thanks for the basic dozen of TurboCAD tips! i just picked up the cheap ($25) Tcad designer 9.2 at Best Buy last weekend. I found printing out the manual has really helped (As opposed to searching through the included PDF). your tips did help me focus on the "important" features, and techniques.

as for importing airfoils: some airfoil plotting programs (Profili(?) is one I believe) will export to a DXF file so you can import them right into your AutoCAD drawing. I plan on doing that eventually myself, Tcad can import as well.

one thing I would LOVE to be able to do is import a JPG, GIF, BMP etc of an aircraft 3-view as a layer and then "trace" over it to do formers, outlines, etc. It seems like a fast, easy way to start a design......does anyone know if Tcad can do this??? perhaps the "pro" version can, but not the cheap "designer" version I have. Grrrrrrrrrrr! =)

-ron