Welcome

During my career, I used 2D CAD occasionally for engineering and design work, but I wanted to continue using it for personal projects after retirement. Since AutoCAD was far too expensive for my needs, I chose TurboCAD Deluxe instead. The software’s capabilities have impressed me, especially given its very reasonable cost. I began by creating simple 2D drawings for woodworking projects and soon started exploring TurboCAD’s 3D modeling features.

As a kid in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I was fascinated by model railroading and Meccano. I realized that building virtual Meccano models would be a great way to learn and practice 3D CAD modeling. So, I decided to create a CAD library of the roughly 300 Meccano parts from that era and began computer modeling some of the complex designs I could only dream about as a child.

Timothy Edwards’ Meccano website offers an extensive archive of original parts drawings and model instruction manuals. The New Zealand Meccano site provides detailed information about the parts and their history. Both have become invaluable references for my CAD work.

I’m still amazed by the mechanical ingenuity of these models—the motors, gears, sprockets, chains, pulleys, and belts—all working together in designs that often use thousands of parts. CAD lets me build with an endless supply of parts and saves me from the heartbreak of dismantling one model just to build another. Still, I sometimes wish I could hold these models in my hands and see them in operation.

I also enjoy creating near-photorealistic renders of my models and superimposing them onto photographic backgrounds to make them look life-size and integrated into the original photo. To achieve this, I use fSpy, an open-source camera-matching tool, along with a C# program I wrote, to synchronize TurboCAD’s camera position and perspective with the photograph.

With TurboCAD’s LightWorks render engine, I can fine-tune the materials, luminance, and environment settings to generate realistic reflections, shadows, and lighting that blend naturally with the background scene. I then use GIMP, an open-source image editor, to add details like steam and smoke—effects that are difficult to create directly in TurboCAD.

You can see examples of these renders in the CAD Models section. Each image was exported as a high-resolution JPEG at 300 ppi.