasing its user base. The decision to do this was influenced by taking the TurboCAD Upgrade mail piece and mailing it to rented lists of software buyers (non-TurboCAD owners). Over the period of 1993 through 1995, direct mail became the main channel of sales for TurboCAD. Revenues for direct mail sales of TurboCAD grew to over 20 million dollars a year by 1993, with successful prospect direct mail campaigns being sent out on a nearly monthly basis in the U.S., Canada, UK and Australia. In 1993, IMSI released the first Macintosh versions of TurboCAD – Standard retailed for $195, while Professional retailed for $495 and offered 3D, wireframe functionality. This technology was purchased from Santiago Montufar’s company, Pegasus Software

In 1993, IMSI began to outsource the development of TurboCAD. Following a trip to Russia by Martin Sacks, IMSI hired 3 Russian programmers to begin work on TurboCAD Windows v2. Included in these 3 original hires were Victor Bazarov, who then came to work in San Rafael for IMSI, and Alex Presniak who went on to start SoftDev on behalf of IMSI. Since then, Alex and many of the same Russian developers (Sergey Nazarov, TurboCAD team leader; Leonid Robin, SDK development) have continued to work on the TurboCAD code.

By late 1994, the success of the direct mailings had peaked, with an established user base of over a quarter of a million TurboCAD owners. From that point on response rates and ROIs (returns on investment) began to decline, due to over-saturation of the direct mail market and increasing printing and postage costs. As such, IMSI decided to reestablish its presence in the reseller market for TurboCAD.

TurboCAD quickly became a favorite of the reseller channel, being successfully distributed through key software distributors such as Ingram, TechData and Merisel, and being sold in retail locations such as MicroCenter, Fry’s Electronics, CompUSA and Software Etc. Concurrent to its penetration into the computer software reseller channel, were the development of strong educational reseller and direct to school sales channels.

International sales

TurboCAD was first sold internationally by IMSI in the United Kingdom in late 1986. In 1992, IMSI took over Pink Software’s London office and re-launched the product back into the UK market. A year later, IMSI began successfully direct marketing TurboCAD in the UK. The following year marked the first sale of a localized version of TurboCAD, with both Windows and DOS version of TurboCAD being offered for sale in German. In 1994, the first French version was created, in 1995, TurboCAD Japanese was launched in partnership with Sumitomo Metal Industries and the first Chinese version was created for the Taiwanese market by Noah International in 2001. Spanish, Czech, Polish and Italian versions have also been created over the past 7 years.

3D CAD

The decision to make TurboCAD a 3D program was one of the riskiest, yet one of the most successful ideas in the history of the product. It defined the development strategy for all versions, starting with v4 in 1995. Version 4 laid the foundation for the 2D to 3D transition; however, TurboCAD users could see its full implementation only in v5 when ‘Model Space’, ‘Work Plane’, ‘Camera’, and 3D Draggers appeared. Version 6 saw the integration of the industry standard ACIS solid modeling kernel and the LightWorks photorealistic rendering engine.

A Plug-in to the TurboCAD engine was first developed in 1999 by SoftDev. This VBA-based application was Animation Lab. Animation Lab is now up to version3. Since then, in collaboration with SoftDev a Beam Analysis tool (2001) and a 2 ½D CAM plug-in (2002) have been developed. 3rd party plug-ins have now also been developed: a surface modeling plug developed by Jerry Simington (2003); a Mechanical CAD symbols plug-in developed by Cadalog Inc. which accesses the CADsymbols.com website (2004); and a parametric furniture (cabinets, tables, chairs) generator, developed by Spinar Software (2005).

From 2003 through 2005 significant enhancements were made to the TurboCAD Professional product. Specifically, Spatial’s Deformable Modeling engine was enabled in version 9.5, while D-Cubed’s 2D Constraint Manager was added in version 10.5. TurboCAD Professional’s price is now $895. Also, in June 2005, IMSI re-entered the Macintosh market with the launch of TurboCAD and TurboCAD 3D. These products were private-label licenses from CADSoft Solutions.

In June 2006, TurboCAD was purchased from Broadcaster, Inc. (formerly IMSI) by IMSI/Design, LLC, a corporation put together for the purpose and led by Royal Farros and Greyhawk Capital Management. [ [http://www.cad-portal.com/articles/pr_details.php?ID=58 Newly Formed IMSI/Design to Focus on Exploding CAD Market] ] [ [http://www.cad-portal.com/news/index.php?id=22 Where goeth TurboCAD?] ]

In 2006, the ability to unlock additional functionality through special Serial number and Activation Key pairs was introduced with TurboCAD v12. Collections of Architectural and Mechanical features were ‘packaged’ together and sold successfully to TurboCAD Professional owners. Architectural features included architectural object types (windows, doors, stairs and rails) based on AutoDesk’s ADT product, meaning that while TurboCAD could now read an ADT (DWG) file with these architectural object types, AutoCAD itself could not!

With the release of TurboCAD v14, the retail price of the Professional version product eclipsed the $1000 price point, with the basic Pro version retailing for $1295 US, and the Platinum Edition (additional Architectural and Mechanical features enabled) retailing for $1495. TurboCAD v14 also include the first Terrain Modeling functionality.

TurboCAD 15 was released in March 2008.

ee also

*CAD
*DWF
*DXF

External links

* [http://www.turbocad.com/ TurboCAD official site]
* [http://management.cadalyst.com/cadman/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=462226 TurboCAD Pro 14 (Cadalyst Labs review)]
* [http://www.aecmag.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=187&Itemid=32 TurboCAD 14 (AEC Magazine review)]
* [http://www.architosh.com/features/2006/indepth/imsi-turbocad/turbocad-1.html Mac TurboCAD Products (Architosh review)]
* [http://www3.turbocadcommunity.com/tiki-index.php TurboCAD Community Wiki site]

References