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(More customer reviews)I purchased TurboCAD as a Christmas present for myself, for the casual drawing of parts and around-the-house projects. I haven't touched a drafting program since the early '90s, when I used AutoCAD 12 & 13 for MS-DOS and early versions of SmartCAM for Windows (when it was still owned by Point Control, and the rendering of materials, parts, & cuts was first introduced). With it having been so long since I've used a CAD program, and because most of my drafting experience is from two dimensional blue prints for parts to be manufactured in a machine shop, it is taking some effort to "get back in the saddle". That said, the menu options in TurboCAD are intuitive and the software came with a small (70 page) "Getting Started Guide" which walks you through exercises in some of the basic uses of the application. There is a fairly comprehensive "TurboCAD User Guide" of 682 pages available as a PDF through the "TurboCAD Help Topics" on the Help drown-down menu. The context-sensitive help, available through the F1 key, opens the User Guide to the page which is applicable to the option or feature for which you are requesting help. There are quite a few TurboCAD "tips & tricks" and tutorial type videos available on YouTube, if you search for them. There is also a forum/community available on the TurboCAD website for asking questions. I've only had the program installed for a few days and I'm obviously still (re)learning how to navigate & draw, but I am pleased with the program and features. I have not purchased any tutorials (yet); however, such training material is available for purchase on the TurboCAD website and through Amazon. The program and the training materials, together, still come in well below the ~$1,000+ for AutoCAD Lite. This makes it perfect for me, as a DIY'er on a budget.
I'm running TurboCAD on Windows Vista (32 bit) with 1G of RAM and a 3GHz processor. Although the installation requires administrative privileges, I have had no problems running the program as a regular, non-privileged, user. According to the EULA, "IMSI grants to you a personal, worldwide, royalty-free, non-assignable, and non-exclusive license to use the object code of the Software on a single machine and to make a single copy of the Software for backup purposes only." Based upon that, it would not appear that you can legally have the software installed on a desktop and a laptop at the same time (unlike the old days of dongles). There is a registration process, which utilizes your Internet connection, and provides you with an activation key which must be entered into TurboCAD in order to activate it. The manual does provide an 800 number for activation if you don't have an Internet connection available. I had no problems activating over the Internet. The program created a ~300mb folder named "IMSIDesign" in Program Files with a full install. At the time of this review, you may also download an evaluation copy of TurboCAD from their website.
Edit (03/25/2010): I'm a little disappointed that the drawing of threads is only available in TurboCAD Pro. If you need threading capabilities, this version does not provide it.
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