![]() ![]() "Quilts are square, but traditional hoops are round," says Bagley. GraceWood's latest product, the GraceHoop2 TM, is a combination of square hoops attached to an all-adjustable stand with an arm and ball swivel. But I don't use it for drawing or design because I find it so cumbersome by comparison." "Since then, my business has grown so much that we use a $10,000 CAD/CAM program for CNC machining. "Originally I bought DesignCAD because I didn't want to spend all that money for other products," says Bagley. Bagley started his company in 1985 in his garage. (Salt Lake City, UT), maker of quilting frames, gives DesignCAD much of the credit for the success of his business. Jim Bagley, founder and president of GraceWood Inc. Although he considered upgrading the sound card, Dunn decided "not to fix what is not broken." For example, Dunn can compare documents in other CAD programs while working on a drawing.ĭunn uses a Pentium Pro 233-MHz computer with a local-area network, 64 Mbytes of RAM, a Matrox Video Card, and the basic system sound card installed and shipped with the computer. It also allows the user to do multiple tasks at once. TurboCAD also interacts with other CAD programs, and can share drawings through industrial standard file formats such as IGES and DWG. Dunn says he is able to complete tasks 400 to 500% faster using TurboCAD v5.0, just through the elimination of hundreds of mouse clicks. This makes the process more intuitive, he says, not to mention faster. "You use your mouth and brain and don't have to fumble with your hands," says Dunn. In 20 minutes, Dunn was able to get the voice-enable feature up and running. Still, he says that TurboCAD has the shortest learning curve of any CAD product out there.ĭue to a military helicopter accident in Vietnam, Dunn has little or no tactile feedback in his left arm and is losing tactile feedback in his right. Dunn has used most CAD products on the market today. The chairman of the board of Dunn's Dump, a consulting firm that designs highly specialized industrial control systems such as parabots, motion controllers, and gearboxes, bought TurboCAD Professional 5.0 specifically for its voice-enabling features. In the fourth Star Trek movie, The Voyage Home, everyone laughed when engineer Scottie talked to the "old-fashioned" earth computer and got no response. The raster-to-vector feature allows users to scan in a drawing or sketch and convert it to a usable CAD format, or vector format, that can be redrawn or manipulated.īut perhaps the one feature that sets them apart, says Tara, is the voice-enabling technology. The TurboCAD Series offers raster-to-vector conversions. It offers drag and drop textures, lofting and shelling, and photo-realistic rendering. The TurboCAD Solid Modeler is a parametric, feature-based program that can easily compete with the likes of midrange CAD packages, says Roopinder Tara, general manager for IMSI's CAD division. Here's a look at what is out there:įor $995, users can now buy both 2D drafting TurboCAD Professional as well as TurboCAD Solid Modeler. ![]() Many CAD packages under $1,000 now offer solid modeling capabilities as well as improved 2D drafting tools a familiar Windows interface even photo realistic rendering. While the speed and functionality increases, the cost goes down," says Mountain. If you are a software developer, that equates to a doubling of functionality. "If you are a hardware manufacturer, your equipment has doubled in speed every 18 months. As the Intel/Microsoft-based computers became more advanced, so did software. Then the G2 effect-Grove and Gates-happened, says Bruce Jenkins, vice president of Daratech (Cambridge, MA). In the beginning, PC CAD was considered low end because the personal computer technology wasn't that well developed. "The advances in programming technology have made it possible for software developers to produce a product that is equally functional to the so-called high-end CAD systems at a fraction of the price," he says. (Ontario, Canada), developers of DynaCADD. Low-end CAD is a misnomer, says David Mountain, president of Ditek Software Corp. Just what do you call CAD packages under $1,000? Quite good, for one thing.
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