IMSI Design to ship TurboCAD Mac version 8 — Features 64-bit and Native Cocoa

IMSI Design has announced that they will be shipping the next version of TurboCAD Mac version 8. The long-standing CAD software developer says the latest version will ship 9 June 2014. TurboCAD Mac version 8 will ship with many new features requested by loyal users.

TurboCAD Mac 8 – What’s New

TurboCAD Mac 8 is now going to be a fully native 64-bit application, catching up to the Windows version of TurboCAD. This means you can now load larger files and work with larger blocks of memory. This will speed up rendering larger parts and assemblies which prior where limited by a 2.3 GB model data limit in virtual memory.

TurboCAD Mac Pro v8 now uses Cocoa compiled code and CoreGraphics. This major code rewrite replaces the old Carbon framework, phased out now by Apple. The result is a more stable application and up-to-date code for Apple’s latest operating systems.

01 – An image from TurboCAD Pro Mac 7 from our review last year.

Other improvements include better printing and the ability to print much larger data intensive files, an improved Deep Select tool that allows you to independently select and modify elements within a group. There are new customizable grids to display the workplace and you can display it as a polar array or ISO grid. You can also change the grid by angle.

MORE: Product Review: IMSI TurboCAD Mac Pro 7

Additional improvements include new SpaceMouse support using the latest drivers, new keyboard shortcuts that work within the Concept Explorer, and improved DWG/DXF support for AutoCAD 2013.

Availability

The pre-sale info on TurboCAD Mac Deluxe 2D/3D version 8 is 69.99.USD and you order or learn more here. There is no information on the Pro version and its pricing at this time. The company has not yet released a press release, which is often common from IMSI. To learn more visit here.

Architosh Analysis

In our last review we didn’t point out the lack of 64-bit in the product even though we were aware of the 64-bit push on their Windows side. The TurboCAD Windows products also utilize some different API technology related to graphics that offer interesting benefits that at the time of our last review we spoke to IMSI about incorporating in the Mac. They weren’t sure yet. We may dig into that issue more in a future review. In this latest update the developer clearly had to devote quite a bit of resources to upgrading the product for both 64-bit and migrating away from Carbon APIs to Apple’s Cocoa APIs. That’s a big project in itself.