Open Source Engineering Software?

pipingguy asks: "A long-time subscriber to my piping design/engineering-related discussion list inquired about Open Source engineering software (and expressed an interest in moving to Linux), citing the high cost and often poor customer support of the commercial packages. Since there are quite a few non-Software Engineers reading Slashdot, I thought I'd ask a 'somewhat larger' userbase by posting the question here. What Open Source engineering software is out there and useful?"

Comments

Scientific Applications of Linux

[The_Dougster]

The following webiste has served as a central index for engineering and scientific related applications which run on Linux, and it has been around for quite a while.

Scientific Applications on Linux

The site lists both free and commerical applications.

For a drafting program, I would recommend QCad which is a nice GPL 2D drafting package. Unfortunatly I am not aware of any GPL 3D drafting programs which are either robust or mature enough for industrial use. Periodically I attempt to get TurboCad running under Wine, but while it seems to be getting closer to working, still no success yet.

Don't overlook the Python Programming Language which has a variety of extensions which make it very suitable for number crunching applications. Its is fairly easy to learn how to make GUI-based applications for specialized purposes, and its speed of development combined with robust error-checking and interpreted execution mode makes it ideal for implementing small engineering solutions.

Sorry, no can do.

[xtal]

Most of the people suggesting alternatives do not make money with them.

Most of the open source software is a shadow of the alternatives in the commercial world. Octave is quaint, Electric.. ugh.. yeah, electric. There is spice, but there is nothing that even comes close to OrCAD, let along Analog Workbench from Cadence. The situation with digital tools for VHDL synthesis isn't much better.

3D wise, nothing compares even remotely to Solidworks or AutoCAD. Nor would I really expect it to. The best hope I have is that one of the big boys will get behind OS X and offer some of these tools for the Mac, and get them back on a UNIX platform in a useable form.

The big digital players DO have their tools available for linux, and I can give props to Mentor Graphics here (send me a t-shirt, ha). Solaris and Sun's horribly overpriced hardware have given them little choice.

Matlab is unmatched in third party support, optimizations, and speed. It is available for Mac and Linux.

But really, if you use these tools in the commercial field, their prices aren't that bad relative to the billing time or projects they're used for. I would, however, really like to see some synthesis tools for OS X from a major player, a good analog simulation tool, and SOLIDWORKS. Hey, anyone with influence. Mac. OS X. Solidworks. Dual G5. Please?

Yeah yeah yeah I can hear you call now. You could use the open source tools for a lot of stuff, but I can also design netlists on paper. Doesn't mean it's an attractive or efficient choice.