TurboCAD Mac Pro delivers unparalleled value and productivity in a professional 2D/3D CAD package with fully integrated 2D drafting tools, 3D surface and ACIS® solid modeling tools, assembly tools, advanced architectural tools, powerful LightWorks photorealistic rendering, new 3D printing features, and extensive file support.
Exceptional Value in 2D/3D CAD
TurboCAD® Mac Pro delivers unparalleled value and productivity in a professional 2D/3D CAD package. Fully integrated 2D drafting tools, 3D surface and ACIS® solid modeling tools, assembly tools, advanced architectural tools, and powerful LightWorks photorealistic rendering are accompanied by thousands of symbols, materials, decals, and more.
Professional Control and Flexibility
Customisable toolbars, set-up wizard, and context sensitive help enhance usability, while the ability to quickly organise layers and layer sets optimise drawing management. Plus complete printing and publishing tools as well as extensive file support including AutoCAD .DWG meet the needs of professional architects, engineers, illustrators, designers, and more.
Industry Specific Tools
Get superior control and flexibility with tools specific to your line of work. TurboCAD Mac Pro includes these suites of professional design tools:
Powerful Lighting & Rendering Options
When it’s time to present your ideas, TurboCAD Mac Pro delivers stunning photorealistic renderings. Apply materials and decals. Set lighting, shadowing, reflectance, roughness and environmental effects. Then render with the powerful LightWorks Photorealistic Rendering Engine. Sketch rendering options are also available for a hand-drawn look, appropriate in the early stages of conceptual design.
Flexible File Sharing and Publishing Options
Easily import existing designs from popular CAD and graphic design file formats, including AutoCAD® .DWG. Just as easily, save designs from TurboCAD to other CAD formats, or choose a popular desktop publishing formats such as EPS TIFF, CGM and more, to create brochures or other marketing materials. Even print design to your specifications with options for better control of how the printed document will look.
3D Printing Tools
TurboCAD Mac Pro includes a suite of tools to check and prepare a part for 3D Printing. These include 3D Print Check, Surface Normals Check, Overhang Analysis, Wall Thickness, Preview Slices, Auto Position, Support Structure, Show Printer Volume, and Printer Definitions.
VRML Texture Support
VRML (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) is a file format used to describe 3D interactive graphics for the world wide web. TurboCAD supports VRML Export.
OBJ Texture Support
The OBJ File format was updated to supporting reading and displaying textures.
The Ultimate in Design Productivity
TurboCAD® Mac Pro makes it easy to design in 2D or 3D with a setup wizard, customisable toolbars and the most usability features including:
Complete Set of 2D Drafting Tools
TurboCAD Mac Pro provides unlimited 2D design options. Choose from a number 2D drafting tools including line, arc, curve, circle, ellipse, and spline tools. Access text, dimensioning tools, modifier and transformation tools for easy editing. Here is a sampling of 2D tools.
Advanced 2D/3D Architectural Design Tools
TurboCAD® Mac Pro includes advanced tools for professional architectural design as well as thousands of symbols, materials, decals, and pre-drawn floorplans. Self-healing walls auto-dimension as they are drawn, auto trim wall vertices, and allow for assignment of hatch patterns and colour. Roof and slab tools work to quickly attach to existing walls, and when parametric doors and windows are added, the built-in intelligence automatically creates the needed openings.
Mesh Modeling Tools
Quickly create quad mesh primitives, extrusions, coverts, lathes, and meshes by points. Use subdivision modeling tools to smooth a quad mesh with a few clicks. Use in conjunction with the gripper tool for direct manipulation allowing you to easily create more organic shapes.
Surface Modeling Tools
Quickly model complex 3D objects with advanced design and modification tools. Primitives, complex and advanced surface tools, as well as surface modifiers and transformation tools are included.
ACIS® Solid Modeling Tools
The powerful ACIS 3D solid modeling engine and file filters fully supports 64 bit DLLs to create realistic, complex 3D objects as well as data crucial for engineers.
Woodworking Tools
TurboCAD Mac Pro makes it easier to visualise your next woodworking project with a suite of woodworking joint tools. Create these joints with just a few clicks:
Assembly Tools
A suite of assembly tools speed 3D design while snaps and alignment aids ensure accuracy.
Part Tree
TurboCAD Mac Pro offers a fully editable, hierarchal part tree for Solids and Surfaces. The Part Tree can be viewed as a selective UNDO/REDO tool: adjust the parameters of a bend, for example, without having to UNDO the design steps that have been made to the model since the parameter of that object were originally set. Each subsequent step will be applied correctly on the newly updated geometry.
Powerful Photorealistic and Sketch Rendering
Add materials, lighting including special effects lighting, and environmental effects to create stunning photorealistic renderings. High Dynamic-Range Images (HDRI) are supported as well as export of poster size images. You can even select a sketch render styles like cartoon, colour wash, pencil, mosaic and more for an artistic effect.
2D Printing
The Print by Layer Tool is extremely useful when you have multiple sets of data within one file that needs printing. For less complex jobs, use the Print Window option to simply drag the mouse over the area of your design you wish to print. Use page layouts to publish your design from up to 4 different view angles on a single page, controlling text size and more.
3D Printing Tools
TurboCAD Mac Pro includes a suite of tools to check and prepare a part for 3D Printing. These include a 3D Print Check, Surface Normals Check, Overhang Analysis, Wall Thickness, Preview Slices, Auto Position, Support Structure, Show Printer Volume, and Printer Definitions.
Record, Publish, & PDF
Record your screen with QuickTime Recording including audio capture for creating videos and tutorials. Save designs as single or multi-page PDFs for sending via email, or export to one of the many desktop publishing formats for placement in brochures and more.
Superior File Compatibility
A large number of industry standard formats make collaboration easy including the latest AutoCAD DWG, 3DS, Adobe® EPS, Illustrator® and Photoshop®, DXF, IGES, PICT, PNG, ACIS SAT, STL, STEP, TIFF, Trimble SketchUp and more.
3D Design
Split Mesh:
This tool allows you to divide a mesh into two portions based on a cutting plane. Split Mesh is an ideal tool for those working with faceted data along with 3D printing manufacturing processes.
Mesh Booleans:
This advancement provides a means to add or remove material from a mesh body. Previous versions only allowed Boolean operations on ACIS®- based solids. Now with the introduction of mesh Booleans, you can add/remove material imported from STL, OBJ, 3DS, and SketchUp.
Wrap:
The Wrap tool will help you place text, company logos, or complex 2D patterns onto 3D surfaces. The results are perfect for imprinting, embossing, or engraving.
PhotoRender SpotLight:
This new visualization tool creates a soft shadow directly under a group of objects. This is an alternate to the default PhotoRendering method that uses a distant light offset.
LightWorks® PhotoRender Support of Imported Textures:
Texture materials imported using the OBJ, 3MF, 3DS, and SketchUp data translators are recognized using the photo rendering features, including screen renders as well as high-resolution output files.
Weight and Volume Tables:
Whether you’re designing an aircraft, automobile, or picnic table, weight is key control parameter in a design. Tracking the weight of materials is a key control parameter in design.
Video: Weight and volume tables
Drafting and Annotation
Best Fit Line and Best Fit Circle:
Great for tracing precise curves over rough sketches. This tool will “best fit” a line or circle from a sample collection of points.
Video: Best fit line and best fit circle
Angular Tolerance Updates:
The Angular Tolerance interface has been updated to dynamically provide input from the Inspector dialog box.
Usability
AutoLayer:
AutoLayer is a tool that will automatically assign an entity to a layer based on the same shape or by entity name. Use AutoLayer to help organize files imported from other applications that do not support layering.
Repeat Previous Command:
This “right click” feature will save you lots of time by maintaining a list of last-used drawing commands. Select an item in the list to quickly change the current tool.
Interoperability
Now you can work with file types from these other programs:
• DWG/DXF 2020 Import/Export• PDF Import
• Adobe Illustrator Import
• SketchUp 2020 Import/Export
• Collada (DAE) Import/Export
UNFOLD SHEET TOOL
The Unfold sheet tool is used to flatten analytical or NURB surfaces into the xy plane. The unfold operation works on a sheet body that is flattened by mapping it onto a plane. The output body is a B-rep body consisting of planar faces and edges.
If the input sheet body is stretched and/or compressed during the unfolding, the shapes of features on the input body will be transferred faithfully to the output body, at the cost of some area distortion. The amount of distortion depends on the curvature of the input sheet body, as well as the constraints imposed by how faces are connected. Developable Surfaces (with zero Gaussian curvature), such as cylinders and cones can be unfolded without any area distortion. Other curved surfaces (with non-zero Gaussian curvature) may have some distortion during unfolding.
The unfold tool is in the mechanical tool palette located under Tools in the menu bar. Selecting the tool icon prompts the user for the surface or body to unfold. The surface to unfold fold must have zero thickness such as with a surface or mesh object. For example, it does not accept a solid. Select any surface in the body and the results are displayed in the XY plane at z = 0
BOM FRACTION MEASUREMENTS
The Bill of Material Create BOM feature has a new option to support fraction measurements. To use this feature, select the Attributes and BOM dialog box from the Tools menu. Select your objects and associated a data set such as CutList properties. Apply to selected. Now select the Create BOM option to create a table. In the BOM Settings dialog box, select the Decimals pull down option. And then Select Fractions to display measurements as factions of feet and inches.
CLASH DETECTION
A ‘clash’ is the result of two objects in your design taking up the same space. A clash detection is the technique of identifying if, where, or how two or more parts of a grouping interfere with one another. Clash Analysis is suitable for checking mate, align, and interference checks for parts and assemblies. Example types of interference may be:
The Clash Detection tool will report up twenty different types of clashes.
COMPARE PARTS
The Compare Parts tool examines two parts for deviations in geometry. Deviations are shown as minimum distance vectors between the two parts.
The first part selected must be a surface or solid. The second part must be a mesh which can be an imported object such as a STL, OBJ, or point cloud via the PLY file format. The result of the tool is provided as a report plus distant deviations represented by line entities between the two parts
GEAR
A spur gear is a type of mechanical gear with straight teeth that are parallel to the axis of rotation. Spur gears are used to transmit power and motion between parallel shafts. They are simple and inexpensive to manufacture, and they are widely used in many different types of mechanical systems.
The Gear tool is in the Mechanical tool palette. A gear is created by specifying a variety of parameters displayed in the creation dialog box. .
Example
1. Select the gear tool from Mechanical tool palette
2. Specify a location for the gear center
3. The gear parameters dialog is displayed
4. Specify the parameters below:
5. Specify whether to create a 3D solid along with the 2D gear profile.
Enable the check box to create an associate 3D extrude solid with the 2D gear profile
PBR PHOTO RENDERING
PBR, or physically based rendering, is a method of rendering computer graphics that aims to accurately represent the way that light interacts with different materials in the real world. In PBR rendering, the appearance of a material is defined by a set of parameters that describe its physical properties, such as its roughness, reflectivity, and transparency. These parameters are used to calculate the way that light reflects off the surface of the material, taking into account the angle of the light source and the surface normal, as well as the surface's roughness and other properties.
One of the key benefits of PBR rendering is that it allows for more realistic and consistent results, as it is based on the physical properties of real-world materials rather than arbitrary artistic choices. This makes it particularly well-suited for applications where photorealism is important, such as architectural visualization, product design, and film and game development.
Key user interface components to PBR rendering include:
PHOTO RENDER TOOL PALETTE
The Photo Render tool palette provides access to many of the tools used to create photo rendered images. The tool palette is access from the Tools menu bar “Photo Render” option.
| Create Camera | Creates a camera from eye point, reference point, and field of view. Cameras are saved with file and used with the Render Camera tool. |
| Render Camera | Renders a selected camera to the window. |
| Render Window | Renders the current window and view orientation. |
| Render To File | Renders current view orientation to a file with new width/height. |
| Display Last Render | Displays the last rendered window to drawing window. |
| Render Settings | Dialog box with settings for HDRI, background, materials, and other settings. |
CREATE CAMERA
The Create Camera tool creates a camera object from eye point, reference point, and field of view. Cameras are useful for saving view orientations that can be recalled or used with the Render Camera tool. To create a camera:
Camera objects have two parameters that can be modified from the data entry window.
RENDER CAMERA
The Render Camera tool creates a photo rendered image from a selected camera.
Camera properties supported when using this command include:
Start Point representing the camera eye point
End point representing the camera reference point
Field of View defines the scope of the view
Cameras are always rendered with perspective enabled. The rendered image is drawn into the drawing window.
RENDER WINDOW
The Render Window tool renders using the current view orientation. The results are displayed into the drawing window.
RENDER TO FILE
The Render Window tool renders using the current view orientation. The results are displayed into the drawing window.
DISPLAY LAST IMAGE
The Display Last Image redraws to the window the last photo rendered image.
PHOTO REALISTIC RENDER SETTINGS
The Render Settings dialog provides access to the following photo render settings and parameters.
GENERAL SETTINGS
The General Settings tab provides access to the following photo render settings and parameters:
| Render Presets | Presets parameters for mechanical, architectural, and jewelry scenes |
| Render Engine Type | Method of light tracing |
| Default Material | Glossy or Matte for parts with no materials assigned |
| Render Halt Time | Stop rendering after so many seconds |
| Render Halt Samples | Stop render after so many render passes |
| Render Halt Threshold | Render until pixels stop changing by this percent |
| Render Curves | Render curves as pipes |
| Render Text & Dimensions | Render Text and Dimensions as polygons |
| Ground Shadows | Create a transparent ground to catch shadows |
| Refresh Interval | Refresh the drawing screen only after so many seconds |
| Light Tracing Depth | The maximum number of light bounces |
HDRI
The High-Definition Range Image (HDRI) tab provides access to the following settings and parameters:
| HDR Images | Drop drown containing example HDRI images |
| From File | Select a HDRI from file system |
| Rotate Z | Rotate the HDR from 0 to 360 |
| Gain | Increase or decrease the light intensity |
| Gamma | Increase or decrease the contrast of the HDR image |
BACKGROUNDS
The Backgrounds tab provides access to the following settings and parameters :
| Backgrounds | Drop drown containing example background images |
| From File | Select a background from file system |
SUN & SKY
The Sun & Sky tab provides access to the following settings and parameters:
Use Skylight - Enables SkyLight environment lighting
Skylight Gain - Increase or decrease overall brightness
Skylight Turbidity- Increase or decrease atmosphere turbulence
Skylight Exposure- Increase or decrease overall intensity
Skylight Tint- Controls the color of the light
Use Sunlight- Enables Sunlight environment lighting
Sunlight Gain- Increase or decrease overall brightness
Sunlight Turbidity- Increase or decrease atmosphere turbulence
Sunlight Exposure- Increase or decrease overall intensity
Sunlight Tint- Controls the color of the light
MATERIALS
The Materials tab provides access to the following material settings and parameters:
Materials- List of material shader types
Each material can have a set of unique parameters. For example, glossy has:
Diffuse- Base color of object
Specular- Highlight color when light is perpendicular to surface normal
Roughness- How smooth or rough the material surface
Transparency- Material value for transparency or opacity
Materials: Glass Library
The Materials Glass shader provides access to a collection of preset glass and gemstones that include diamond, ruby, clear glass, and emerald.
POST EFFECTS
A post processor is a tool that allows you to apply various image-based effects to a rendered image after it has been completed. These effects can include things like tone mapping, denoising, color aberration, vignette, and gamma correction. Post processors can be very useful for improving the final appearance of a rendered image and can help to add a more polished and professional look to your work.
Post processors are accessed under the Post Effects tab in the render settings dialog box. The Post Effects tab is only available in SharkCAD, SharkCAD Pro, ViaCAD Pro, and TurboCAD Mac Pro.
DENOISER
The denoiser used to reduce noise in images. The denoiser used is the Intel Open Image Denoiser (OIDN) which is based on a machine learning algorithm that has been trained on a large dataset of noisy and denoised images. This allows the denoiser to learn the patterns of noise present in different types of images, and to remove the noise while preserving the underlying detail and structure of the image.
To use OIDN, select the Post Effects tab and enable the “Use Denoiser” check box. The denoiser has one setting called Sharpness. By default, the Sharpness value for denoiser is set to zero which is “full” filtering. The value of 1 represents little to no denoising.
Note: The denoiser only works in CPU and will add a slight pause to each sample rendered.
GAMMA CORRECTION
Gamma Correction is a method used to adjust the brightness and contrast of an image by applying a nonlinear transformation to the pixel values. This transformation is typically used to correct for the nonlinear behavior of some displays, which can cause the displayed image to appear too dark or too bright.
Gamma correction is applied in the post-processing stage of the rendering process accessed by enabling the “Gamma Correction” check box. The “Amount” value specifies the exponent used in the nonlinear transformation, with a value of 2.2 being commonly used for sRGB displays.
By adjusting the "Gamma" value, you can adjust the overall brightness and contrast of the rendered image, as well as correct for any color shifts that may occur due to the nonlinear behavior of the display.
TONE MAPPING
Tone mapping is the process of converting the high dynamic range (HDR) pixel values of a rendered image into low dynamic range (LDR) pixel values that can be displayed on a standard monitor. This is necessary because the dynamic range of an image, which is the range of luminance values from the darkest to the lightest parts of the image, is often much larger than the range of values that can be displayed on a standard monitor.
By adjusting the tone mapping parameters, you can control the overall appearance of the rendered image and make it more visually appealing.
To perform tone mapping, select the Post Effects tab and pick the “Tone Mapper” check box.
VIGNETTE
Vignette is a post-processing effect that darkens the edges of an image, creating a concentric gradient from the center of the image to the edges. Vignette is often used to draw the viewer's attention towards the center of the image and create a sense of depth and focus.
To enable vignette, you can select the "Vignette" setting in the "Post Effects" tab of the render settings. When the "Vignette" setting is enabled, you can adjust the "Scale" parameter to control the strength and size of the vignette effect. The "Scale" parameter controls the size of the area affected by the vignette effect.
COLOR ABERRATION
Color aberration is a post-processing effect that simulates the chromatic aberration that can occur in real-world lenses. Chromatic aberration is an optical phenomenon that occurs when the different wavelengths of light are not focused on the same plane, causing different colors to appear slightly offset from one another. This can cause the edges of objects in an image to appear distorted or fringed with color.
To enable color aberration, pick the Post Effects tab and select the "Color Aberration" check box. When the "Color Aberration" setting is enabled, you can adjust the “Scale" parameter to control the size of the area affected by the color aberration effect. The "Scale" parameter specifies the size of the color fringes, with higher values resulting in larger fringes.
PHOTO RENDER LIBRARY
The Photo Render Library provides a collection of materials, HDRI, and backgrounds via a drag and drop user interface. To access the Library, select the Render Library from the Tools menu bar.
MATERIALS/HDR/BACKGROUNDS
The library category type provides access drag and drop materials, HDRI, backgrounds, and textures. Select a category such as materials to show various options for fabric, marble, glass, and metals. Position your cursor over the desired material and press and move to the object.
LASER LIGHT
The laser light adds a direct light source that emits a focused beam of light. Laser Lights are defined by a start point, end point, radius, and gain. The start point defined the laser start while the end point defines the direction of the light. The radius value defines the cylinder region of light. The gain defines the strength of the light.
PARABOLOID PRIMITIVE
The paraboloid primitive provides a means to create a quadric surface from one-, two-, or three-point definitions. Use a paraboloid to create a reflectors/radars, automobile headlights, solar furnaces, antennas, and aerodynamic tips. The Paraboloid primitive is located in the solid primitives tool palette, last tool item. The one-point paraboloid has a base center, and three radius values. The two-point paraboloid has a base center, end. The three point has two points defining the base diagonal, and one point defining the height. Each method provides a data entry window interface to change the associated radius values.
GRIPPER NON-UNIFORM SCALING
The Gripper has a new graphic widget to perform non uniform scaling via a handle. To use this feature, display the inspector and select the gripper properties tab. Then select “Enable Gripper”. The non-uniform scale graphic is the red, blue, or green box display along the associated axis. Select, hold and drag over the box to scale along that particular axis.
Red scales along x
Blue along y
And Green scales along z
You can scale curves, surfaces, or solids. Use the data entry window to scale a precise amount.
AREA DIMENSION
A new dimension tool was introduced to support area-based measurements. To access the Area Dimension tool tear out the dimension tool palette and select the area dimension tool icon. The area dimension works with collections of closed curves or polygons. There are two options accessed through the data entry window.
1. Leader Line Dimension
2. Text at Centroid
Select Pick Leader Line Dimension. And now select the collection of curves or polygon. Then select the arrow location and text location. Now change the area method to text at centroid. And select the polygon. The area dimension is associative to the curves originally selected. Modifying a curve will update the area dimension. The Area dimension also work with a collection of curves used in a constrained system. In this case, updating any dimension value, will update the area dimension.
SPATIAL 2022 UPDATE
Core technology components for the modeling and interoperability tools are provided by Dassault Systems Spatial Technology. V14 includes a major integration update for all products.
ACIS MODELING KERNEL UPDATE
The core modeling kernel was updated to support a newer version from Spatial. The new update provides greater increases in quality and robustness and improvements in modeling tasks such as booleans, blending, chamfering, sweeps, skinning, healing, and faceting functionality.
INTEROPERABILITY UPDATE
SAT & SAB Updates
The SAT and SAB data translators provide a neutral file format for precisely sharing curve, surface, and solid modeling data. Third party app supporting SAT/SAB file formats include AutoCAD, Inventor, Fusion 360, SolidWorks, and SolidEdge.
STEP & IGES Updates
The STEP and IGES translators for importing and exporting of precision curves, surfaces, and solids was updated via the Spatial Interop. STEP and IGES support sharing of precise NURB and analytic surfaces between applications.
SolidWorks, CATIA, PROE, NX
Native format translators were updated to support newer versions from SolidWorks, SolidEdge, PRO E, CATIA, and NX.
2D PDF Export
The 2D PDF export is a new method of sharing vector and font-based data with other applications. Vector data such as Lines, arc, circles, and splines are supported. Additionally, text and dimensions annotations are supported. Line styles and pen weights are also supported. Surfaces and Solids are exported as wireframes.
DWG ODA 23.5
The DWG, DXF, PDF, and DAE translators provided through the Open Design Alliance (ODA) were updated to support the latest enhancements and performance boasts. Additionally, minor enhancements were made supporting sharing of text and dimension data.
SketchUp 2022
The SketchUp import/export technology was updated to support the lasted SDK. This includes support for newer versions as well as maintenance updates for sharing data between the applications.
Batch Export Photo Rendering
The Batch tool supports the option to render multiple images from a collection of files.
The tool will support rendering all cameras in visible layers of the files as well as use saved render settings. If no camera or saved render settings are present, it will use defaults at the time the batch tool was executed.
STEP Export with Units
The STEP export file was updated to support specifying a unit setting upon export. Applications reading the STEP file must support reading the file unit setting.
More Solid Modeling Tools
Ten new solid modeling tools were added into ViaCAD 2D3D and TurboCAD Mac Deluxe. These tools extend the already powerful solid modeling capability with the following tools:
| Version | 14 |
| Platform | MacOS 10.11 El Capitan, MacOS 10.12 Sierra, MacOS 10.13 High Sierra, MacOS 10.14 Mojave, MacOS 10.15 Catalina, MacOS 11.1 Big Sur, MacOS 12.1 Monterey, MacOS 13.1 Ventura |
