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Pro/Engineer Coming to Linux

Posted by chrisd on from the catia-we're-coming-for-you dept.

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."

6 of 216 comments (clear)

  1. Top Notch Software by chill · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  2. "There must be some fairly credible requests..." by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    There must be some fairly credible requests coming in for this to happen.

    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.'"
  3. Re:Good, that's one of my only reasons to stay MS! by Locutus · · Score: 3, Informative
    VariCAD is the best I came across for CAD on Linux. It's got 3D and can import/export Autocad files along with exporting IGES files from it's own 3D file format.

    Leagues less functional than Pro/E but the price is VERY good. I think it's around $300 now.

    VariCad web site

    This Pro/E announcement is awesome news though....

    LoB

    --
    "Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
  4. Thought they already did it.. by Mike+Hicks · · Score: 3, Informative

    Huh?!? I thought I'd heard they were planning this back in 1998 or 1999. Oh well, better late than never, I suppose.

  5. Re:Wine, perhaps? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative
    I worked at Autodesk in Unix ports as they were being fazed out. The real reason Autodesk quit making Unix AutoCAD? It just didn't sell.

    Most of the Unix AutoCAD sales went to major accounts like government or aerospace/military. Around the time we started porting AutoCAD R13 to Unix Microsoft was making inroads selling Windows NT in those very same markets. To the pointy-haired IT managers it was a good excuse to get the engineers on the same type of systems the rest of the non-technical folks in these companies were using. And back in those days Unix workstations were priced quite high compared to WinTel hardware.

    BTW, these ports were mostly paid for by the hardware manufacturers (i.e. Sun paid for the SunOS and Solaris ports, IBM for the AIX, etc.).

    MS did pressure to prevent further development of a Mac port, however. One of the Mac programmers put a sign on his door: "Welcome to Autodesk--a division of Microsoft. Or it might as well be."

    Nowadays the code base is so MS-centric it'd be difficult and expensive for AutoCAD to be ported to anything but Windows. And I'm sure MS would have a cow if Autodesk tried and would probably pressure to prevent, say, a Linux port. Now a Mac OS X port would be interesting. The Mac ports had a loyal following among Architects...

    The threat of MS entering the CAD market was (is?) real and at one time was the biggest threat to Autodesk.

    I still remember the new CEO getting rid of Ted Nelson and AMIX back in the early 90's--the thinking was that nothing would every become of this online hyperlinking stuff. Oh, well...can't win 'em all.

  6. Pro/E was show at Linuxtag 2000 Germany by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    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.

    All I know is that the HOOPS3D Libary by Tech Soft America is used by Pro/E as in most other CAD software (IDEAS ,Solidworks etc.)