Turbocad
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TurboCAD is a 2D and 3D CAD software application originally developed in South Africa in 1986. It runs on Windows and Mac operating systems. Over time, TurboCAD added support for additional hardware, expanded to international markets through localized versions, and transitioned from 2D drafting to include 3D modeling capabilities. It is currently on version 16 and remains a popular CAD software option.
Turbocad
- 1. TURBO CAD
- 2. TurboCAD is a CAD software application for 2D and 3D design and drafting running on the Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. TurboCAD Developer(s):- IMSI/Design, LLC Initial release:- 1986 Stable release :- v16 (Windows), v4 (Mac) / 2009 Platform:- Windows, Apple Mac Available in:- English, German, French, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Czech, Polish,Italian Type:- CAD License:- Proprietary Website:- http://www.imsidesign.com/
- 3. TurboCAD History Early Days TurboCAD was originally developed in South Africa 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 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 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. 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.
- 4. 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. 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.
- 5. 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 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).
- 6. 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. TurboCAD 16 was released in July 2009.
- 7. From:- Karamjot singh class:-civil(c2) Roll no:-100074 Date:-11 august,2010