In-Depth: IMSI TurboViewer for iPad

I am talking to Bob Mayer, Royal Farros and Doug Cochran of IMSI/Design, the makers of the venerable TurboCAD product line. In front of me is the new TurboViewer on my spiffy newish Apple iPad 2.

Royal Farros, who is chairman and CEO of IMSI, starts to speak about Apple’s amazing iPad. “We really believe that the iPad represents an inflection point in the CAD industry,” said Farros. “It has phenomenal portability with its very long battery life… and with Multi-touch you simply can’t match what it can do with any other computing device.”

“Like the Mac in 1984, which many said was just a $2400 Etch A Sketch, many looked upon the iPad when Apple introduced it in a similar way,” said Farros. The IMSI CEO continued to elaborate on why the iPad is such a game-changing device, for the CAD software industry and elsewhere.

Refocusing

Prior to Apple introducing the iPad, IMSI/Design had began refocusing on serving the needs of its TurboCAD users and providing robust support for DWG users as well. The results proved worthwhile and the company has grown. But as soon as the Apple iPad was introduced IMSI recognized opportunity. “Doug Cochran, our CTO, recognized what the iPad could be in the CAD industry very early on,” said Farros, “and we started to refocus and map out our strategy for this era.”

TurboViewer isn’t just a single product but an environment and platform for IMSI. The company has much larger plans in the works for addressing mobility in the CAD market and exploiting the unique strengths of the Apple iOS platform.

“There are many new CAD apps for the iPad and iPhone,” said Cochran, “but there are very few good CAD viewers and none that can do what TurboCAD Viewer can.”

Next page: TurboViewer Details and The Future

TurboViewer

TurboCAD Viewer is the world’s first 3D DWG viewer application on a mobile device like the iPad. It is also, noted Farros, possibly the world’s fastest 3D DWG viewer application on any platform, desktop or mobile space. What makes TurboViewer so quick is a combination of Apple’s iPad 2 hardware and IMSI’s streamlined code and unique features. One such unique feature is the ability for the user to manipulate and zoom into a file while it is still loading. It accomplishes this by utilizing a rasterized image of the file at last load. The user can pan and zoom into this raster image during the limited seconds that the file is loading. The overall effect is it feels like the file loaded instantly.

If you think this is a trick and not useful think again. For example, while a large file is loading and you are thinking about what area of the file you want to work on, you can explore it and figure out where things actually are prior to the file being fully editable.

“When you load CAD files,” says Cochran, “you wait for it to fully appear and then you look at it for awhile to see where things are before you zoom into the part you are interested in.” What TurboViewer essentially does it allows you to see the file and accomplish something while it is loading so you don’t have to wait.

Utilizing OpenGL ES on the Apple iPad hardware with its industry-leading graphics means, TurboViewer offers the user an incredibly fluid interactivity.

So how do you navigate in 3D?

Simple. With one finger. TurboViewer uses Apple’s Multi-touch user interface technology with a deft logic, focusing on the natural and the obvious. To spin a model around you simply create a spin-rotating motion with one finger on the iPad. To zoom in and out, you use the standard two-finger pinch gesture. A single finger double tap zooms to extents. A double-finger, double tap moves to full-screen mode and back.

The UI has a Views button and pop-up palette which allows you to navigate back to saved views or top, side, bottom and various axon views via intuitive 3d icons. (see image 03) You can also change the background color to various grays and reversing it entirely. There is also a “blueprint” blue color option.

Looking Forward

TurboViewer is just the start for IMSI/Design. Royal Farros remarked that a Pro version of this application is already in the works as well as more focused industry options. Unlike the current TurboViewer, the Pro version will not have Apple iAds at the bottom of the screen. While the company is not yet ready to discuss the Pro version’s complete feature set, TurboViewer Pro will be able to open far more industry standard CAD formats than just Autodesk DWG and DXF.

The company also has more ambitious plans for TurboViewer and its core code base, which they will reveal later in the year.

To learn more about the free TurboViewer and obtain it from the App Store on iTunes go here. To learn more about IMSI/Design visit their website.