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Anyone use Turbocad for the mac OSX?
- Thread starter ruawake
- Start date
- Replies 7
- Views 4,751
gregormarwick
Diamond
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2007
- Location
- Aberdeen, UK
Turbocad is just a cad program. It has no cam capability.
If you want a decent cad/3d program for os x take a look at the ashlar vellum products. I don't know if they are underrated or just not widely known, but they are very good and on a par with solidworks and the like. I use cobalt for all my drawing and any modelling that isn't easy to do in featurecam. Turbocad is pretty low budget and poor by comparison. Mind you, the ashlar products are priced "industrially".
If you have an intel mac most cam programs that I've tried work pretty smoothly in vmware/parallels.
Gregor
If you want a decent cad/3d program for os x take a look at the ashlar vellum products. I don't know if they are underrated or just not widely known, but they are very good and on a par with solidworks and the like. I use cobalt for all my drawing and any modelling that isn't easy to do in featurecam. Turbocad is pretty low budget and poor by comparison. Mind you, the ashlar products are priced "industrially".
If you have an intel mac most cam programs that I've tried work pretty smoothly in vmware/parallels.
Gregor
John Stevenson
Stainless
- Joined
- Apr 30, 2001
- Location
- Nottingham, England
Turbocad does actually have an add on called Turbocadcam.
Limited to 2 1/2D and only works on certain versions. Posts on various forums seem to throw up a lot of unsupported bug and lack of support but it does exist.
John S.
gregormarwick
Diamond
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2007
- Location
- Aberdeen, UK
Yes, unfortunately not on osx though. All the plugins for turbocad are windows only as far as I'm aware?
Clive603
Titanium
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2008
- Location
- Sussex, England
Forget Turbo-CAD for the Mac. IMSI tech support has always been a bit iffy and volunteer dependent. Certain aspect of the set-up will drive you barmy especially if you are used to the old MacDraw/Claris draw way of working.
Worst point is that the Mac CAD code base is bought in with a custom interface and last year IMSI lost the rights to use use the OSX code they were using so they have started over with a new underlying code. Buggy and, so I hear, iffy in places. I have the older TC Mac & Mac Pro. Guess it works.
Punch use the ex Turbo-CAD code base for ViaCAD. I've looked at that and basically its another guess it works thing.
Ashlar sounds interesting. If you are still using a PowerPC machine, like me. Future support and updates look like becoming iffy fairly soon so its wise to go for an established program.
Clive
Worst point is that the Mac CAD code base is bought in with a custom interface and last year IMSI lost the rights to use use the OSX code they were using so they have started over with a new underlying code. Buggy and, so I hear, iffy in places. I have the older TC Mac & Mac Pro. Guess it works.
Punch use the ex Turbo-CAD code base for ViaCAD. I've looked at that and basically its another guess it works thing.
Ashlar sounds interesting. If you are still using a PowerPC machine, like me. Future support and updates look like becoming iffy fairly soon so its wise to go for an established program.
Clive
gregormarwick
Diamond
- Joined
- Feb 7, 2007
- Location
- Aberdeen, UK
Actually, all the ashlar products have been universal for quite a while, for some reason they haven't updated their website. Also ashlar is about as established as it gets, they've been making modelling software for mac for about 20 years, and osx is still their primary platform.
Michael Hall
Plastic
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2005
- Location
- S.F. Bay Area
Here is part of the story on ViaCad:
http://forum.punchcad.com/showthread.php?t=1906&highlight=ashlar
You might check out the Punch line:
http://punchcad.com/
Having been a long time user of Ashlar's Vellum, I've since made the change to ViaCad.
Michael
http://forum.punchcad.com/showthread.php?t=1906&highlight=ashlar
You might check out the Punch line:
http://punchcad.com/
Having been a long time user of Ashlar's Vellum, I've since made the change to ViaCad.
Michael
This is how I've done it for the past two years on my Macbook Pro with Parallels. I'm running AutoCAD and MasterCAM on there without any negative effects. The nice thing about the Mac is you can setup your windows (not the operating system, the feature on the Mac) to have all your Parallels programs in another window or multiple if you want to keep things clean. This way you can easily jump thru the windows as if you were on multiple computers very quickly. For example, I know this is horrible practice, I'll usually have the internet open in the top left window, iTunes in the top right, AutoCAD in the bottom left and MasterCAM in the bottom right.
Now the only issue, well not even an issue really, I have is when saving or posting it sends the file to the Windows desktop, not the Mac. This isn't a huge deal, just make sure you open up your USB in Windows, not Mac. You have to use Parallels to view any Windows files, as far as I know.
I've been very interested in the Ashlar products. My grandfather swore by them and he has done some amazing work.
-couch
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