National Instruments LabVIEW vs. TurboCAD

LabView is a great tool to connect your sensors to your data aquisition hardware. It makes it really easy to set-up a data acquisition routine that meets your individual requirements. I, as an engine researcher, find it very well suited for engine experimentation. For any other programming needs, i.e. not data acquisition, I would not recommend using LabView because of its graphical programming architecture. The architecture makes it a great tool for Data Aquisition but puts at a disadvantage when it comes to other computational tasks, e.g. making a thermodynamic engine model. For those applications having text-based programming is better suited

Incentivized

TurboCAD is well suited to a smaller budget, it is by no means the best there is but for the money, it fills the gap. Being an AutoCAD & DraftSight user I find the user interface a little old and the lack of common drafting industry shortcut keys a bit of a hindrance. However this product, TurboCAD gets the job done, other packages like DraftSight do not even come with an active 3D option on the cheaper end, standard license whereas TurboCAD does, even though it's a little clumsy to use.

Incentivized

• Being a graphical programming language, it is a little easier for a layperson to understand than text based programming languages.
• The program has very good debugging features.
• Support is good.
• There are a variety of tutorials which make it easier to do something that you aren't sure about.

Incentivized

• Produces accurate drawings to scale, and with several ways to show the "views" to people in need of them at our factory.
• Relatively easy to use, once you understand the toolset. You can draw anything with it.
• Sending files to CNC machine shops to produce parts is easy with this program.
• Sending to mold making companies works out well. Just ask them what file format they want and TurboCAD can give it to them.

Incentivized

• improve the management of pc resources to use the minimum amount of resources
• add a utility for zooming in the block diagram window
• Improve management of complementary applications, such as real time module or dsc

Incentivized

• Some of the load times are lengthy is there a way to streamline this?
• Path Hatching and Object Trim could use a hot key
• More intuitive layer management system

Incentivized

TurboCAD does all of the things we need it to do and some. The wide variety of options to create specificity in each of our projects is a large plus. The reason it was given a 9 is because the learning curve can be a little steep and sometimes certain processes are not as intuitive as they could be

Incentivized

We chose LabVIEW over MATLAB due to the integration with hardware and the graphical programming interface. Also, the ability to use LabVIEW with FPGAs and real-time processors without having to make large changes to the code base or swapping to a separate programming environment was a big benefit since we don't know what hardware will be suitable for each customer application.

Incentivized

3DS Max is the one I use the most, the other two are good choices also. They have more online tutorials for helping learn them.

Incentivized

• We use NI's data acquisition hardware as well which has made it possible to get whatever experimental data we need to get for our studies.
• LabView has made it possible for us to post-process and tailor the raw data to our specific needs.
• With a responsive customer support team, NI allows us to expand our data acquisition and post-processing capabilities to carry out the kind of research projects that we would want.

Incentivized

• Ability to render quotes.
• Ability to supply complete drawings.
• Easy to use interface provides a faster design time window.

Incentivized