__Hi Jarret

I bought a IMSI Design Cad V18 to design my project and i
wondering if i should use the
Solidworks program .

Tell me how much is this cad program and where i can purchase it
if you recommend it.

The shape of my project will be similar to the fuselage you had
send below
but with swept wing and strake and small winglet.

From the program could you use the sketch and work from it.

I been working on reduction gear design and using the carbon fiber
tubing for prop drive shaft and drive shaft between engine and
gearbox.
  Jean Prudhomme

Jean, I haven't used TurboCAD for a number of years [10+] so I can't
comment on the abilities of the later editions. The copy I had was pretty
much a 2D only platform. If you've got the money to do it right, I'd
recommend buying SolidWorks or Rhino if you don't want to spend that
much. SolidWorks has done alot of improvements in it's abilities to
do complex surfacing. Was I to do that same model again I don't think
I'd go to all the effort of adding in the equations. The new tools would
simplify that need.

SolidWorks is ~$2900 for the very basic version or $6k+ for the office
version [ Office Pro is ~9k?? IIRC] I haven't done pricing on it of late as
I've owned my version for 8yrs now and just pay the maint/yr costs.

I think Rhino is ~$2k?

SolidWorks is a sketch dependant modeler. It requires the user to sketch
profiles and open contours and then using multiple contours to create
surfaces. This is the same in Rhino, the main difference being the feature
tree in SW. The feature tree is a chronological list of every step you've used
to create a model. The tree enables a user to go back to the original
[or any] feature and modify it and then allow the software to regenerate the
model w/ the changes. This greatly simplifies the modeling process as you
can improve and tweak while you go.

Some of the new surfacing features in SolidWorks [last 3-4yrs] is the ability
to do complex surfaces. Some of them [to name only a few] are boundry
surface, fill surface, [C2 surface] deform etc etc..] The great tool that is in
just about every surface creation tool is the C2 command. This enables the
user to generate a surface which will match to an existing [organic] surface
boundry and match the curvature of the existing surface into the new surface.
This differ's from Tangental connections in that the surface connection is
totally seamless, you can't see it, while you can see a Tangental surface joint.

Anyway there's much more to that topic but for now..  :)

HTH
Jarrett