TurboCAD Mac Pro at 64-bit – Here are the Details

For those who are on the IMSI/Design email lists you may have seen the announcement promoting the new 64-bit version of IMSI /Design’s new 64-bit version of TurboCAD Mac Pro. Although there is no official press release on this Architosh spoke to Bob Mayer of IMSI/Design about what is under the hood in this change.

(see, Architosh, “Product Review: IMSI TurboCAD Mac Pro 7,” 9 Aug 2013)

Going 64-bit – Details

Going 64-bit is a big deal in the CAD world. It can take a lot of work on the backend coding wise. Bob Mayer, COO, of IMSI/Design clarified the details behind the new 64-bit version of TurboCAD Mac Pro, which is now at version 7.

For starters the modeling kernel behind the Pro version of TurboCAD Mac is based on the French Dassault’s Spatial model geometry kernel. We mention kernels and rendering engines quite a bit here on Architosh as we think it’s important readers are aware of these core component technologies. In TurboCAD Mac Pro 7 the Spatial kernel is implemented at the 64-bit level for both the modeling kernel and the translator kernel. This only applies to the Pro version.

There is a general performance improvement now in TurboCAD Mac Pro 7 as it can handle very large files as both a combination of the 64-bit support and some new OpenGL updates. Speaking of OpenGL, repaints have been rewritten to take advantage of better integration between Cocoa and OpenGL.

Other improvements include the area of printing. Printing has been updated to leverage a more accurate Cocoa print engine, larger printable areas, print previews have been updated and an improved PDF export (floating vs integer values).

To learn more about TurboCAD Mac Pro read our review or go here.

Architosh Analysis

We have recently mentioned Redway’s rendering engine technology API. It’s been implemented in some of the Windows versions of IMSI’s TurboCAD products. Mayer said that there is no implementation of Redway’s “RedSDK” in the Mac version of TurboCAD yet.

IMSI/Design was a launch partner with Lightworks’ new iRay+ at SIGGRAPH this year which taps the underlying technology on Nvidia’s side. In other words, GPU-bound and accelerated photo-realistic ray-tracing rendering. Bob Mayer was quoted in the article on this feature launch. So it may be that we may see updated Lightworks based rendering engines or Redway or both.

In either case, IMSI/Design has some good options in front of it, while it now has the transition to 64-bit firmly behind it and in the rear view window.