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Pro/Engineer Coming to Linux
PotatoHead writes "
Parametric Technologies Corporation
(PTC) announced in a recent
press release, a Linux port of their flagship modeling product Pro
Engineer. HP will be the preferred partner for the Linux platform
release. This is pretty big news for the engineering and product design
crowd folks. There must be some fairly credible requests coming in for
this to happen."
woopie
I thought Pro/E was simply a file format standard for drafting and design. I also thought the standard was open. Why hasn't an open source project undergone making a CAD program that read/wrote Pro/E files? Is the need that little?
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
This is top-notch software. Well, PRO/Engineer is, anyway. The last shop I worked at used Cadence but we had a lot of PRO/E CAD people who had come from Lockheed-Martin.
OTOH, this is not cheap software. Usually several thousand $$ a seat.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Nice 3com logo ripoff PTR has!
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
I've seen this acronym used by trolls a lot.
What does it mean?
I work for a company that currently owns around 50 ProE licences. I maintain the licenses for these computers and about 6 months ago we started to switch some of the workstations we had over to Linux for a variaty of reasons. At that time many of the engineers requested to me to talk to the ProE people to see if a Linux version is available. So, here we are.
when I used to work at PTC customers where always asking about this and of course since it is working closely with HP odds are it will be Debian that will be officialy supported with it. There is a *huge* market for this. I'm sure many of my old friends are *very* happy.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
So, they are officially supporting Linux as a target platform, because they recognize it can have a lower TCO.
Which is true, of course, if they have UNIX expertise in-house. MCSEs are a dime a dozen, but good UNIX admins are quite expensive. If you go the consulting route, you get screwed with huge fees. If you train your personell, you get screwed with long courses and a decent change they simply won't get it.
Then again, if you have a competent staff or a big budget, *nix all the way. I know firsthand that the grass really is greener on the *nix side of the fence, but sometimes that's not feasible for large corporations. (Besides, many corporations are brainless and/or inflexible, and won't switch away from their Novell file servers, Lotus Notes 2.0, and NT 3.51, but they have bigger problems.)
This is great news, the engineering crowd has been stuck with MS for a while now. The Linux CAD area is one place where we could use some support. This is not a slam on the CAD stuff that's out there, but Pro-E is in a different league.
Pro-E is also VERY expensive when compared with the other CAD packages though....I'd really like to see Solidworks for Linux. I could TOTALY walk away from MS if that happened. I imagine that there are a lot of engineering operations that could do it too. All Linux workstations, no MS anywhere from the engineering office all the way out to the production floor.
I've recently written to the folks at Solidworks too, sort of the "....I'm really interested and would buy seats now if I had the opportunity..." No reply.
How about a really "kick-ass" engineering document control program to go with that?...I was just thinking about that last night, something to compete with Agile and the like.....
I have been in ASIC engineering for the past 11 years. I have seen things moving towards Linux as the underlying OS for the past 2-3 years.
It appears to go hand in hand with the fastest uniprocessor platforms looking fast compared to the fastest uniprocessor suns.
The software we use is very expensive and generally compute intensive. So it pays to run it on the fastest hardware and it pays to buy the fastest hardware when it is the cheapest. The only exceptions are tools that require 64 bit addresses to permit enough memory to be installed (E.G. IC layout). Sun still wins there.
When PCs are both the fastest and cheapest and Unix is the operating system of choice for engineers and Linux is both free and good, the preference is obvious.
We pretty much will not buy software that does not run on Linux and the ASIC tool vendors know it.
The same market forces seem to apply in here mechanical engineering.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Hopefully this will force EDS to port I-Deas to Linux as well.
I had been trying without success to get SDRC to port to linux before they were bought out. I was really pissed off when SDRC ported it to Windows and my employer took away my HP-UX.
Mobster John Gotti died at 61 today in his mineapolis prison. Even if you weren't murdered by him he probably shookdown your union, truely a criminal icon.
From first hand experience, i know many of the pitfalls associated with using complex, resource intensive software on a windows platform. Memory leaks. Memory _limits_ (ugh!). Crash to desktops several times a day. Have to reboot after every crash. Have to restart the program every now and then to clear up memory you've been using. Having HUGE files because of the way M$ saves things.
The above refers to Solidworks, which i unfortunately have to use. Hopefully, with PTC going back to Unix (linux now), solidworks will start in that direction. Tho they're so entrenched with M$, i don't know if they have the talent or ability to actually write stable software. I guess it depends on how tightly M$ is holding their leash.
this is a damn good thing for the solid modelers and designers out there!!
--john
Slashdot: you'll not find a more wretched collection of villainy and disreputable types...
I agree that Linux is a natural platform for high-end CAD. Why oh why has Autocad not been released for Linux? Here's a question: Can any of these programs be made to work with Wine? If MS Office can work on Wine, maybe Autocad can too? One cool thing is that now that one company has done it, the others will feel pressure to keep up. We all win from that.
For all you non-mechanical engineer types, Pro/Engineer is a 3-d modeling tool. The other big ones out there are SolidWorks (which is hugely popular, mostly due to its lower cost, but similar quality) and at a lower scale, AutoCad Mechanical Desktop/Inventor.
As an aside, Cadence generally doesn't do mechanical modeling software. They do PCB design, schematic entry, simulation and of course IC design and verification.
This is news, but for most Linux users, forget about buying Pro/E. It costs big time - and the companies that use Pro/E already can afford bigtime boxes (Sparcs, etc) to run them on. Now if SolidWorks were to push into the Linux arena, things would start to get interesting...
apt-get install proeng. . .oh wait, they're going to charge MONEY for this aren't they? Hopefully if a few big-name apps get people to accept buying software for linux, we'll see a lot more.
The masses are the crack whores of religion.
ProE started on the Unix platform, then almost totally migrated to NT (and 2k). But they kept the same kind of interface, which needed some time to get used to (all menus in a single window, the next of which overlaps the previous...). They had the potential to really take the market with their parametric technology, which was a lot more advanced than what AutoCad could (can) offer. But then some other ones rose...
Personnally, I'm leaning towards SolidWorks. The licensing costs are smaller than those of the competition, and it's very pleasant to work with. Very Windows-centric, but the interface is fast to get accustomed to.
And it impossible to pass by Catia V5. The precedent versions were almost exclusively Unix-based, but they also made the switch to NT. The interface is really nice (reminiscent of XP, but a few years before). Pleasant to use, but V5 is still being developped, so the stability on the latest release is not always top notch.
There's also Autodesk's Inventor, although I never used it personally.
Of course, then there's the support for third-parties modules. This can hurt initialy the introduction of a new platform (CAD or HW).
Kudos to PTC for bringing their product to Linux. I know there's been some people asking them to do it for a few years now. But one has to wonder if it's because they feel some pressure to maintain their share of the market.
Just because Pro/E runs on Linux now, it is not safer. Unless a team of qualified programmers can audit the code, I would not do any work on it, if it's related to defence and national security.
I think Linux has finally hit the knee of the curve, we're going to be seeing a lot more ports like this in the future.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
I had to setup a lab @ work on a 'budget' to get this software to run.. we had gone through various systems because (and I guess I can appreciate that) the software was exceptionally fussy about the hardware it ran on. Had to be like this perticular brand of Dell, etc etc.. I told my company to trust me and bought some well built but reasonably priced AMD/GeForce2/DDR systems (after consulting the Pro/Engineer compatability list and various forums) - and after two years of stress from other cheap ass systems, these boxes ran it great. In fact, haven't had a single support call for them in 8+ months.. :)
Again - it frustrates me that where I work sometimes wants to do stuff like this (especially where the software costs more than the hardware) on a cheap budget..
I had inititally suggested that they buy some 2nd hand SGI's but realised that I would be the sole person responsible for looking after the systems (only person at work who even knows UNIX) but also realised that most of the people who would be using Pro/E could hardly use Windows.. let alone IRIX!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
As Far as I know, Pro E has already been ported to Linux.
Now if only SDRC I-DEAS was available for Linux
:)
Pro/E is a horrible piece of software, with an archaic interface. Porting to Linux for them has more to do with winning seats back from other easier to use solid modeling software companies such as SolidWorks then really giving a rat's ass about the Linux community.
Their file format is absolutely not open. They add quirks to the format as soon as some other company figures out how to read it. All Pro/E file converters break with each new revision of Pro/E. I understand that, when they save doubles they now encrypt them so no one else can read them.
The company I used to work at made a substantial investment in Solaris boxen to run Pro-E. Comparably powered PC's can be had at a fraction of the price so I'm wondering if this bodes ill for Sun?
Why is it that this gets modded up? Good MS admins are just as expensive as good unix admins, there's just more MS admins because of the way that MS built their software. When the only way to recover a computer is by reinstalling all the software, then yeah, you are going to NEED a bunch of disk monkeys to run around with CDs and hard drive images. But a good unix admin can do everything from remote, usually even if the user has hosed their system. (Thanks to a security model that is actually implemented!)
then soon, 64-bit will rule on linux as well. Then you'll have as many addressing bits as you can handle, is there really any reason to goto a 128-bit addressing mode? Well, maybe when they need to design chips that have 2^128 or more transistors. ;)
Nice work. But remember that in html, < is written < and > is written >. It's unfortunate, but html is an extension of ascii, so it has a few reserved symbols. Maybe you could write a Cheap Software Foundation utility to html-ize code automatically in your next issue?
I have worked in the HMI/Systems Intergration Field, and there are really only two products used for design. Autocad for 2d work, and Pro/Engineer for 3d and serious acurate 2d work. The funny thing is, you can download a version of the package that is 100% free for nothing.... unless you don't want like 250 megs. True, you could order the cd for like 10 bucks. The only thing they require is that you keep registered with them. *shrug* My mom keeps trying to get me to use it so I stop looking for her Autocad R12 disks.
My university teaches a Pro/E based course, but thus far has only licensed it for our Sun machines. There has been a recent push to develop a Linux cluster on campus; this is just another step in the right direction. Additionally, we have found that the Windows version of Pro/E is extremely unstable.
ANSYS, Inc.'s New ANSYS 6.0 Simulation Software Suite Compatible with the LINUX RED HAT 7.1 Operating System
ANSYS 6.0 Coupled with the 32-bit Linux OS Provides Cost Efficiency and Enhanced Speed-to-Market
Canonsburg, PA - October 31, 2001 - ANSYS®, Inc. (NASDAQ: ANSS), the global innovator of simulation software and technologies aimed at optimizing the customers' product development process, today announced that the new ANSYS® 6.0 simulation software suite is fully compatible with the Linux Red Hat 7.1 Operating System that features the Intel® Processor Family (IPF).
The Linux OS provides ANSYS 6.0 users with a powerful, flexible and open-architecture platform that can use clustering technology to handle the super-computing loads required for simulation engineering applications. Linux provides ANSYS 6.0 users a reliable cost-effective, multiple-user support tool that provides engineers with a platform to share development efforts early in the process, decreasing the number of design iterations. Because the Linux system updates occur quickly and openly, users do not have to wait for new vendor updates or releases, saving ANSYS 6.0 users time and money.
ANSYS 6.0 marks the first formal release for the Linux 32-bit OS. Future updates to ANSYS 6.0 are also expected to support the Linux 64-bit OS.
"Our goal is to continuously provide ANSYS customers with state-of-the-art software solutions that are compatible with a variety of operating systems. Linux has quickly become a standard in many engineering environments and can provide ANSYS 6.0 users with the open architecture they need to complete their tasks in timely and cost-effective manner," stated Michael Wheeler, vice president of marketing for ANSYS, Inc.
About LINUX OS
Linux is a modern operating system that runs on 32-bit architecture, uses preemptive multitasking, protected memory, supports multiple users, and has rich support for networking, including TCP/IP networking. Linux runs all the applications a Unix server system should run, including web servers like Apache, mail serving software like Sendmail, and database servers like Oracle, Informix, or more open applications like MySQL and Postgres. Linux supports a wide range of file system types, and through programs like Samba can even seamlessly replace NT as a Windows file server. Through the use of clustering technology, Linux can scale up to handle the super computing loads required by many scientific/engineering applications, and required in high availability environments.
About ANSYS, Inc.
ANSYS, Inc., founded in 1970 as Swanson Analysis Systems, Inc., develops and globally markets engineering simulation software and technologies widely used by engineers and designers across a broad spectrum of industries, including aerospace, automotive, manufacturing, electronics and biomedical. Headquartered at Southpointe in Canonsburg, PA, ANSYS, Inc. employs 400 people and focuses on the development of open and flexible solutions that enable users to analyze designs directly on the desktop, providing a common platform for fast, efficient and cost-conscious product development, from design concept to final-stage testing and validation. ANSYS, Inc. distributes its ANSYS®, DesignSpace®, AI* Solutions(TM) and ICEM-CFD Engineering products through a network of channel partners in 37 countries, in addition to its own direct sales offices in 18 strategic locations throughout the world. To address the latest in Web-based solutions, ANSYS, Inc. provides e-CAE, a solution designed specifically to address the need for "surge capacity" often required during the design verification phase, as well as providing a low-cost entry point for consultants and occasional users.
CONTACT:
Dawn Tappy
ANSYS, Inc.
PR Manager
globalpr@ansys.com
Note to editors: ANSYS is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
That comment was a little off the hook. I need to get some prozac or something.
This is awesome! I've got ProE running on my wintel box right now, and ProE was the 1 thing keeping me from moving to Linux for my work computer; now there's no reason at all for me to be running Windows. Nice.
This is good news. The CAD choices for linux are pretty bad but getting better. However, what about a lite version for those of us that just want to design our own desk and home office space? I've tried some of the open source projects out there and they are pretty bad. The simpliest concepts like scaling your drawing to fit on a paper printout are missing. VariCad is another commercial offering but again, it's too expensive for home use. I tried their demo but it wouldn't let me save my work.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Could this software benefit from oh, say, a beowulf cluster?
/me is splattered with tomatos into oblivion.
This is not HTML LOlLol.
I work with a number of tier 1 and 3 automotive suppliers, and they always tell me the same thing when getting new equipment... The cost has to be as low as possible. I can't begin to say how many of my clients have switched from solaris or hpux to NT, intel hardware may not be as well designed, but it gets the job done at a much lower cost. Most of my clients could care less about the OS on the box (in fact, many prefer UNIX since most designers don't know it... keeps down on IM clients, P2P, and other time wasters at work.) Parts of Unigraphics (GM) are now available for Linux, if the rest was offered, along with Catia (Chrysler) I could see a large number of my clients switching. A port of ideas (Ford) would help too... but IMHO that product won't be around much longer.
Go away, or I will replace you with a very small shell script.
there's probably no response because solid-works was started by a bunch of guys who used to work on pro-e who were frustrated the company wouldn't do a proper windows port so they started their own company... =)
PTC seems to be first in line to move the MCAD market to Linux. Good for them. Wonder how this will affect the other MCAD market segments. Will people switch?
Maybe just the thought of this will encourage other ports.
Their next generation of products will be built around the WildFire release of Pro/e. This is no big deal because it is in the press release. Interestingly though, they use the M$ IE components on win32 for their web enabled functionality, but use Mozilla for everything else.
Someone around here said mozilla was an important project once... (they were right!)
I think it is cool to see Mozilla being used in such a way. The fact that it was there and capable paved the way for a Linux port that will do anything the win32 one does. (Other UNIXes enjoy that now.)
Makes you wonder why we need IE doesn't it?
Blogging because I can...
more off the hook as in extreme, not as in good.
In context, it was ment to be extremely bad.
There is pressure from many of the large companies to get some of this design software available for Linux. In the instance of Candence, it should have better performance on x86 machines than on Sparc, with the added benefit of cheaper hardware. Word has it that a version of Cadence for Redhat may be available early next year. The sticking point is that 64-bit is really needed for large layouts, so it might be a while before a stable kernel and cpu are available which Cadence will bless.
Yes, you can use your super expensive video card for something productive.
That is where Will frag for bandwith starts making some sense.
All it takes is one request from someone who will purchase enough seats.
IBM's Tivoli TME10 enterprise management suite (for all I know it's called something else now, but I'm too lazy to check) is supported on OS/2 primarily because of a single customer, the UK postal system. Everyone knew it would have to happen eventually, since IBM bought Tivoli and still had a strong commitment to OS/2 back in those days -- except, of course, for making it not suck. They didn't have that strong a commitment.
Incidentally, the linux port of tivoli was originally done by a support engineer with too much time on his hands. Ah, the wonders of using CORBA and perl.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
A Mercedes technician costs you more than a dweeb from JiffyLube...does this mean you should not buy a Mercedes?
You really have to feel sorry for SGI. They were in the Linux game years before most companies but the software support wasn't there (PTC included). Now they axed all of their Linux services and hardware only to miss the boat.
Combine this with Weta (sp) in New Zealand buying 150 shinny new Linux workstations, from IBM, and you really have to think that SGI didn't make a very smart business decision.
An exploration of mixology, spirits and bartending.
I've been seing some decimal on slashdot, which geeks hate. So I've been posting this reply. So, why are you using decimal here? Do you understand number bases? I think you don't, otherwise you would use hexadecimal. Repost in hexadecimal--you may use "0x" as a prefix or "h" as a suffix. Perhaps you can learn at this since it is possible you don't understand. Or perhaps you are too stupid to ever understand hexadecimal and will be stuck with decimal.
you really fucked up
clit = logged in
This is the package as far as product design is concerned. Everything from cell phone housings to automobile engines are designed with ProE. Surely not every company uses it, but most do. Many of my friends are engineers at Fortune 50 companies. Most of them use ProE on Sparcs running Solaris. Some have converted to Windows, but the product was and is primarily designed for a Unix/X11 environment.
There is a lot of demand for Linux from engineers but they are not the ones paying the bills. The ones who control the purchases don't even know that Linux is not some computer game.
You must remember that we live in a Dilbert world with a lot of pointed hair bosses.
Labview has had a Linux version for a while but no one buys it. I was told that there was a lot of demand for a version but when time came to buy it the purchases didn't materialize.
It is also true that they don't push it much as virtually no one knows that it exists.
you could put it on windows and then have the russians easily send a virus. they probably already know some of the code in NT anyway...
... horrible place to work, though. I used to contract with them, as a unix administrator. It was a fun place to learn unix, but pretty incompetent with a lot of things. No centralized password scheme, etc.
They had some really dirty tricks though. They'd hire Russian programmers for well under market, and hold their green cards over their heads. Working there as a contractor meant that you were basically mulch.
I really learned to despise Irix on that job.
I have to agree that such a change is in the works. The Linux offerings in VHDL for VHISIC programming tools for linux are impressive. I am told I-DEAS has linux support now. (I have only run it on winnt machines but my univ has a HPUX lab running it as well.) And now Pro/Engineer as well.
I think that this will make it easy for the high end design part of hightech industries to step away from MSFT so they can spend their time worrying about how to best do design tasks as opposed to manage and pay for restrictive licensing agreements. Still, I expect that office work will be done on Win32 for a long time yet, this change is a good start.
Huh?!? I thought I'd heard they were planning this back in 1998 or 1999. Oh well, better late than never, I suppose.
yea, i noticed. fucking mozilla
"but good UNIX admins are quite expensive"
Any body who can admin a windows system can read a book about linux over the weekend and set a system up on monday. I did.
We have three linux boxes in two locations. These boxes run month after month with no problems. I shut them down over the christmas holidays just to feel like I was doing something.
What about FreeBSD? I know lots of engineers who run FreeBSD as their prefered desktop.
Last year, when I applied to the company, I got the impression that they were doing a lot of stuff in java, esp web services. This may or may not have to do with achieving platform independence, in which case Linux would be a logical step. Or maybe their newer products have suffered from lackluster sales.
One baby step closer to getting a 2D/3D drafting program to Linux like AutoDesk Mechanical Desktop and Inventor.
OrCAD for Linux would be great, although I've almost got SDT/PCB386 working under DOSEmu and VMWare. 800x600 with VMWare, 1024x768 for DOSEmu. :-)
Possibly the only thing holding my office at Windows is MPLAB ICE 2000. The damn thing won't install under WINE but works great under VMWare or Win4Lin. Office is licked now that StarOffice is here and Mozilla or Konq does all we need for web browsing.
One of the big things PTC talked about when they did my company's release update session was their new "Granite" architecture. They released a new free/cheap modeler that's can handle Pro/E files and called it Pro/Desktop Express. It has some of the basic functionality of Pro/E. They explained it as being CAD for non-CAD people, to get more people using it. It's the "Free 3D cad software" mentioned on their homepage.
The reason these engineering packages moved to Windows from Unix in the first place is that it was so much cheaper. The advantage of NT was that you could run these apps on cheap, commodity hardware, and a relatively cheap OS. The alternatives back then were commercial, proprietary Unix on expensive workstations from SGI, DEC, HP, or whoever. NT boxes cost less than half as much, and could be run by the average office's "computer whiz" (or at least that was the perception).
Since then, Linux has taken over, with the ability to run on the same cheap hardware. But now it doesn't matter as much- the savings are in the hundreds, rather than thousands, or tens of thousands per year, per seat. Compared to the cost of these apps and the salaries of the people using them, that's a drop in the bucket. Windows may not be cheap or good compared to Linux, but in the overall scheme of things it's cheap enough, and good enough.
Well, I certainly won't be using it, then!
I can see the "Ask Slashdot" now: I manage a large aerospace machine shop and I'd like to run my shop on Linux. Is there an open-source 3D CAD/CAM program that will create NC programs that will properly control my 5-axis milling machines, lathes, and Okuma grinders? I hope to convince my managers this is a good idea!
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
The place I work at (large helicopter manufacturer) has about 1200 RS/6000 boxes, most of which run CATIA. Licenses can get awfully expensive.
I agree that the OS costs are immaterial, but I am not sure that I buy into the good enough. I struggle with the limitations of Windows every day. When I went from HP-UX to Windows, I lost virtual desktops, X11 remote logins (not for heavy duty work, but great from time to time), useful swap space (not just for multiple applications, but for an app that needed more RAM than I had), and the list goes on. I gained cheap hardware (works with Linux), MS Office (I can have Open Office with Linux), and - well I got support from IS if that is a gain. I don't know if IS can be open minded enough to give it a try, but I will be at the head of the line to sign up.
I got word that ICEM is going to have a linux port also. They used to be owned by PTC but split off.
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
This is so amazing. I have worked for 3 different design corperations that have used *NIX for the main system and used VMWare or other emulators to make Pro Engineer work. In one year, in software alone we spent $100k on upgrades for Pro/E and then had to turn around and spend another $10k on windows upgrades. The ONLY thing on those machines that used windows was....you guessed it Pro/E. This is such a HUGE thing for Linux. Even though not many people use it, Engineers and designers do...let's just say this is going to make heads really start to turn. Now, if we could just get adobe to support linux it. If Adobe would join the ranks, there will not be any holding linux back.
SDRC had a port working in house for Master Series/IDEA-S about 2 years ago. Unfortunately no one thought it was a good idea to try to and continue down that path.
Like they say, the road to hell is paved with melted snowballs...
I admin a few of the boxes at the university where I go to school ¥SIUE© We use suns with Cadence© Now we get a HUGE break on the price of the cadence software© Generaly from what I've seen, the yearly contract costs of the software dwarf the cost of the boxes that it runs on, even semi-expensive SUN workstations ¥eg SunBlade 1000s© What is the big advantage of jumping ship from say a bunch of Sun workstations to some Intel boxes if it only results in a marginal reduction in cost© If I'm forking out 50k a year for software, what's the big advantage if I run it on $2k intel boxes verses $5k Suns, espically considering some of the advantages of the SUN boxes ¥64bit, tight integration of OS/Hardware, etc©©©?
And all I have to say is:
You mean, there are people
who actually used the menus
and icons to do work? I was
once amazed to see someone
actually using the "enter"
key, instead of the obviously
superior "space" key, in
AutoCAD.
I used icons all the time,
if by icons you mean pop-up
icons that represented
autolisp routines when the
tablet ran off the screen.
I still miss using a tablet.
A mouse just isn't the same.
Don't forget IRIX.
BTW: SGI contributed their XFS filesystem bringing ACL support in the filesystem with SAMBA for Linux. (others may do this, but I am aware of XFS at the moment.)
Blogging because I can...
It's great that after several years of using the excuse of "we don't what Linux distribution to support", they're finally making the port to a Linux based OS.
Unfortunately, this may be too little too late as far as academic users of the software are concerned. A couple of years ago, ProE files generated by the education version of the software started to not be capatible with the full version software, cutting off university research groups that wanted to be able to design things with ProE and have their files merged with bigger systems.
I'm part of a research group that was fighting for our research collaboration with several other universities and national lab to use ProE for the design and integration of the sub-systems. However we lost the fight when it was realized that the educational version (cheap at $5k per seat) wasn't capatible with the super-duper version that the lab has.
Craig Steffen
http://www.craigsteffen.net
Not a bloody chance. They are married to the MFC and intergrated OLE application model forever. Building on this toolset (no matter how wise) is one of the keys to their business model.
Anyone running MCAD on UNIX is a ripe target for them. Less informed shops that are feeling the one box and it had better be win32 pressure is their target.
Leveraging the win32 intergrated applications is key to their gain in market share. (Which BTW is all they care about.)
They want to be the MCAD extension to Office, not the best tool.
Blogging because I can...
Wrong. SGI did the right thing by getting out of the PC market. Nobody can make any money from PCs (other than Dell). PCs are so completely commoditized it just doesn't make any sense for a high-end systems vendor who competes with differentiated hardware to be in the PC business.
The main reason that IBM/HP/Compaq do PCs is to retain account control in their big corporate accounts. They'll lose money on the PCs, but make money selling services and big servers.But because SGI is specialized in the technical and creative computing market, this account control strategy doesn't apply to them.
They deserve credit for trying to deliver a differentiated Linux/Intel workstation, and they deserve credit for leaving this market when it proved not to match their business model.
Autocad is a mid-level program, and does not stack up against the likes of Pro/E, Catia, I-DEAS, and so forth.
Yeah, we'll write it for you, just give us a couple of years to 1) raise interest in the project and get coders 2) design the thing 3) write it 4) make it talk to everything else.
In the meantime, you'll just have to use hand tools. Sorry!
-the management
I agree that SGI deserves credit for LEAVING the INTEL market, but not for entering it. Basically they turned chickenshit when HP teamed with Intel to help create Merced. Instead of continuing to push the envelope (at the time SGI was far far ahead of EVERYONE in the RISC game, and Intel was very far behind) they stopped developing the frontier and came out with an overpriced commodity clunker. This destroyed the once great and proud SGI.
Then the question is who?
Blogging because I can...
Will it support vr easily?? I mean, integration with big 3d stereo projection screens and interaction with 3d input devices ? vic
That is rediculous (note that this is characteristic of PTC), the Educational version should not be prevented from working with the Commerical version, they both cost roughly the same. The Student version (I got my copy for $15 :)~ is incompatible with the Commerical version, which makes sense because it is only for learning/training. If you have a lot of money/influence you can get a module from PTC that will convert files saved with the Student version to standard Commerical Pro/E files.
AutoCAD is a toy, I thought that only 3rd world companies used it, like some of our south american customers.
does anyone know if this software is functional for civil/environmental engineering-type drafting? (Drainage systems, bridges, feed lots, that sort of thing). I've been looking for such a linux solution due to the immense time investment that Windows takes to administer, and am wondering if there is a product that is similar in feature and similar in function to AutoCAD 2000 (due to the monkey-like nature of most of the engineering technicals employed at the company I work for, it's necessary to have something that will not cost a lot to retrain them on.)
Sorry if it's a bit incoherrent, it's been a long night and I'm exhausted.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Is remember Pro/E was at the SGI/Rand booth at Linuxtag 2000 Stuttgart/Germany. I was told that porting took them 11 days. But it took two years to hear of Pro/E again in the news.
,Solidworks etc.)
All I know is that the HOOPS3D Libary by Tech Soft America is used by Pro/E as in most other CAD software (IDEAS
This is what I've been waiting for. This proves that Linux is ready for prime time. Why ? The (mechanical) engineering market is huge. Take all the different software companies, and add up their value. Pro/Engineer, UGS/Sdrc(Unigraphics, Solid Edge, I-Deas), Autodesk(Autocad, 3Dstudio), Bentley(Microstation), Dassault Systemes(Catia, Solidworks), etc. Combined, they're one of the largest segments of the IT world. It's also got some of the most demanding customers. By releasing Pro/E for Linux, they're forcing everyone else to follow. It's just a matter of time before UGS launches Unigraphics for Linux. And what's next ? Imagine a large car manufacturer, like GM, or BMW. What's stopping them from running Linux on all their PC's ? Nothing. SAP is already there, FEM (Nastran) is there. Staroffice is ready. The way is paved for Linux from top to bottom. The irony of it is that it's not so long ago that these companies finished their transition from UNIX to windows, and now their going back !
Everything you described is something you can have with Windows -- well maybe not the X11 remote logins, but there is remote desktop, which is actually quite good.
is 3D Studio Max. When that day comes, I'll be one very happy camper.
when does it come out for OSX?
actually, if i understand correctly, apple uses pro/E for all of their design work.
-cowboy byscuits
News of any Big Name (tm) 3D CAD software for Linux is huge in the engineering field. Where I work (as engineer in a large aerospace-industry company with infrequent-but-present CAD needs), we have been using Unigraphics on Solaris boxes. For whatever bone-head reason, couple years ago the entire company decided to begin replacement of several thousand Sun boxes with Dell/Intel solutions running W2K. The real geeks here amongst us made a good cry for putting Linux on the machines instead (save money, yes you can still get support, we still have Unix, no productivity drops, etc.) but, among many other "reasons" was one of the strongest motivators that Unigraphics (UG) didn't work under Linux but did under windows. Now, while the company deployment of and reliance on "UG" is large (so much so that there's no hope of switching to anything else; there is far too much inertia at this point), us pro-Linux guys didn't have too much come back for the pro-MS upper management point that there wasn't any top-of-the-line CAD packages for Linux. (As an aside for those interested, we are expected to be a fully-MS-campus by end of the year; already the amount of things that just don't work, courtesy of unknown coded limits in W2K and/or its basic non-Unix-ness, is enough to make you either laugh out loud or go cry in a corner.)
I did send in essentially that very "Ask Slashdot" about a year ago when I was shopping for CAD software and saw prices up to $120,000 for crap with built in bugs to keep you coming back for "maintenance." This sort of professional application would be excellent for the Linux community, and could probably be funded by the machine tool manufacturers just to eliminate the bottleneck that current software places on their sales. You can spend more for the software than for the tools! So, yeah, why doesn't someone organize this?
I think about how nice it would be for AutoCAD to be available for linux almost daily. (It remains our only obstacle to a complete change over.) I think the major stumbling block at this point is that AutoDesk appears to be married to the visual basic development environment. I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the AutoCAD extensions out there are coded in visual basic, and AutoCAD has supported visual basic for applications ala Office, et al for quite some time now. It doesn't get less portable than that.
I am assuming that the initial buy in was "look at all these nifty developer's tools we can offer you and your users". It would be very difficult to reverse that course now, but since we do all our customizations in LISP I wouldn't miss visual basic at all. I just can't GetPastTheGoofySyntax for VBA, and the first book I bought on it was peppered with lots of "for some reason, this doesn't always work" and "be careful calling this routine after that routine or your program may hang for a few minutes" so I put it down and never picked it back up.
I just wish someone at AutoDesk would pay attention. Some video production shops are going linux, though, so maybe 3D Studio will be the first hole in the dam over there.
As for Ford switching to CATIA, possible but not likely. After the fallout, there will be pretty much only 2 products controlling high-end CAD--EDS and Dessault. Every large consumer product/automotive/aerospace company will be evaluating both products continuously, I'd imagine. Pro-E? Not bloody likely. Check their stock--Ford or any other big auto name isn't going to invest $250+ million in an MCAD package that might flounder any day now. The big 3 (really big 5) are perfectly happy dealing with EDS and IBM (dessault's reseller).
Operating system reinstalls, software that needs to be periodically uninstalled and reinstalled, uninstall routines that fail to complete the uninstall process, biannual hard drive reformats.
Even if it were still necessary to occasionally clean the slate on a given unix, at least it would only be a matter of erasing some files and copying them back over.
I bet the windows registry (and undocumented keys therein) costs us thousands of dollars in IT time a year.
Right now I am installing operating system software on sixty desktops here. It would be so much easier if I could just do a simple "copy" of the relevant files from the network. Installation routines for Windows are a nightmare, and mystery errors requiring reinstalls are all too common.
TurboCAD Is a pretty decent 3d modeler, and a good 2d drafting program as well. It is way cheaper than AutoCAD ( and hence Pro/E ) but is a good work-alike. The modeler works similar to that in Pro/E where you basically sketch your primitives and then add dimensions to constrain them. I would love to see this for Linux, I'd buy it right now. That sad thing is it was originally CorelCAD, which if it still was there would definately already be a Linux version. It is a good program, uses OpenGL for interactive rendering, can export STL and 3DS files. _That_ is the one that I can afford and is good enough quality for most work.
That was in 1996. I can only imagine what the price would be today.
But, dang, the engineers sure liked the functionality of the software!
Note: This is the same AC that
you were replying to....
AutoCAD is a damn fine 2D
drafting tool. I've never seen
anything better.
That is all it is, though, despite
it's ambitions of being a real 3D
modeling program.
Any shop I know who runs this kind of software has a standard configuration, which is installed from a hard drive image. Windows is only "installed" once, as are the other apps. Subsequent personal configurations are backed up periodically too. So if a system has a problem, a wipe/reinstall can be done in minutes. If it doesn't work, it's a hardware problem, and that could happen with any platform anyway.
in practice, this is faster than actually troubleshooting and fixing any system, Windows or Unix/Linux.
Until the fix there unsubscribe script and get me off their damn bandwidth heavey newsletter, I'm not going to use it.
MFC... You're right, they ain't going anywhere but MS windows. They'll go down with them after all, I've NEVER seen Microsoft fight something as bad as they're fighting Linux. And it isn't because they didn't invent it, it's because they can't control it. Thanks for the heads-up on that other CAD companies tie to MFC.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Everything you described is something you can have with Windows -- well maybe not the X11 remote logins, but there is remote desktop, which is actually quite good.
I can tunnel one app from one unix box to another unix box without exporting the desktop. I can do this over the internet. I can leave a box running for 3 months and never reinstall apps. I can run the same source code on 3 different architectures with minimal changes. I can avoid giving money to a company that uses fear based tactics to make people pay for the same software 3 times.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
This is also another reason why Microsoft wants OpenGL *dead*.
All of the major MCAD packages use OpenGL for their graphics render engines. OpenGL is good at this. Today I would wager that DirectX whatever version is good as well.
Not an issue for the minor players, but the big boys are still cross platform.
MCAD and high-end analysis packages run on the UNIX platforms and OpenGL enables this.
BTW you can include on your list SolidEdge, Autodesk Inventor, IronCAD (or whatever they are calling it now), and CADKEY. Autodesk and CADKEY used to be UNIX based, but that ended in the early 90's with ACAD 12 (I think) and CADKEY 6 or 7.
Basically all the midrange stuff out there right now is built using the MFC. All of it wants to be high-end CAD. None of it is going to be.
Blogging because I can...
I'm aware of the "We wand OpenGL dead" line Microsoft has. OS/2 shipped with OpenGL way back in 1994 (OS/2 v3.0) and NT got it to. It was around that time that MSFT started their own 3D stuff. They only did DirectX because IBM had DIVE and showed Doom running full speed in a window on OS/2. All this was just like you said, OpenGL is not a Windows-only technology and MSFT does not own the API's. IE, they can't use them to keep the competitions applications a rev or two behind theirs.
I think it was AutoDesk bought into Microsofts "write to Win32 and have Windows AND UNIX" way back when. Bristal,Mainsoft and a couple of others were allowed to licences MSFT code to enable Win32/MFC to run compile and run on UNIX. After a few big CAD companies ported from UNIX to MFC, Microsoft pulled the rug out from under the companies providing the underlying runtimes. I think Mainsoft was the only one left standing. Their sole existance is because then needed to show in court that Bristol wasn't being targetted. Only thing was, Microsoft charged MainSoft tons for their Windows source license but turned around and paid them big bucks to port IE to Solaris and HP(?).
They are smart bastards but not technically, only business-wise. The world finally caught on that a networked computer must be peer2peer capable, secure, and robust(not crash daily). Microsoft windows is such a pig that it imploads under any reasonable load.
BTW, I think AutoDesk realized the mud they are in and started porting a bunch of stuff to JAVA. Then Microsoft pulled the JAVA rug out from under them too (requires them to install the JVM now). JAVA may not be best for all apps but it's much easier going from Java to say Qt than MFC to ANYTHING.
Looks like there's quite a self-imposed ceiling on these CAD companies and if they want to exist in 5 years, they had better get off of MFC soon. IMHO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus