TurboCAD Mac 16

The availability of features may vary across different model variants. For a detailed overview of feature distribution, please consult the Product Line Comparison Chart. This will help you identify which features are included in the variant you are interested in.

Core Design & Modeling

Design & Editing

TurboCAD^® Mac is engineered for precision and ease of use. The LogiCursor^™ smartly anticipates your next move, guiding you to potential point selections. The Gripper tool simplifies design edits with its drag-and-drop capabilities, while customizable grids offer precision in various layouts, including rectangular, polar, and isometric.

• LogiCursor^™ Technology: Anticipates your next move, guiding your cursor for optimal point selection.
• Gripper Tool: Provides drag-and-drop capabilities, simplifying design edits.

Drafting & Annotations

As a robust documentation tool, TurboCAD^® Mac includes over 20 customizable dimension styles to match industry standards. Enhance your project documentation with features like:

• Customizable Grids: Offer precision in various layouts, including rectangular, polar, and isometric.
• Wide range of Dimension Styles: Cater to various documentation needs with a diverse range of dimension styles.
• Bitmap Import: Incorporate logos and reference images seamlessly into your designs.
• Spell Check: Ensure accuracy in your annotations with integrated spell checking.
• Single Click Fills and Hatch: Apply fills and hatches to your designs with a single click for efficient detailing.

Solid Modeling

TurboCAD^® Mac’s Advanced Solid Modeling tools provide a robust set of features for creating detailed and precise solid models. The Blending function offers G2 Curvature, Three Face, and Thumbweights options for smooth transitions between surfaces.

Curvature Continuous Blend

Edge Features like Flanges, Lips, and Grooves add functional details to edges. Feature Patterns can be arranged in Linear, Spherical, Radial, and Polar layouts for repetitive detailing. The Extend Bend Tool offers flexibility in manipulating bent surfaces. Use the Rib Feature to add structural support elements, while Pressure Deform Face enables localized deformation via Area, To Point, and To Curve methods.

Edge Treatments

Surface Modeling

TurboCAD^® Mac’s Advanced Surface Modeling tools offer a sophisticated array of features for precision design. The Projected 2D Silhouette function enables accurate 2D outlines from 3D models. G2 Continuous Surface Fillet provides seamless transitions for high-quality finishes.

The Tangent Cover Surface and Tangent Cover Surface with Guides tools assist in creating tangent-continuous complex surfaces. Additional tools include:

• Surface Match – Aligns surfaces for smooth transitions
• Rebuild – Refines surface topology
• Add Knot – Increases surface control
• Elevate – Enhances surface complexity

These tools combine to deliver a versatile and powerful surface modeling environment.

Advanced Surface Tools

Edge Matching

Auto 3D to 2D Precision Conversion Tool

TurboCAD^® Mac offers a sophisticated conversion tool that leverages Dassault^®’s Hidden Line Technology and transforms 3D models into precise 2D drawings, facilitating the creation of accurate technical blueprints. This tool is ideal for professionals who need to generate detailed plans from complex 3D structures. It ensures every nuance of the 3D model is captured and represented in 2D, providing a clear and comprehensive view of the design. This feature is crucial for those who require exacting technical documentation, making TurboCAD^® Mac an essential tool for a wide range of engineering and architectural applications.

Visualization & Animation

Photorealistic Rendering

While TurboCAD ^® Mac Deluxe supports basic rendering, the Platinum and Pro versions offer advanced capabilities including Physically Based Rendering (PBR). PBR simulates realistic interactions between light and materials using parameters like roughness and reflectivity, ensuring consistent and true-to-life results across lighting environments. It's ideal for highly visual fields such as architectural rendering and game development.

Photorealistic Rendering

• Camera Creation and Rendering: Define camera positions, perspectives, and field of view.
• View Rendering: Render from the current view orientation to the drawing window or export to a file.
• Recent Render Display: Show the most recently rendered image.
• Render Settings Control: Adjust HDRI, backgrounds, textures, and post-processing effects.
• Post-Processing Effects: Enhance image quality with tone mapping and denoising.
• Laser Light Simulation: Simulate focused laser-like beams for lighting effects.

Animation Tools

TurboCAD^® Mac provides a suite of animation, recording, and publishing tools for generating QuickTime movies. Users can create animations using Walk Through, Fly By, Paths, Object VR, Panoramic VR, and Object-Based Animations. These features enable dynamic visualization of designs, whether following a predefined path or capturing a full 360-degree view.

Animation Rebound, available exclusively in TurboCAD^® Mac Platinum and Pro variants, allows animations to trace a path and return to their starting point—perfect for polished, looping presentations.

Productivity & Automation

Copilot

TurboCAD^® Mac Copilot: The Ultimate AI-Powered Design Partner

Unlock the full potential of your design process with Copilot, the AI-driven companion integrated into TurboCAD^®. This tool streamlines navigation, expedites progress, and enhances design with smart analysis.

Copilot is available in two tiers: TurboCAD^® Copilot Help and TurboCAD^® Copilot Professional*.

All TurboCAD^® variants include a complimentary 1-year subscription to Copilot Help, powered by RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) for context-aware answers sourced from documentation, FAQs, and video tutorials.

Copilot Professional adds features like Talk to Your CAD Data, general AI access, and Text to Image. It supports multilingual requests and provides guidance on everything from software use to design principles.

*TurboCAD^® Copilot Professional is an optional add-on for TurboCAD^® Mac Platinum, Pro, Deluxe, and Designer, available via 1-year or 3-year subscription.

PowerPack

TurboCAD^® Mac Platinum comes fully equipped with the PowerPack, an extensive collection of over 70 additional tools that significantly enhance the capabilities of the software. The Mesh Tools provide advanced options for editing and refining mesh models, essential for detailed 3D printing and modeling tasks. Entity Management tools offer robust controls for organizing and manipulating various elements within a project, ensuring efficient workflow management. The suite also includes expanded options for both 2D & 3D Modeling, giving users a wider range of design possibilities and greater creative freedom. Lastly, the Mesh to Solid tool is a standout feature that allows for the conversion of mesh data into precise solid models, which is crucial for compatibility with other CAD software and for high-quality manufacturing processes.

*PowerPack is available as an optional add-on for TurboCAD^® Mac Pro and Deluxe.

Organization

Layer Sets

Enhance your TurboCAD^® Mac experience with the Layer Sets feature, a powerful tool designed to optimize your design space. Layer Sets enable you to effortlessly save and manage your layers, view orientations, and zoom levels, ensuring a seamless transition between different phases of your project.

Layer Sets

Symbol Manager

Improve your design efficiency with the Symbol Manager in TurboCAD^® Mac. This tool helps you organize, store, and quickly access reusable symbols, making it easier to manage frequently used components and maintain consistency across projects. With intuitive functionality, it simplifies complex designs and saves time by keeping essential elements readily available.

Symbol Manager

Fastener Library

Enhance your TurboCAD^® Mac designs with the ANSI Fastener Library, a comprehensive collection of nuts, bolts, and washers. Easily accessible within the Symbol tab in the Concept Explorer, this library simplifies the insertion of fastening components into your projects.

Fastener Library

Custom Textures

This feature greatly enhances the customization of 3D models with the ability to create and store custom textures. Users can craft unique textures and apply them to surfaces within their designs, adding detail and personalization. These textures can be saved and reused across projects, improving efficiency and consistency.

Custom Textures

Texture Import

Enhance your TurboCAD^® Mac experience with the Imported Textures feature. Any imported textures are automatically copied to your custom texture folder, making them easily accessible and simplifying texture management across projects.

Texture Import

3D Printing & Manufacturing

Prepare and validate your designs for 3D printing with TurboCAD^® Mac’s suite of 3D printing tools:

• 3D Print Check: Verify the print viability of your models.
• Surface Normals Check: Ensure the correct orientation of facet normals for successful printing.
• Overhang and Wall Thickness Analysis: Inspect models for structural support requirements and adequate wall thickness.
• Preview Slices: Slice models to check for closed, non-overlapping sections, essential for 3D printing.
• Auto Position: Automatically position your model within the positive coordinate system for printing.
• Support Structure: Add manual support geometry for 3D printing.
• Printer Volume Display: Visualize the printing boundary as defined in the Printer Definitions dialog box.
• Printer Definitions: Set key parameters of the 3D printer to ensure compatibility with your designs.

3D Print Tools

TurboCAD^® Mac is not just a software; it’s a gateway to transforming your visions into reality with precision, efficiency, and ease.

Architectural & Woodworking Design

Architectural Tools

TurboCAD^® Mac comes equipped with all the necessary tools for professional architectural planning, enabling teams to draft, print, and collaborate effectively:

• Architectural Wall Tools: Design walls with precision and flexibility.
• Composite Walls: Visually represent different materials within wall structures.
• Parametric Doors and Windows: Insert doors and windows dynamically into your designs.
• Instant 3D Walls, Roofs, and Floor Slabs: Generate architectural elements in 3D with ease.
• AutoCAD^® DWG File Compatibility: Work seamlessly with files from other popular CAD software.
• ACIS^®-Based Geometry: Create with the same advanced technology used in high-end software.

*TurboCAD ^® Mac Designer only supports Doors, Windows, Walls, Multi-Walls.

Floor Plan

Woodworking Tools

TurboCAD^® Mac accelerates woodworking projects with specialized tools that simplify the creation of complex joints, including:

• Joints: Apply precision Rabbet, Miter, and Dovetail joints with parametric adjustments for perfect fit and strength.
• Dado Joints: Choose from through, stopped, or blind options for added versatility.
• Edge Treatments: Apply various edge treatments like cove, round, bullnose, and custom profiles.
• Tongue & Groove: Efficiently create tongue and groove joints for woodworking projects.

Advanced Modeling & Editing

Split at Discontinuity

Avoid the pitfalls of curve discontinuities that can hinder successful modeling operations like Booleans, blending, and chamfering. The Split at Discontinuity tool intelligently identifies and splits curves at points of discontinuity, ensuring a smoother design process.

Split at Discontinuity

*TurboCAD^® Mac Designer only supports Doors, Windows, Walls, Multi-Walls.

Floor Plan

Woodworking Tools

TurboCAD^® Mac accelerates woodworking projects with specialized tools that simplify the creation of complex joints, including:

• Joints: Apply precision Rabbet, Miter, and Dovetail joints with parametric adjustments for perfect fit and strength.
• Dado Joints: Choose from through, stopped, or blind options for added versatility.
• Edge Treatments: Apply various edge treatments like cove, round, bullnose, and custom profiles.
• Tongue & Groove: Efficiently create tongue and groove joints for woodworking projects.

Advanced Modeling & Editing

Split at Discontinuity

Avoid the pitfalls of curve discontinuities that can hinder successful modeling operations like Booleans, blending, and chamfering. The Split at Discontinuity tool intelligently identifies and splits curves at points of discontinuity, ensuring a smoother design process.

Split at Discontinuity

Surface Cover from Points

Transform your design process with TurboCAD^® Mac’s Surface Cover from Points feature. Craft surfaces directly from designated point locations, offering precision and customization.

Surface Cover from Points

Convert Text to Surface

Supports converting text to ACIS surface faces—helping designers express creativity without limitations.

Text to Surface

Blend Version

TurboCAD^® Mac allows reverting the ACIS blend version to a previous setting—giving you control and customization in blending operations.

Blend Version

Select Faces Same Plane

Discover the power of precision with TurboCAD^® Mac’s Select Faces Same Plane feature. This tool streamlines your modeling process by intelligently selecting all faces of a solid that reside on the same plane, ensuring uniformity and accuracy in your designs.

Select Faces Same Plane

Shear Transform

The Shear Transform feature in TurboCAD^® Mac is a dynamic addition to the Transform Utilities palette. This option allows you to apply shear transformations to curves, surfaces, and solids with precision and ease.

Shear Transform

Verify Clearance

Elevate your design precision with TurboCAD^® Mac’s Verify Clearance feature. This innovative tool includes the capability to accurately calculate the spatial clearance between two solids, ensuring your components fit together perfectly.

Verify Clearance

Lofting with Guides

TurboCAD^® Mac’s Lofting with Guides feature significantly expands design possibilities, enabling the crafting of complex shapes through the process of lofting along multiple guide curves. This method provides a powerful way to generate intricate and smooth surfaces that transition between the defined curves, offering a high degree of control over the shape’s form and flow. It’s an essential tool for designers who require the flexibility to create sophisticated and custom geometries in their 3D modeling projects.

Skin Surface with Guides

TurboCAD^® Mac’s skin surface creation tool with guides offers designers the flexibility to construct intricate geometries with precision. This tool allows for the manipulation of skin surfaces through customizable guides, enabling the accurate shaping of complex forms. It is particularly useful for models that require smooth, flowing surfaces, as it provides the control necessary to achieve the desired contours and intricacies. The tool is an asset for any design process that demands a high level of detail and customization in surface modeling.

Skin Surface with Guides

Interoperability

TurboCAD^® Mac offers compatibility with a wide range of industry-standard file formats, including DXF/DWG, 3MD, ACIS SAT, PDF, STL, SVG, STEP, 3MF, VRML 2.0, OBJ, and many more. It enhances its versatility with the File Options tools, catering to a variety of user needs. The Collada (DAE) Import feature in TurboCAD^® Mac Platinum is an addition that allows users to seamlessly integrate Collada files into their workflow. The Save For Review option is a convenient tool for users to save their work in a format that is optimized for reviewing and sharing with others. Reference Files are supported to streamline collaboration and ensure consistency across different project files.

Additionally, TurboCAD^® Mac Platinum includes CATIA V4, Pro-E, VDA MCAD Translators, which provide robust compatibility with other major CAD software, making it easier to work within multi-software environments. It also supports SketchUp import/export and integrates with Adobe Illustrator^® for graphic design applications, ensuring broad interoperability across disciplines.

Note: File format support may vary across different model variants. For a detailed overview of supported file formats, please consult the File Format Comparison Chart.

Sketch up Import

Multi-Language Support

Support for English, French, and German languages ensures broader accessibility for international users.

Performance Improvements

TurboCAD^® Mac 16 delivers significant performance improvements for handling large files and complex operations.

Up to 12× Faster Redraws

The redraw speed has been improved up to 12 times for large files. In testing, a 2D file containing 148,318 objects—including points, lines, circles, polygons, text, and groups—was repainted much more quickly compared to the previous version. This improvement becomes more noticeable as the number of entities increases.

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Faster Redraws

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Up to 22× Faster File Loads

Files with thousands of entities now load up to 22 times faster. This results in reduced wait time and a more responsive user experience when opening complex projects.

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File Loading Speed

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Faster File Loads

Up to 5× Faster PDF/DWG Import Speed

Importing complex PDF and DWG files is now up to five times faster, improving efficiency when working with external design data.

Up to 25× Faster Printing of Large Files

Printing performance for large designs has been optimized up to 25 times faster, allowing for quicker output without sacrificing quality.

Redesigned Custom Tool Creation and Editing

The custom tools interface in TurboCAD^® Mac has been redesigned to support larger m×n icon arrays, providing greater flexibility in organizing tool palettes. Users can now configure layouts such as 3×20 or 10×10, and a new edit dialog makes it easier to modify existing tools, enhancing customization and overall usability.

Redesigned Custom Tools Interface

Arc Slot Polygon Tool

This new drawing tool enables users to create polygons using arcs as defining edges, providing increased design flexibility and creative control.

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Arc Slot Polygon Tool

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ISO Part Library

TurboCAD^® Explorer Symbols now includes a 3D ISO part library, allowing designers to access standardized components directly within their projects.

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ISO Part Library

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Batch Export Single Parts from Multi-Part Files

A new batch export option lets users save each individual part in a multi-part file as a separate file, simplifying file management and sharing.

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Batch Export One Part per File<

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SketchUp Import

The SketchUp importer has been updated to support the latest SketchUp versions, with special handling for glass materials.

• Transparent materials automatically receive a glass shader.
• Ensures realistic rendering with minimal manual adjustments.

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SketchUp Import

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Part Creator (AI-Powered)

TurboCAD ^® Mac introduces an advanced AI-powered feature for generating intelligent parametric parts, available exclusively in Copilot Professional. This powerful tool supports the creation of a wide range of mechanical components, including:

• Gears: Spur, Full Spur, Beveled, Ring, Worm, Rack, Planetary, Herringbone Ring, Herringbone Rack
• Screws: Hex
• Nuts: Hex
• Threads: ISO, ACME

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Part Creator

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Users can customize parameters like diameter, helix angle, and tooth count to generate precise mechanical components.

Copilot – AI Assistant

Copilot has been enhanced with improved instruction-following capabilities and a more advanced language model, making it an even more valuable AI assistant. These enhancements are available in both Copilot Help and Copilot Professional, ensuring users across all plans benefit from its intelligent support.

Features include:

• Step-by-step guidance on using tools
• Answers to common questions
• Data insights for drawings
• Text-to-image generation
• General CAD expertise and best practices

Sheet Metal Tools

New tools for sheet metal design enable advanced modeling and manufacturing-ready outputs.

Available Tools:

• Base
• Flange
• Contour Flange
• Partial Flange
• Hem
• Rolled Hem
• Unbend

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Sheet Metal Tools

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These tools help simulate real-world fabrication processes such as bending, forming, and unfolding.

Minor Corrections and Bug Fixes

Since the release of TurboCAD ^® Mac 15, hundreds of minor corrections have been implemented to enhance stability and accuracy. Key fixes include:

• Corrected issues with feet/inches unit handling
• Fixed problems with extruding faces from solids
• Resolved performance bottlenecks related to logging
• Addressed WorkPlane switching inconsistencies between views
• Fixed OpenGL clipping errors for distant parts
• Improved outline polygon printing accuracy
• Added layer set name validation checks
• Enhanced French and German localizations
• Improved mesh-to-analytic conversion