[Lbw] Fax server and CAD for Linux?

[Howard Gibson]

On Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:39:05 -0400
Sheldon Mustard <smustard-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> proe (and related PLM products) have been talked about for a while on
> linux but they don't have much market share in the major MCAD
> customers anyways.  It is relatively cheap and less functional then
> the major MCAD apps ... a minor player with some market share in
> Europe.
> 
> UGS recently announced some details on porting plans for CAD and PLM
> products to linux (server apps first) ... lets hope the linux versions
> are actually functional and get some market share.
> 
> http://www.ugs.com/about_us/press/press.shtml?id=4033
> 
> Still waiting for CATIA V5 (arguably the market leader) on linux
> details from Dassault and IBM ... not sure this will ever happen, more
> for business not technical reason.

Sheldon,

   Pro/E is one of the major players in mechanical CAD!  It is less user friendly than SolidWorks and the others, but apparently, more competent at weird, curved models (spline curves?).  I am on vacation and I cannot remember the correct jargon for this. :)  SolidWorks and SolidEdge are roughly equivalent in price, and are significant market players.   

   Catia and a couple of others are high-end CAD packages at around $30K/seat, and they already run under UNIX.  A Linux port ought not to be that difficult.  Once you have laid out $30K for the one application, the cost of your OS is not much of an issue. 

   There have been discussions on some CAD message bases about Free Software and mechanical CAD.  All the big 3D CAD packages extensively use third party code which is proprietary, and which represents the primary income stream for the copyright holders.  It seems to me, this should not stop them from writing data files out in a publically documented format.  Think back to the old browser wars, when Netscape and Microsoft arbitrarily added extensions to the HTML language.  

-- 
Howard Gibson 
hgibson-MwcKTmeKVNQ at public.gmane.org
howardg-PadmjKOQAFn3fQ9qLvQP4Q at public.gmane.org 
http://home.eol.ca/~hgibson
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