Customer Reviews

Turbocad Professional 8

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I love this software! Having consulted with 3 friends using AutoCAD (2 ACAD 2000, 1 ACAD 2002) I can find nothing that they can do in AutoCAD that I cannot do in TurboCAD. This tells me that either TurboCAD v8 does everything ACAD does, or the features additional to ACAD are so esoteric that no-one uses them! TCAD will be readily learned by an ACAD user, but is, in many respects simpler to use, particularly with respect to viewports. The toolbar default arrangement is handier (IMO), and portability tests (ACAD to TCAD and vice vs.) have been 100% successful. If TurboCAD lacks anything it is documentation. The documentation that comes with v8 is good (as opposed to what it was for v7) but still not comprehensive, and comprehensive documentation is not as readily available as it is for ACAD. If you want to do floorplans (in 3D) or draw cool pictures, there are documents available (for extra $$) from 3rd parties, but books on technical illustration and mechanical drafting are scarce. Overall, for those with anything but a limitless budget, I think TCAD is the hands-down winner!

The software initially seems good as everything is easy to use and there are allot of features.

But when you take this software to a production environment, the bugs start destroying your day. Crashed and corrupted files is the biggest headache. How would you like to work on a file all day, just to have it crash and become corrupted? This happens at least three times a week for each person! We backup the drawings every hour to a new file. Why always to a new file? Well, somtimes you think you are working on a good file until you close it and then later cannot re-open it. You then have to trace back through all the versions to see when it got corrupted!

We started with Version 4 and continued to buy updates in the hope nuisance defects we encountered would be repaired. The frustration level became so high (IMSI sure as hell was no help), our best detailer quit in disgust. While most certainly not the only flaw, the show-stopper was lack of dimensional accuracy, in what appeared to be a random basis. As an easy example: one line, copied three times at 90 degree intervals, should produce a square that closes on itself. Sometimes Turbocad doesn't. Simply put, we couldn't trust it on the numerical stuff, and other flaws wiped out any productivity, making the whole sad affair more trouble than the system was worth.