Slashdot Mirror

Pro/ENGINEER (now a part of PTC Creo Parametric) isn't real? (They dropped Unix support a while ago.)

There are more students enrolling, but most of them drop out or change majors. That's why in the EE article you linked there is almost no change in the number of degrees awarded.

Mathcad is awesome and cannot be beat for calculation documentation. http://www.ptc.com/products/mathcad/

I mean it's a nice try, but how many people here can do anything with it?

The GIMP is almost as good as Photoshop now.

GIMP isn't even close to Photoshop, not for a pro photographer. CinePaint, aka FilmGIMP, bridges the gap quite a bit though.

But I've never seen anything that compete with Autocad that is remotely as good.

There's CATIA, MicroStation, and Pro/ENGINEER. And if you don't need all that they offer, there's TurboCAD, as well as others.

I would love TurboCad or Solidworks for Linux as well as FSX.

Pro/E supports Linux

PTC / Windchill manufacturing http://www.ptc.com/ business process software includes pathing for fabbed model creation, for example, and accepts quite a number of 3D drawing file formats incorporated in the workflow. One of the guys we just hired on at our SI comes from mfg background and clued me. It's considered a must-have in a number of different mfg software packages now.

I have been working in the BPM field for about 10 years, and I think ProjectLink is very nice.

The workflow engine in particular really rocks. Full Petri Net expression capabilities, robots, inline Java code to fine tune activities and provides automatic rollup of dependant activities. Workflows can even be created from an MS project file, or their native UI.

ProjectLink is NOT freeware.

Pro/E is available for Linux.

Admittedly it's not easy to find on PTC's website, but it's listed on the software update page

Maybe I missed something, but I didn't read anything in that article that isn't already done in industry every day.

-S

The Holy Grail of test automation is Automated Test Generation, in other words the ability to have your application record inputs and outputs in a way that can be easily played back or transformed into a test. Pro/Engineer has this capability. Are there other applications that can do that?

Unfortunately, finding 64-bit commercial programs for the architecture is nigh-impossible, so you almost have to be able to run a lot of 32-bit code. The problem lies in the fact that ALL of your software has to be compatible, and that's not even close to feasable currently.

Some problems we run into with program support for our Itanium2-driven Altixes (Altices? Altixen??):
PTC Products System Requirements
Alias Maya 64-bit Requirements

If you want major then you should be looking at Pro/Engineer from PTC. I haven't used it but a student co-op I was supervising used it at the University of Utah and thought I would like it. It looks awesome, and expensive.
http://www.ptc.com/go/wildfire/index.htm

The next logical choice would likely be Varicad. They have a demo version you can download and play with. I've used this and its not bad, about on the same level as AutoCAD. When I get around to buying a CAD application for linux this will likely be it.
http://www.varicad.com/

And things are always changing. It may be worth a look to google around for current offerings. A good start would be here:
http://www.tech-edv.co.at/lunix/CADlinks.html

burnin

PC-Crash sounds like a dodgy name.
They could've used engineering programs like: CATIA, Pro Engineer, Strand/Straus, or any other FEA (Finite Element Analysis) program and apply the right forces to the element to come up with a half decent result. However, if you've ever used any of them, you'd know the immensity of constructing an accurate model.
I can't judge PC-Crash. Maybe it is useful and accurate, however, the blurb says it was not "certified" or accepted for the senario it was used for.
I think this goes back to using the right tool for the job.
"Nothing to see here, move along!" is probably the right thing to say for this article.

Pro/Engineer would be the one to learn, followed by Bentley Microstation, followed by Dassault CATIA (catia should be before microstation but for political idiocies). No one competent in one of those three and without ethical problems with military work will be unemployed.

Learn AutoCAD too, but don't waste too much time on it unless you want to work in the SME space - it's the Microsoft Word of CAD. Pro/Engineer would be the Adobe or Quark. Plus, almost every Pro/Engineer-using company I've seen has been a Linux shop!

OpenCASCADE is the TeX :-)

Here's a helpful illustration to get you started with your doorbell-mouse-computer device. Also see this one

Kidding aside, the biggest reason more workstations are sold with Linux is that there aren't enough professional applications (design stuff like ProE, The pSPICE family (at least Cadence and Synopsys, etc) haven't all been ported to linux yet.

Pro\E *is* available on Linux, and in fact, on HP workstations.

Many other scientific applications are available on Linux, including Matlab, most CFD suites, most FEM suites, and more maths packages are coming.

Kidding aside, the biggest reason more workstations are sold with Linux is that there aren't enough professional applications (design stuff like ProE, The pSPICE family (at least Cadence and Synopsys, etc) haven't all been ported to linux yet.

Pro\E *is* available on Linux, and in fact, on HP workstations.

Many other scientific applications are available on Linux, including Matlab, most CFD suites, most FEM suites, and more maths packages are coming.

Kidding aside, the biggest reason more workstations are sold with Linux is that there aren't enough professional applications (design stuff like ProE, The pSPICE family (at least Cadence and Synopsys, etc) haven't all been ported to linux yet.

Pro\E *is* available on Linux, and in fact, on HP workstations.

Many other scientific applications are available on Linux, including Matlab, most CFD suites, most FEM suites, and more maths packages are coming.

Parametric Technologies has this problem. Seems they were trying to insert the year 2038 bug into their code, but the messed up and got the year 2004 bug instead.

Linux will get is name far faster by being accepted on the corporate desktop. There you don't need gaming performance, you don't need 3d performance.

So you're saying that Linux should never be used for (say) CAD/CAM work (for instance Pro\Engineer), 3d-modelling, 3d GIS visualisation, and many other sceintific uses of OpenGL?

Maybe you haven't noticed that Pro\Engineer + NVidia cards actually make one high-end business case for Linux on the desktop (especially with the deals HP is pushing for their Linux Workstations, which AFAIK come with NVidia Quadro cards).

I am actually not too familiar with the high-end CAD design space, so I am not too sure how the following programs compare, but I did find these:

Pro/Concept 2.0 (only just coming out to be sure)

CADENCE

Solidworks Licence server is running on OS X, which would aty least enable them to consider a port - and there are petitions calling for them to do a port.

The people making Catia appear to have some bits working on OS X (C++ component library).

This site looks to have some cool Mac related CAD info.

I think that overall, the release of the G5 will convince a number of high-end companies to port to the Mac as the system architechure is really a great improvement.

There aren't even programs such as AutoCad, Rational Rose or stuff like this.

You mean like Rational Rose Developer for Unix?

Or what about Pro/E, instead of AutoCad. Or maybe LinuxCAD.

It certainly appears that Pro-E runs on Linux. I believe Unigraphics does as well, but their site was much more difficult to navigate. At least something from them runs on Linux. CATIA doesn't appear to run on linux yet, but with IBM as the main US distributor hopefully that will change soon.

Catia, Unigraphics, Pro-E and other world-class CAD systems simply do not run on Linux. Control software for Coordinate Measuring Machines (CMM) is only available for the Microsoft Windows platform. That software often controls the basic construction of a manufacturing companies IT infrastructure.

Yes you are right that there is a need for linux version of these applications, as a user of Pro/ENGINEER and linux I can understand the problem. But a port of Pro/ENGINEER is under way. see this FAQ. There is already a linux port of Alias Wavefront another major package.

As such you can seen that though there is still a problem with the lack of high end grahical and engneering application this is slowly reducing.

Starting with its latest release, ProE runs on Linux.

It's proprietary (and expensive), though.

It's gotten better, but one of the major problems is the 4GB limit. Specifically, Win2K lets you have 2G of user space. Basically it boils down if you want your assemblies to much larger than 1.5-2GB, forget it. The whole system starts bogging down at 1.5 GB, and when you hit 2GB the system dies and throws up its hands. Needless to say, many product designers at a certain major auto manufacturer are still running on Solaris boxes. Microsoft, of course, has been profusely promising a fix, but still haven't delivered of course.

Pro/E of course will eventually run on Linux, :)

One problem is the GM IS&S directorate that no open source software shell be used. This came, interestingly enough, right after they began to move to Windows platforms for Unigraphics. More interesting is that their servers all run HP-UX, and that they integrate with their existing Win2K DFS system using CIFS 9000. Hmmm...no open source, huh? (For the uninitiated -- CIFS 9000 is just Samba relabelled by HP)

Ah well. I did the best I could to advocate Open Source while I was there and was told to just 'drink the kool-aid.' *sigh*

One of the biggest CAD packages, PRO/Engineer , runs on HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris and Linux.

If you don't need any Windows apps that's great but it doesn't change the fact that many people do (especially corporations). Besides, some people prefer Windows apps for one reason or another. There are Windows ports of both the GIMP and OpenOffice.org yet Photoshop & MS office haven't gone bankrupt.

but there's still no well known professional quality 3D CAD suite that runs nativly on Linux.

What are you talking about? AutoCAD is not a 3D CAD program (but AutoCAD Mechanical Desktop is). Most of the serious CAD programs I know about started on UNIX workstations long before getting Windows support (x86 boxes had nowhere near the power for solid modeling 10 years ago). I currently us CATIA on an RS6000. However, looking at CATIA's requirements they don't currently support Linux, although Pro/ENGINEER does.

Companies aren't going to port unless it financially makes sense for them to do so. Even if they get hundreds of requests for them to because they either know emulation works, or they know there are alternatives that will likely win out in the typical Linux user's mind.

I would think that if a company received a sufficient number of requests for a port (from PAYING customers) then that would indicate that there is a market for the port.

KHTML was a smaller codebase than Gecko, and easier for a new project to make completely their own. That's right, there was a better open source alternative out there most people had never really thought about.

Why in the world does either "smaller codebase", or "easier for a new project [at Apple, working stealthily] to make completely their own", define "better open source alternative"?

The second claim, "easier for a new stealth project to make their own", is arguably bad for open source, although it looks like Apple has worked out arrangements to give back its changes without too much pain (a KJS2 fork, a few big merges). All's well in the end, but Apple took chances with forks, and from what I can tell was prepared to carry its own tine of the fork, forever. Apple chose KHTML because it was easier to own, if necessary, than Gecko -- that's true. But that fact doesn't make KHTML the better open source anything.

As for the first claim: "smaller" is better until you want in-page editing of arbitrary block level elements (contentEditable, available in Mozilla now), or good XML support, or XSLT, or MathML, or SVG, or a bunch of web compatibility bugfixing that Safari has yet to do. Then, even though KHTML is a fine engine, you might prefer, given all the trade-offs, to use Gecko.

These black-white, good-bad disjunctions between large, not-quite-competing software systems are unreal. Complex software comes with a set of complex trade-offs. On someone's absolute scale of goodness, KHTML may be "better" than Gecko. Heck, I could agree to that, based mainly on size of codebase (source and compiled), or on aesthetics (I prefer lean C++ to stylized, design-patterns-infected, not-quite-COM object-oriented hoohah).

But in the real world, you have to state requirements carefully and trade off costs and benefits with relative judgments. Gecko does not always lose to KHTML, for all scenarios where you need something like an embedded layout engine (See ptc.com for one embedded Gecko example).

And the reason Apple chose KHTML does not matter a bit to other entities looking for such an engine. Nor does that reason decide which engine is the better open source alternative in general.

/be

"... as far as i know, the closest thing for linux is the army's brl-cad. which isn't very close at all."

Why would you think that?
PROe

"for example, i use a 3d cadd package (solid edge) to model parts and make drawings. as far as i know, the closest thing for linux is the army's brl-cad. which isn't very close at all."

Why would you think that?
PROe

As with many things in life, your opinion will depend greatly on your perpsective.

To my knowledge (which may be biased living in a so-called third-world country where software is really expensive), the biggest customer of commercial software is big business.

Granted, quite soon open-source solutions will extend from the file/print/web/mail server to the desktop, and include the basics the average administrative user needs (email, documents, spreadsheets, simple databases).

But, currently there are no real solutions for the business-critical software that actually pays the bills (unless you do web design or server hosting, which may not pay the bills either).

Coming from a mechanical engineering background, the software that we spend the real money on (one license can often pay the entire balance of all the other non-technical software) are things like 3d associative Computer Aided Design Software, software for Finite Element Analysis, Computational Fluid Dynamics.

I imagine other high-tech industries will also have software they depend on, for which there is currently absolutely no viable open-source solution.

Fortunately, a lot of this software does already run on free OSs (notably all the CFD software I listed, and also most of MSCs structural analysis software), and Pro/E will apparently be coming soon. But, of course, there were not ports from windows, rather ports from commercial Unix (in many cases, so were the windows versions).

The problem for us is that we can't migrate until all the tools one person will use are available, since work often requires interaction between at least two pieces of software. But, presently Pro/E is the biggest piece missing, and we hope that this will be addressed by the end of the year.

Then, we only need to replace the stuff the use, but I think that's going to require a different kind of solution, unless it's easy to port VB on MSSQL software to linux.

Please, don't do other linux (and OSS) users a disservice just by stating that all your home computing needs are catered for by current OSS software, thus there is no need for proprietary commercial software.

Having more linux users around is a good thing, since that will mean that hardware vendors and website designers will have to take notice, and hopefully the number of HTML emails will drop ;-).

The quickest way to do that, is to ensure that businesses can migrate easily to linux/OSS without losing the functionality they currently have, at which point they will start to see the additional advantages they hadn't considered.

What about ProEngineerfor Windows and Linux ?

What about ProEngineerfor Windows and Linux ?

No, and if you want to try it out and have access to a windows box, you can always download Pro/DESKTOP for free(!)...

Pro/DESKTOP is kindda "Pro/E lite".

How about Windchill?

Inflatable Guitar. I heard it - sound oK.

are there any solid modelling CAD programs for linx?
i use a lot of different types of cad programs between work and school, and the only one i have seen that even works on any *nix is Pro/E (irix). it is a very expensive, professional, proprietary, solid-modelling CAD program.
i think that the cad programs are a lot easier to use than typing code and rendering.

He does have some reasons and in fact his response to my post cleared up a couple of issues and I wish him the best of luck. I don't *really* agree with his reasons but I can see how they might be concerns and it does look like nebby is aware of what he is doing. But Open Source is all about being free and I just pointed it out. When the Open Source version of this comes out I could see myself looking at using it. All in all good job Nebby and thanks for the response.

that in the past these people. Have provided some support to battle bot teams. Mostly it has been in the way of software in exchange for putting a sticker on the bot but you never know and they do have at least some people who know what it is and who have supported it in the past.

It isn't about games for everyone. Games are great but I personally would rather see the acceleration hardware aimed at major CAD vendors (Autodesk, PTC (ProEngineer), SDRC (I*DEAS), Dassault Systemes (CATIA), UG Solutions Inc) rather than games because that would help me more. 3D graphics available today are really pretty slow compared to what I really need. (and yes we have some pretty high end hardware to work on too) Try rendering an entire plant in 3D with product in it and flying around in real time with a reasonable level of detail. (no you don't use a CAD system for this, you use dedicated VR or 3D simultion software like QUEST) The currently availlable hardware still only permits fairly crude cartoonish models. It has been quickly improving though...

Actually what I'd really love to see any of them release their products for linux, but that's another topic... (funny thing is, most of them have unix versions already so it shouldn't be all that hard a port)

Perhaps I should provide a few more details about our network, so I can justify the the design decisions that went into it.

We have about 250GB - in about 200,000 files - available on four servers. At this point, having a cleverly designed directory structure is no longer a viable solution for organizing our documents across the enterprise, and an additional layer of abstraction is needed so users can locate the files they need.
Enterprise Document Management Systems are applications that usually sit on top of an RDBMS and allow search, check-in check-out, version control, and other features beyond what a file server can do. Since we already have an Oracle ERP solution installed here, we went with their EDMS product, but there are certainly others available (most notably from Xerox and Eastman-Kodak, although recently I've wondered how suitable CVS would be for such a task).

By the way, I think the biggest CAD file I found on our servers was ~400MB, and it was a Pro/Engineer drawing of a component that could fit in the palm of your hand. After a six-month campaign of trying to ration disk usage by our employees, only to be voted down by higher-ups, I have resigned myself to the fact that I will be adding disk storage to these servers forever. Network Appliance is starting to look real good...

The comment was:
For the longest time, PTC only supported NT on Intel hardware

Do not confuse PTC (Parametric Technologies) with one of it's product lines, Pro/E.

Pro/E is NT based right now, but PTC owns more than one CAD/CAM company. Not too many know this.

Last year, ICEM Technologies, makers of ICEM DDN, a high end UNIX only (now we support NT too) CAD/CAM suite was bought from Control Data Corperation by Parametric Technologies. This was not primary for ICEM DDN, the CAD suite, but for it's high end surfacing application, ICEM Surf which has long been coveted by PTC because of its desire to integrate with Pro/E.

ICEM DDN, which is quite popular in Germany and in other European Engineering Firms as well as high end European Car Companies (Ferrari, for instance), is wholey owned by PTC.

So when you say that PTC is UNIX only or has been UNIX only, you're incorrect. I work for ICEM and subsequently PTC which might I add, treats its developers/programmers quite well (free pop machine, free snacks, and free beer on fridays for those of age).


-Zebulun

The comment was:
For the longest time, PTC only supported NT on Intel hardware

Do not confuse PTC (Parametric Technologies) with one of it's product lines, Pro/E.

Pro/E is NT based right now, but PTC owns more than one CAD/CAM company. Not too many know this.

Last year, ICEM Technologies, makers of ICEM DDN, a high end UNIX only (now we support NT too) CAD/CAM suite was bought from Control Data Corperation by Parametric Technologies. This was not primary for ICEM DDN, the CAD suite, but for it's high end surfacing application, ICEM Surf which has long been coveted by PTC because of its desire to integrate with Pro/E.

ICEM DDN, which is quite popular in Germany and in other European Engineering Firms as well as high end European Car Companies (Ferrari, for instance), is wholey owned by PTC.

So when you say that PTC is UNIX only or has been UNIX only, you're incorrect. I work for ICEM and subsequently PTC which might I add, treats its developers/programmers quite well (free pop machine, free snacks, and free beer on fridays for those of age).


-Zebulun

The comment was:
For the longest time, PTC only supported NT on Intel hardware

Do not confuse PTC (Parametric Technologies) with one of it's product lines, Pro/E.

Pro/E is NT based right now, but PTC owns more than one CAD/CAM company. Not too many know this.

Last year, ICEM Technologies, makers of ICEM DDN, a high end UNIX only (now we support NT too) CAD/CAM suite was bought from Control Data Corperation by Parametric Technologies. This was not primary for ICEM DDN, the CAD suite, but for it's high end surfacing application, ICEM Surf which has long been coveted by PTC because of its desire to integrate with Pro/E.

ICEM DDN, which is quite popular in Germany and in other European Engineering Firms as well as high end European Car Companies (Ferrari, for instance), is wholey owned by PTC.

So when you say that PTC is UNIX only or has been UNIX only, you're incorrect. I work for ICEM and subsequently PTC which might I add, treats its developers/programmers quite well (free pop machine, free snacks, and free beer on fridays for those of age).


-Zebulun

The comment was:
For the longest time, PTC only supported NT on Intel hardware

Do not confuse PTC (Parametric Technologies) with one of it's product lines, Pro/E.

Pro/E is NT based right now, but PTC owns more than one CAD/CAM company. Not too many know this.

Last year, ICEM Technologies, makers of ICEM DDN, a high end UNIX only (now we support NT too) CAD/CAM suite was bought from Control Data Corperation by Parametric Technologies. This was not primary for ICEM DDN, the CAD suite, but for it's high end surfacing application, ICEM Surf which has long been coveted by PTC because of its desire to integrate with Pro/E.

ICEM DDN, which is quite popular in Germany and in other European Engineering Firms as well as high end European Car Companies (Ferrari, for instance), is wholey owned by PTC.

So when you say that PTC is UNIX only or has been UNIX only, you're incorrect. I work for ICEM and subsequently PTC which might I add, treats its developers/programmers quite well (free pop machine, free snacks, and free beer on fridays for those of age).


-Zebulun

The comment was:
For the longest time, PTC only supported NT on Intel hardware

Do not confuse PTC (Parametric Technologies) with one of it's product lines, Pro/E.

Pro/E is NT based right now, but PTC owns more than one CAD/CAM company. Not too many know this.

Last year, ICEM Technologies, makers of ICEM DDN, a high end UNIX only (now we support NT too) CAD/CAM suite was bought from Control Data Corperation by Parametric Technologies. This was not primary for ICEM DDN, the CAD suite, but for it's high end surfacing application, ICEM Surf which has long been coveted by PTC because of its desire to integrate with Pro/E.

ICEM DDN, which is quite popular in Germany and in other European Engineering Firms as well as high end European Car Companies (Ferrari, for instance), is wholey owned by PTC.

So when you say that PTC is UNIX only or has been UNIX only, you're incorrect. I work for ICEM and subsequently PTC which might I add, treats its developers/programmers quite well (free pop machine, free snacks, and free beer on fridays for those of age).


-Zebulun

I second the don't vote unless you use, however what reason could anyone have to vote no?

The only thing I can come up with is that it might "dilute" support for the other versions, but they already seem to have Unix support, so it's almost a non-issue...

I have been trying to nudge Parametric to get more info on a linux port for some time now. FlexLM supports linux, PC's are cheaper hardware, unfortunately proe still costs $20,000 a license. If you want to jump on the bandwaggon, ask your sales guy about linux.