Tim Wiltse-RCU

I'm looking to get a CAD program. This will be to work on both plane design and engine design. I know there is alot of guys here that use CAD of one kind or another so what is a nice user friendly yet powerful program?

Thanks alot,
Tim

blvdbuzzard

I have been trying to learn Turbo CAD. I just have not had any real time to set and play with it. I have found that it is pretty easy to use so far. It would be hard to beat the price too. I paid $39.99 for it at outpost.com. I know you can get it from a thousand other places too. I like that I can tile the plans for printing. For giggles I tiled a set of plans for a 40 sized Ultimate bipe and it was 78 sheets of 8.5X11 inch paper.

Dru.

BMatthews

Tim, do a search in the Scratch Building, Aircraft Design, 3D/CAD forum using the words "best CAD" or "which CAD" as the keywords. You'll turn up enough thread about just this topic to keep you reading for a full day at least. Having said that I don't think you'll find a better CAD for the price than TurboCAD. A few years back I tried all the low priced options I could find and none of them did what I wanted to do until I found TurboCAD. That was 3 or 4 versions ago now and it just keeps getting better and better.

Hey Dru, How well did all those pages line up? I've tile printed with my TurboCAD but never that many at once!!! Did you paper the wall of your shop afterwards? Also I did up a bit of a hints package for a first time TurboCAD user a while back that may help you as well. Check out [link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_1284982/mpage_1/key_turbocad/anchor/tm.htm#1284982]Post #7 of this thread.[/link]

BTW I can move this thread to the SB,AD,&3D forum if you want. Or just go and read those search results. It's all been said before many times over.

nekked_man_2000

I have Turbocad version 8, and design cad, and model cad. I use Model cad the most(version 95 no less) because to me it seems to be the easiest to use, and has enough features to draw pretty decent. That being said, All three have one thing or another that the other doesn't, which is a real bummer. The only real complaint I had about Turbocad is I can't draw a double line around a curve with it. What I mean is, with model cad I use Profili to generate a naca0018 airfoil, I import it into modelcad, make it the proper size, then I click on double line and tell it to place a line 1/16" inside of the other line, now my airfoil has sheeting...same for all formers. I haven't found an easy way to do this with Turbocad. What you might want to do is wait a little while for the next version of Turbocad, IMSI bought the designcad people(they make modelcad also, it's just a stripped down bare essentials version of designcad) and maybe they'll incorporate the finer points of the two programs, then you will have one excellent program. I also have Autocad lite for windows, and with it you can do anything, but the learning curve is very steep compared to either of the other two I mentioned, but, you can go to any local junior college and learn the basics for Autocad...so if you're into that sort of thing that might be for you, it is also more expensive than either Design cad or Turbocad.

I would definitely download the Free version of Turbocad and play with it first...you may find that is plenty good!

BMatthews

This issue was one of my hints in the link above. There isn't an easy way to clone the line and shift it inwards by the sheeting size but there is a trick you can use. Use the multi point double line with the properties set to put the vertex points to the left or right side of the double line and then use the SEKE's V or N to drop the segments onto the curved line. It takes about 10 seconds to add a 1/16 sheeting line to a typical rib. Where the line does not have much curve I drop vertex points about every 1/4 inch and where it gets tighter I reduce the spacing to about 1/8 or even 1/16. Yes this does produce a lot of little short segments but the errors at that scale are lost in the line thickness during printing. It's "good enough".

You could also use the Split Entities tool to split out the line segment you want and then copy and paste a copy onto the plan. You could then drop it in place and scale or stretch it to fit using a few double line segments as a reference to snap the new curve to. But in the end the extra accuracy would be lost in the printing and I think it would take longer to do than the simple segmented double line option.

MarkD

Give DeltaCAD from www.deltacad.com a try. The program only works in 2D, but I've used it to design/modify about 20 different planes. It has a very simple and straightforward user interface. If you are just getting started in CAD for the first time, I don't think there is an easier to learn program.

With the earlier versions (before V 5.0) there were a few bugs when trying to save files as DXF ( when you opened them with another CAD program you found a lot of errors). This has been much improved, and doesn't really cause much hassle anymore.

Mark D

fritzke

My Feedback: (1)

Tim,
For the $$, TurboCad. I have used CADKey, KeyCAD,
Autocad 11-14 and Turbocad 7. I can't see how you can beat
Turbocad for the money. I have Compufoil with the DXF output
option, and usually start there, dump out the wing plan, import that
into CAD (I usually use AutoCAD14 because I know it well...)
and go from there.
My 2 cents!
Dave
I got Turbocad 7 Pro with Corel Draw 10 (great for making decals)
for $100 from MicroCenter about 2 years ago.

Bipe Flyer

I use Turbocad and I actually like it better than Autocad. There used to be a free version, but I can't find it on their site now. They do have trial versions though. You can also find it on [link=http://*******.com/4sgp]eBay[/link] cheap. I just did a search on [link=http://*******.com/4sgp]eBay[/link] and found versions ranging from 6.5 to 9.1 at prices from $5.00 to $35.00.

flyinrog

My Feedback: (1)

I had AutoCAD LT, that I bought from the local community college, but it expires in 1 year unless you update it ($$) each year and it was $150...Rog

DICKEYBIRD

Here's a free TurboCAD download http://www.al-ki.com/tcad/download.php It's an undiluted, no time limit v4.0 which will do all 2D functions. There's also a free .pdf download of the complete manual at the same site.