TurboCAD

[Mark Shayle]

Dear Blue Room Gurus

 

Many years ago I used TurboCAD version 3 for Macintosh to produce ground plans and drawings. I speedily self taught myself from the supplied manuals and found it a good solid application that allowed me as a Production Manager to quickly and efficiently produce working ground plans for tours etc. The only slight drawback I had at this time was producing printouts at any thing bigger than A4 from my printer. I managed to resolve this by persuading a friendly print bureau to purchase TurboCAD, load it onto their Macs and then easily send it to their large format plotter to plot out at any size when I supplied artwork on disc.

 

It’s been a long time since I last used the application, and somewhere along the way I lost the prog files in the course of upgrading hardware over the years. I still have a number of the ground plans I produced way back then on back up archives.

 

I want to get back up to speed with CAD as increasingly I am handcrafting or producing sketches that would be better done on my Macintosh, and plotted out in large format ie A3 plus.

 

I have downloaded the latest Mac Version of TurboCAD oddly called version 1 ( I assume it became discontinued and has been remade as a MacOS application?) and have started hunting and pecking around it. Sadly it doesn’t have a nice training manual as with my original old programme, and the speed that I can pick up new application appears to be slowing with age! That said this new version appears to be more than capable of meeting my simple drafting needs.

 

I do have a couple of questions relating to this software and CAD work in general. Any help on any / all of the following TurboCad issues would be greatly appreciated:

 

1/ Is there a nice training manual available anywhere for this software?

 

2/ I don’t appear to be able to import my old version TurboCAD drawings into the new application……..is it possible?

 

3/ Can anyone recommend a print bureau that can plot out drawings I produce (obviously keeping scale and drawing integrity in the process)? Ideally I like to find a physical bureau in the Lewes / Brighton / East Sussex areas, but would be happy email drawings for mail back plans if any one knows a reliable company for this kind of service.

 

This last question is probably the most important / urgent to me as spending the time to retrain myself will be a bit redundant if I cant produce large format plots.

 

By the by, is anyone else using TurboCAD on the Mac? How do you find it? Any good resources or pointers you can share?

 

 

Many thanks

 

Mark Shayle

[gareth]

Recent versions of TurboCAD are quite adept at exporting drawings in a variety of file formats - DXF, DWG, PLT, etc. Most print bureau services should be able to deal with those. Do be aware, though, that taking a TCW file that contains things like symbols that are constructed in certain ways and exporting it to other formats can sometimes result in some slightly strange things happening - but usually nothing that a little time spent tidying the drawing won't solve.

 

Steve Wentworth runs Modelbox, a drawing and plotting company specialising in theatrical-related drawings - he's a very helpful chap, and his service is excellent.

 

Regarding TurboCAD versions - the PC release is currently on v12 (I'm still using v11.2, which does everything I need it to do so I see no point in upgrading quite yet). I see from the website that the Mac versions don't carry the same version numbers as the PC releases, but I'd hazard a guess that the current Mac release is a parallel one to PC v12.

 

I've been using TurboCAD since v4, when I was introduced to it while working at Glyndebourne, and I have a lot of time for it - it's an excellent, very capable CAD package at a very competitive price. I currently have TurboCAD v11.2 and WYSIWYG R17 installed on my PC, and the fact that on occasions I prefer to use TurboCAD (tens of pounds) in preference to WYG (hundreds of pounds) to draw simple 2D lighting plans must surely say something about the packages! If you need any lighting symbols for TurboCAD, let me know - I have a fairly comprehensive selection that I've built up over the years.

[Mark Shayle]

Steve Wentworth runs Modelbox, a drawing and plotting company specialising in theatrical-related drawings - he's a very helpful chap, and his service is excellent.

 

 

Hi Gareth,

 

Thanks for the reminder about Steve at Modelbox……….he had completely slipped my mind, and I had assumed that Modelbox only dealt in all things AutoCad. A quick glance at the website is very encouraging as a first port of call, Ill look into it this week, and report back to this thread for others in a similar situation.

 

Any thoughts on the import of my old version into new package / training manual?

 

Thanks for the offer of the LX symbols, I’ll keep in file away the offer for future reference if that’s OK

[gareth]

Any thoughts on the import of my old version into new package / training manual?

I've occasionally come across issues with using newer versions to open drawings which were created in older versions. It doesn't seem to be a predictable thing - just the odd drawing here and there which doesn't seem to like opening in versions of the package which are a lot newer than the one with which they were created. Luckily (touch wood!) this issue has never really caused me any significant inconvenience, so it's not one to which I've devoted much time in terms of coming up with a solution or work-around. Just as a thought, have you tried installing the older version alongside the newer one, and using it to open the old drawings and save them in a different form (e.g. DXF) before opening with the newer version?

 

Regarding the training manual - I do remember that the very first version I bought came with a selection of different manuals, one of which was a "teach yourself TurboCAD" sort of affair containing a series of lessons/tutorials. The next version I purchased was very different in that the documentation that came with it was minimal - much less impressive than the previous one. I purchased V11 last year, and while that came with a pretty decent reference manual, there wasn't any sort of tutorial included, either within the manual or as a separate entity. Pity, really - I can see TurboCAD being the first step on the CAD ladder for some people due to its rich feature set and low price, so I guess a tutorial in the basics would be a useful thing for many purchasers.

[Mr.Si]

There's a printshop on Portland Road in Hove (actually) which we use to photo copy stuff Architects etc send to us.

 

If think they've got an original name such as "The Copy Shop" or something like that.

 

I haven't been there much, but you can certainly try.

 

Otherwise, Try Here

 

or HERE

[Mark Shayle]

Slightly delayed, but just wanted to let you all know that I solved my plan printing problems with TurboCAD.

 

For the benefit of anyone else who may find themselves in a similar situation can I recommend the very helpful Geoff at Ezeeplan ltd, who spent a lot of time looking at my various file formats and exports and experimenting for me. In the end , despite my initial reservations I went with creating an A1 pdf file and then emailing to Ezeeplan who printed it and posted back to me the next day all for a very reasonable price. Their website is here

[Bryson]

Thread Necromancy alert!

 

I've just bought TurboCAD v3 (the new v3, that is....confusing or what?) for my Mac and I seem to have totally lost the ability to sort the visibility "order" of the layers. IE: I want the groundplan as the "bottom" layer - right now it covers everything!

 

Can anyone point me at that function? It's so long since I've used it.....

[gareth]

Dunno about the new Mac version, but on the PC version the Modify menu has "bring to front", "send to back", "forward one" and "back one" for modifying layer order.

[boatman]

I got the PC version 14 Deluxe recently and found that there are lots of very helpful people on the TurboCad User Conference site.

 

HTH