Back to Start PageTurboCAD
PRE-PUBLICATION DRAFT
STAGE DIRECTIONS
COPYRIGHT 1997
AUTHOR: Dr. Patrick Finelli
TITLE: Computer-Aided-Design for under $500
SUBJECT: CAD Primer and Review of TurboCAD Professional v4
At Stage Directions, we are always on the lookout for new or innovative products that enhance the theatrical design process. The scenographer’s main responsibility is to transform an imaginary dramatic idea into a specific visual experience. Many scenographers, technical directors and other theatre practitioners use CAD programs for drafting and design -- important tasks that are central to the creation and construction of the stage setting. CAD is an acronym that stands for both "Computer-Aided Design" and "Computer-Aided Drafting." CAD programs are like word processors for architectural drawing. CAD "tools" are similar to the familiar paint programs.
CAD software allows the designer to make precise drawings in real scale, expanding the scenographer’s ability to experiment and greatly enhancing the visualization and presentation in developing original designs for the stage. Most professional architects and engineers have already replaced their drafting tables with computers running CAD programs. Many theatre artists are also automating the design process, although some have been deterred by the steep price or complexity of CAD programs. The ideal CAD package for the theatre would be one that is transparent to the designer’s creative process and provides an easy-to-use, easy-to-learn set of tools at a reasonable price. Compatibility with other drawing programs and flexibility (e.g. customized toolbars, file programmable scripting) are also desirable qualities. But the main requirement is functionality: Does the CAD program meet the needs of the intuitive theatre artist? I think the answer is a resounding "yes."
IMSI is a software company whose expressed goal is to provide customers with powerful software products at competitive prices. The company boasts a wide range of products in the category of "graphics" software from low-priced ($69.95) "Floor Plan" packages for designing your home, office or garden to the TurboCAD line of software starting at $149.95. The lower-priced products are limited in what they can do. Some offer pre-drawn editable plans that you can adapt and modify, others are entry-level drawing programs. These low-end graphics programs might be handy for home remodeling or landscaping, but do not offer the theatre designer a full range of CAD drawing and editing features. As you go up the scale you move to higher levels of performance (e.g. more drawing tools, utilities for sharing drawings with other applications) and compatibility (support for AutoCAD file formats such as DXF, DWG and DWF for the web).
We received a full working copy of TurboCAD Professional v4, IMSI’s top-of-the-line CAD product. TurboCAD Professional v4 is an extremely powerful desktop CAD program with a suggested retail price of $469.95. Unlike so many other programs on the market today, this one comes with four quality manuals: "Guide to Learning CAD," "Reference Manual," "Symbols & Clip Art" and "Programming TurboCAD with Enable Basic" (for advanced users who want to create special applications). The software is included on a CD-ROM with simple instructions. The Set-up Wizard guides you through the basic steps and you’ll have the program up and running quickly.
You open the program by double-clicking on the application icon. There is a "Quick Tour" button on the opening screen that includes active demonstrations of most features and functions. The start screen also includes a link to IMSI’s TurboCAD website. There you will find all sorts of information including support, reviews and comments, case studies and product updates. The home page lists the Marine World Africa U.S.A. theme park and game developer Activision among TurboCAD clients.
I found that the symbol library seemed to take a long time to load, but it includes 16,000 predrawn symbols in categories such as furniture, construction, flags and maps, which might be useful for designing stage properties. You can save time by not copying the symbol libraries onto your hard drive since you can always access them at your convenience on the CD-ROM, thereby saving precious disk space and upload waiting time.
In TurboCAD, a symbol is actually a pre-drawn shape available for repeated use. Any TurboCAD drawing can be a symbol. They are also known as "blocks" in other CAD applications. Blocks and symbols are used to conveniently store objects that you use on a regular basis. For instance, you could make standard platform and flat modules and insert them into your drawing without having to create the object from scratch each time. TurboCAD Professional v4 has an extensive symbol library containing doors, windows, bathroom and kitchen fixtures and furniture, but unfortunately there are no stage lighting instruments or audio symbols. However, third-party lighting and sound symbols are available if you ask around (try a stagecraft or lighting online user group). Any existing symbols library made for an AutoCAD drawing will work with TurboCAD. Of course, you could always make your own library of commonly used symbols once you learn TurboCAD.
The setup process installs the application in its own folder along with subdirectories containing related files (templates, sample drawings and symbols). The templates are actually special drawing files with standard settings for you to use whenever you begin a new drawing. You will most likely be using the same settings repeatedly for scale (i.e. ¼", ½") , units (inches, feet) and paper size. The template is a good way to store your standard drafting parameters.
TurboCAD Professional is extremely easy to learn and use. The TurboCAD interface, or what you see on the screen, contains the drawing area and toolbars. If you are at all familiar with the Microsoft Office toolbar, you are already well on the way to being an adept TurboCAD user. The first nine toolbar buttons are identical as are the well-known File, Edit, View, Insert, Format and Tools commands.
TurboCAD Professional v4 offers a unique feature of tailoring the toolbar configurations for different screen resolutions, since there are limitations presented by the available number of pixels (dots) used to display the screen. You can change the screen resolution through the Windows95 "Settings/Control Panel" button on the "Start" taskbar. TurboCAD tailored my computer’s resolution to 640 x 480. The screen had the familiar look of a Microsoft Office application with its Menu Bar, Rulers, Standard and View Toolbar, Scroll, Edit and Status Bars. The Status Bar lets you know when you have to perform a task. You can customize your toolbars the same way you would customize your Office applications.
Some of the toolbuttons in TurboCAD contain a small yellow triangle in the lower right-hand corner indicating a "fly-out" dialog box with expanded options. For instance, the "Arc Center and Radius" button on the toolbar has a yellow triangle in the corner. If you click the left mouse button, you get eleven choices of different Arc geometries (e.g. Double Point, Start/Included/End, Concentric, Tan to Line, Tan to Arc). If you click the right mouse button, a dialog box opens offering options for line pattern, layer and selecting whether you will draw with pen or brush style.
You can also drag and drop TurboCAD drawings to or from any Microsoft Office application or OLE application. OLE stands for Object Linking and Embedding, which allows you to share objects such as drawings among applications. For instance, you could insert a thumbnail of your groundplan in a document created with Microsoft Word and send it to the other members of your production team.
TurboCAD Professional v.4 includes thirty sample drawings and house plans. There are 150 tools for drawing, editing and viewing and an Internet-based help system. You can draw lines, polygons, circles and arcs, set dimensions, calculate distances, trim and extend objects. You can make chamfer and fillet modifications at the intersection of two lines. Chamfer makes a flattened (beveled) corner and fillet is for rounded corners. make virtually any geometric shape and easily make fillets and chamfers (joining two line segments with flattened corners. You can create unlimited layers, meaning that you could put your floor plan on one layer, the light plot on another and a third for notes and dimensions. Then you could print out all layers or select the ones you want.
Paint programs and other graphics software define objects on the screen in terms of dots, or pixels. The screen image depends upon the number of pixels available. This is known as "raster graphics" and is "device dependent." This means that if you create a drawing using raster or "pixel mapping" on a low-resolution device, it won’t translate well to a screen with higher resolution. CAD programs don’t depend upon pixel mapping. TurboCAD Professional calculates the geometry of the lines (e.g. connecting coordinate endpoints) and does the calculation each time the screen is redrawn. This is called "vector graphics" and is "device independent." TurboCAD will reproduce the drawing accurately regardless of the your monitor’s resolution. So if you make a drawing with a 640 x 480 resolution and send it to a Technical Director who has 800 x 600 monitor, it will be displayed correctly. TurboCAD also has a nifty FileTrace command that lets you take a bitmapped drawing (e.g. a scanned floorplan saved in TIF format) and trace it, thereby converting any drawing or bitmap into fully editable drawings. This makes it easy to convert your old drafting projects into CAD files.
TurboCAD’s press releases claim that the product provides 90% of the functionality for 10% of the price of high-end CAD systems. I think it does 100% of what a PC-based CAD program should do. IMSI has been in the CAD business since 1986. Just out of curiosity, I looked up a review of an earlier version, TurboCAD v.1.8, which was done by Terry Cobb for USITT’s Directory of Software for Technical Theatre in 1991. The program ran under DOS 3.0 and was tested on a CPU with half the recommended speed and RAM of today’s Windows95 version. Terry found it difficult to master at first. The current version is far superior in terms of functionality and flexibility and is much easier to use. TurboCAD Professional v4 will bring immediate benefits to the inexperienced user and offers the professional virtually unlimited possibilities, especially when you consider the custom programming features of TurboCAD’s "Enable Basic" for advanced users. CAD programs have come a long way in the past six years.
System Requirements:
486 DX2/66 or better CPU
16MB RAM (32 MB recommended)
30 MB of free hard disk space
VGA graphics card or better
CD-ROM drive
Windows 95 or Windows NT 4
Mouse
Internet connection recommended (for online support and updates)
IMSI USA
1895 Francisco Blvd. East
San Rafael, CA 94901-5306
Tel: 415-257-3000
Fax: 415-257-3565
E-mail: sales@imisoft.com
Web Sites: www.turbocad.com; www.imisoft.com
© Copyright 1995-1999 by Patrick M. Finelli. All rights reserved. These pages are protected by United States and international copyright laws. Copying or distribution by any means is strictly prohibited. Please send e-mail to finelli@satie.arts.usf.edu