Turbocad/autocad

[Capt. Manuvar]

I have just acquired a cheap version of Turbocad, which i want to use from some amatuer aircraft design. In the past i've been successful in teaching myself to use a variety of software, but i seem to have hit a brick wall with this one. There are a lot of books on Autocad but none on turbocad. I was wondering if anyone knew if its worth using an autocad book as i've heard that turbocad is a clone of autocad.
Thanks
Capt Manuvar

[DeepC]

No TurboCAD and AutoCAD have quite different ways of doing things. Admittedly I haven't used TurboCAD for some years but at that time it seemed very clunky compared to AutoCAD. Saying that, TurboCAD is a sight cheaper than AutoCAD so if you can live with it no problem.

Are you intending to use it for 3D Design or just 2D plans drawing?

DeepC

[Capt. Manuvar]

I want to use it for both but i want to start with 2D plans for now.
Thanks
Capt. M

[DeepC]

If you want to do this as part of a commercial venture then I would say buy a copy of AutoCAD (Approx £3000).

Some of the AutoCAD expanded versions might be better. (Try Mech Desktop)

I have heard that TurboCAD can do 3D fairly well for the price. You don't have a member of close family studying at Uni or School doing an engineering or design type course do you? Cheap versions of AutoCAD for them.

DeepC

[SoftTop]

Pro Engineer seems to be ahead of AutoCAD in terms of 3d rendering and structural analysis. If you need to do analysis on an AC file, you have to export it to another program (can't remember the name) and then convert the file. ProEngineer comes with another program called Mechanica that is intergrated with it and doesn't require much messing about to run the analysis.

If you need more info, I'll get my lad to dig it out.