Comparing Vectorworks and TouchCAD?

[Mohan Pakkurti]

hello!

Does anyone know of a comparision of Vectorworks and TouchCAD. The biggest difference seems that TouchCAD specifically has features for marine cad.

I want to buy a cad software that is useful for small boat design, but also flexible enough to design other things (industrial design). Can somoene here share their experiences about the differences between the products and also some idea of what excels in what!

Thanks for your kindness in sharing any experiences and tips related to this.

I am using a mac book pro laptop 17", so i want to find software that runs on Mac OS X.

Regards

Mohan

[nero]

At the time I bought TouchCad, I had been using Vectorworks for over 10 years. The two programs work together not against each other.

TouchCad does free form 3D shapes ... like boat hulls. It has marine calculations built in to the program. Without them it would be too frustrating and time consuming to design a boat.

Probably better to start with TouchCad. You could build a boat from what the program can print out. If you want to make the results look better and add dimensions then VectorWorks would be the next step.

I run them both on a ibook G3 900mhz. On a imac G5 TouchCad runs fast.

[ludesign]

Originally Posted by nero

At the time I bought TouchCad, I had been using Vectorworks for over 10 years. The two programs work together not against each other.

TouchCad does free form 3D shapes ... like boat hulls. It has marine calculations built in to the program. Without them it would be too frustrating and time consuming to design a boat.

Probably better to start with TouchCad. You could build a boat from what the program can print out. If you want to make the results look better and add dimensions then VectorWorks would be the next step.

I run them both on a ibook G3 900mhz. On a imac G5 TouchCad runs fast.

I agree. VectorWorks is a great program in most ways, though as is the case with many ordinary CAD programs, it does not quite deliver the shape control you have in the typical hull fairing program. I use both so I can choose to use any of them at any time.

In reality, I do the 3D shaping of all major panels in TouchCAD (hull, deck, frames, bulkheads, engines, add human shapes for ergonomic analysis, sketch renderings and animations, marine and weight /center of gravity calculations etc.). It is simply better to do as much of these things in one unit as tedious things like intermediate surfcae to surface trims, weight and center of gravity calcualtions, unfolding and material / production optimization simply becomes an integrated part of the design and not a tedious afterwork that is what it is.

In VectorWorks I do 2D detail drafting, solid modeling and some high end renderings.