TurboCAD Pro v19 on 64-bit Operating System: A Case Study on Photorealistic 3D Rendering

The release of IMSI TurboCAD Pro v19 this spring marked the first version of this CAD platform available in a 64-bit version. Previous versions of TurboCAD were only available as 32-bit, which limited the use of onboard memory for opening and manipulating large CAD files and for performing memory-intensive functions such as photorealistic rendering. No longer! Now TurboCAD users can experience the full capacity of the 64-bit versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

The Advantages of a 64-Bit Application

The advantage of a 64-bit application working on a 64-bit OS means the program can address up to 48 times more available RAM (memory) than with a 32-bit application.

TurboCAD user Ken Friend has been using desktop CAD to create model kit designs. Initially, Ken used TurboCAD for 2D plans but then quickly evolved in using it for 3D design, taking advantage of the solid modeling capability introduced back in TurboCAD v6.

At that time, he designed a radio-controlled glider, which used an electric motor to take the plane to altitude. Once at altitude the motor would be switched off and the plane would glide back to earth. Ken said that one of the advantages to using TurboCAD at that time was the great way you could design rounded corners (3D fillets) for the fuselage and wings.

Rendering with 64-bit TurboCAD

More recently, Ken has been involved in modeling an ocean liner, the Normandie, with TurboCAD. Ken is making the model as the ship was originally built in the early 1930s. The rendering below of Ken Friend’s cruise ship file (250 MB) was never even able to be opened with previous versions of TurboCAD, let alone rendered!

Model of the Normandie rendered in TurboCAD Pro v19.

Ken has been working on this modeling project for the past 2 1/2 years. Back in 2009, Ken actually received a third place in one of the first TurboCAD Challenges put on by Don Cheke for an early version of this 1/350 scale model. Ken’s goal is to create a kit that can be sold to modeling hobbyists. Ken’s been able to reduce the size of the model from 250 MB in size to a more manageable 65 MB by converting much of the solid modeling detail to surfaces.

He’s also now taking advantage of advances in 3D printer technology, including the more affordable prices, in order to manufacture the ship’s hull in sections. He hopes in the future to also print out smaller, more detailed components of the ship as well.

3D print model of the Normandie.

With a 64-bit OS and TurboCAD v19, users no longer have to struggle to open large files or see that annoying message in the middle of your rendering that says the system is low on memory and may not be able to complete the operation. Instead, if your system has additional memory, the 64-bit version of TurboCAD Pro will fully utilize it and large drawings will open smoothly and can be edited or rendered without a significant fall-off in performance.

Author: Bob Mayer, Chief Operating Officer, IMSI/Design

How GPC-Based Accelerator Technology and Multi-Threading Support Can Improve TurboCAD and DoubleCAD Performance

In the past year, the developers of TurboCAD have been taking advantage of hardware enhancements and overall processing power increases on the PC in order to significantly improve the performance of our CAD applications. 

GPU-Based Accelerator Technology

We started by taking advantage of new, GPU-based accelerator technology that is found on newer graphics boards from manufacturers such as AMD/ATI and Nvidia. In order to do this, we integrated a relatively new graphics middleware, Redsdk, dedicated to display visualization and rendering available from the company, Redway3D. 

With Redsdk now integrated into TurboCAD and DoubleCAD, we have seen overall speed enhancement over previous versions of these products of up to 60X in both 2D and 3D models. These speed gains in wireframe, hidden line, and shaded, draft rendering modes, let the user concentrate on their design without the disruption caused by slow zooms, refreshes and regenerations. The performance enhancement is particularly evident when working with larger sized models.

Multi-Threading Support

More recently, we’ve added multi-threading support to both editing of solid models and to draft and photorealistic rendering to our TurboCAD Pro product. Multi-threading takes advantage of multi core processors, so the turnaround time on calculations is much faster.

While TurboCAD has long supported multi-core processing, the ability to do multi-threaded processing across multiple CPU cores means that mathematically intensive processes such as photorealistic rendering and Boolean operations now take significantly less time.  This improves the quality of CAD projects by quickly being able to view many different design iterations/schemes in less amount of time.

Performance is always an issue for CAD users. Your hardware’s ability to render complex designs on a display requires iterating through the pixels and calculating values for each of them. Large blocks of memory also are required to load images, perform filter operations and other high-end features. Additionally, when using these complex shapes, patterns, and images in a 3D application, it’s more difficult to achieve fast and reliable rendering. As hardware technology continues to improve, the CAD user can benefit in terms of speed, performance and advanced features.

 Author: Bob Mayer, Chief Operating Officer, IMSI/Design