TurboCAD
Deluxe (has full 2d and 3d modeling) ($99 when on sale, $149 other times)
their main web page is here (IMSI), or here just for TurboCAD only
FREE ~ VBS scripts for TurboCAD Professional (tested on versions 11, 12, and 14) for the horizontal and the vertical decliner dials. These are like the DeltaCAD scripts. Programming notes are here. If you only have TurboCAD Deluxe, call and ask for a "competitive upgrade", they often let you upgrade to Professional for much less than a straight purchase. May not work, but worth a try.
KEY POINT: TurboCAD took the approach of using Microsoft's languages rather than the approach taken by DeltaCAD which was to integrate a stable third party vendor's BASIC backage. While this may have simplified TurboCAD's work, it must be remembered that Microsoft has dropped languages which reduced the options available to the programmer writing TurboCAD scripts. Then, the languages themselves are not stable, they evolve as much as does JAVA, so features may become obsolete, making maintenance an issue for someone programming scripts for TurboCAD. Finally, the programming option is only available in TurboCAD Professional, which costs much more than the TurboCAD Deluxe variant. All these factors, combined with the ease of DeltaCAD stable BASIC programming platform have made DeltaCAD the standard for the sundial community. If you still want to program for TurboCAD, then these notes here are very helpful. The lack of stability in TurboCAD language support is why Illustrating More Shadows does not show TurboCAD VBS scripts, whereas sample scripts are provided for all the other language based systems: DeltaCAD, Visual BASIC, JAVA, and even Pascal, C, FORTRAN and so on. However, TurboCAD scripting does provide for 3d models to be built. TurboCAD scripting is much slower than DeltaCAD scripting, thus animation is less viable in TurboCAD than in the animation available in the Illustrating Shadows DeltaCAD macros. Also, see my LISP page for programmable free CAD from ProgeSOFT. Jan 7, 2008
If you have the Cortona VRML plugin
(if not, get it free with this link or on the avi page)
click here (220k wrl) or here (22k wrz) for the picture to the left to
come up as a user rotatable vrml model.
it was built from the v-dial and h-dial
macros.
FREE ~ CAD TCW files are here built with TurboCAD deluxe, a 3d modeller that is more economical than other packages. It also has an optional animation package, see here for animated CAD examples, and the models used for them are on the main CAD page here. This page also has not only TCW files, but also some DXF, some JPG, and some CAD (CADstd) files.
The animated CADs are not as good as the animated vrml, but useful nonetheless in a classroom setting.
CAD files for designing an astrolabe for latitude 33, you can modify it, and also a latitude mesh being a hemisphere. Same thought as the solar travel mesh. The solar travel mesh makes lighting easy with CAD models.
Check CALCULATING SHADOWS for tips on how to use 3d CAD to design dials
vrml worlds (built with ISB and ISA), and vrml models (built with TurboCAD saved as wrl version 2) are on this page here (they need the Cortona vrml plugin which is the industry vrml viewing standard) |
