CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

25 March 2009

Product News

IMSI/Design Launches Significant TurboCAD Professional V16 Upgrade Collaboration

IMSI®/Design announced that it is shipping a significant upgrade to its flagship product, TurboCAD® Professional Version 16.

"TurboCAD Professional v16 may be the strongest upgrade we've ever had to the TurboCAD series," stated Bob Mayer, COO of IMSI/Design. "There is a lot of innovation in this product, particularly in 2D drafting and 3D modeling and rendering."

An overview of new and improved features include (please see http://www.TurboCAD.com for a complete listing):

Drafting and Detailing:

• Drafting Palette. Capabilities that expedite the drafting-to-detailing process. Create associative 2D sections based on standard views or sectional planes of 3D surface or ACIS® solid models, including XREFs and imported models from ADT and Google™ SketchUp™. Create nested, associative sections (i.e., cross-sections of cross-sections). 2D views may be placed in paperspaces (layouts), hatched, dimensioned, and annotated.

• XREF Manager. Built into the Block Palette. Manage external references more effectively. XREFs can be exported with .DWG or .DXF drawings for greater Autodesk AutoCAD® file compatibility.

• Bezier Curves. New node editing options include Equal Curvatures-at-point, Non-equal Curvature-at-point, Non-smooth-at-point; all offering much better control over curve fitting with nodes handles.

• Dimensioning. Create standard styles for exchange of standard conventions. Dimension scaling in Paper Space now matches scale from Model Space to ensure accurate dimensioning of displayed entities in Paper Space Viewports.

• Format Painter. Provides ability to automatically extract and save selected formats (even from imported files) as preset property values for any object property type. Access from drop down menu.

• Filleted Corners. Automatically add from local menu, streamlining the process of filleting corners when drawing polygons, irregular polygons, rectangles, and irregular rectangles.

3D Modeling Enhancements:

• ACIS® Solid Modeling Engine. Now updated to Version 18. From Spatial.

• Quick Pull. Productivity enhancement for modeling 3D objects. Select any enclosed geometry on a 3D face and then press or pull it out of the design. Even specify draft angle and add a chamfer or fillet to the geometry being modified. Works with solids or surfaces.

• Mesh Simplifier Tool. Degenerate (simplifies to a specific number of triangles) TurboCAD surfaces. Useful for simplifying large, imported meshes from popular 3D scanners.

• Helix. New tool that allows users to quickly draw 2D and 3D spirals.

• Curve. Split a 3D Curve into two pieces. Handy for extracting extrusion or sweep profiles from part of a larger curve.

• Extrude, Revolve, Sweep. New offset property allows for the creation of a body with constant thickness, as offset.

• Measurement. Measure length of 3D Curves as well as the area of ACIS faces. Also, measuring the volume of ACIS solids is conveniently included in the Measurement menu.

• 3D Mouse Support. Speed design as you move along and rotate about your drawing’s X, Y, and Z axes without having to also use your keyboard or other on-screen navigational aids.

Architectural Enhancements:

• Enhanced Doors and Windows. Right/Left and Inside/Outside flip options now available in Node Editing. The following Vertical Alignment properties have also been added: Head and sill height for windows; head and threshold height for doors.

• Stairs. Ability to edit a stair's height in Edit Node.

Lighting and Rendering Enhancements:

• LightWorks® Rendering. Now updated to Version 7.9. From Lightwork Design. Provides global illumination, final gather, tone mapping, gamma correction, lens flare, ambient occlusion, and dozens of new material shaders. Benefit from advanced shader descriptions as well.

• Materials to Facet. Drag and drop materials from the Material Palette onto a 3D object's face. Add multiple material finishes to a single object.

• Material Scaling. New methods to accurately scale materials and preview changes on-the-fly.

• Render Styles and Style Editor. Render using pre-defined styles that optimize dozens of settings for specific effects, photorealistic or non-photorealistic. Render Style Editor allows for unlimited new styles to be created for one-click access to a style from project to project.

Improved Compatibility and Interoperability:

• Database Connect Palette. Data link to any data source (ODBC database, Excel, CSV, SQL, Access, Oracle, Sequel Server) on either local machine or company network. Reference data in a TurboCAD table as well as data associated to objects. CAD file automatically updates with changes to external database. Improves bill of material handling, real time pricing.

• Improved .DWG/.DXF Import/Export. Ability to export XREFs with .DWG or .DXF drawings.

• Google™ SketchUp™ Import. Enhanced. Not only is more information about the Google (NASD: GOOG) SketchUp model imported, but supplemental rendering, lighting and materials information is imported if the SketchUp model has been rendered with IMSI/Design's IDX Renditioner product, a plug-in to SketchUp.

• Google SketchUp Export. New ability to convert models into native SketchUp (.SKP) files for opening directly in Google SketchUp.

Availability and Pricing

TurboCAD Professional v16 is now available at a suggested retail price of $1,295.

TurboCAD Professional v16 Architectural Edition and TurboCAD Professional v16 Mechanical Edition are available for $1,395.

TurboCAD Professional v16 Platinum Edition (containing both Architectural and Mechanical Edition features) is available for $1,495.

Upgrades are available online at http://www.turbocad.com or by calling IMSI/Design at 1-800-833-8082.

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