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Pro/Engineer Coming to Linux 217

Posted by chrisd 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."
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Pro/Engineer Coming to Linux More

Pro/Engineer Coming to Linux

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  • 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?

    • Re:Uhhh... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by SquadBoy ( 167263 )
      Because you are what we like to wrong. Pro/E is a full fledgled application. The reason there is no serious OSS CAD app is because the math and engineering knowledge needed to do this is not something a group of coders can do in their spare time. Also starting with 2000 and 2000i PTC started making the file formats binary in order to decrease size. I do know that they are willing to work with just about anyone who wants to be able to import Pro/E files into another app. So if you where able to write a OSS solid modeling kernel they would most likely be happy to help you make it able to import Pro/E files and of course they can export to *many* different formats. Just ask me about it a big part of my old job was figuring out import/export problems.
      • Yes, he is very mistaken. Pro/E is one of the most complete CAD packages in Mechanical Engineering out there. It plays in the same league as ME10 and Solid Designer from CoCreate [cocreate.de] (a former HP division). There are companies that are actually undertaking the effort to put a meta format which does not loose Database links on top of the native CAD formats. One of them is CEA [cea-int.com]. Check it out, it is an interesting concept. If you do not want to buy such a product you can go with DXF or others.

    • Re:Uhhh... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by digitalunity ( 19107 ) <digitalunity @ y a h oo.com> on Monday June 10, 2002 @05:45PM (#3675748) Homepage
      No. The desire for this is huge. There already a lot of firms using ProE who have to put up with many development environments because it wasn't a Linux option. Of course, some are willing to put up with VMWare-ing it but thats a PITA.

      Anyone who reads mailing lists or newsgroups knows how much people have been screaming for this. Just in case anyone was wondering, this might be one of those breakthrough apps that gives Linux mountains of credibility at the enterprise/collaberation level. This will probably help draw more developers to the platform; also something we could always use more of.
    • 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?

      Well, it's not as necessary when you have intermediate formats such as IGES already in most of the commercial packages of the same vein (ProE, PATRAN, I-DEAS, Auto<whatever>, etc etc...). Plus, some of the apps can directly read format variations of the other programs (being able to read PATRAN neutral files, I-DEAS 'export' files (they had a specific name, but it's been ~2 years since I touched I-DEAS), Abaqus input decks, etc etc...)

      And as a point of note, MSC has had a Linux (well, RedHat) version of PATRAN included with their dists for the last few releases. ANSYS has done it recently as well. HKS; it would be interesting to see the Abaqus solver go over.. that seems to be quite popular for FEA.

      Too bad I'm currently unemployed; it was fun working with that crap. :/
    • No, and if you want to try it out and have access to a windows box, you can always download Pro/DESKTOP [ptc.com] for free(!)...

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

  • Top Notch Software (Score:5, Informative)

    by chill ( 34294 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @05:24PM (#3675621) Journal
    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.
    • That's GNU/X11/PRO/Engineer. Please, give credit where credit is due, it's the GNU way!
    • ... 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.

    • damn! it's payware!! (Score:4, Funny)

      by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @09:23PM (#3676925) Homepage Journal
      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.
  • Nice 3com logo ripoff PTR has!

  • This is very cool (Score:4, Interesting)

    by SquadBoy ( 167263 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @05:31PM (#3675654) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • TCO (Score:3, Insightful)

    by delta407 ( 518868 ) <.moc.xahjfrel. .ta. .todhsals.> on Monday June 10, 2002 @05:32PM (#3675655) Homepage

    So, they are officially supporting Linux as a target platform, because they recognize it can have a lower TCO.

    Supporters of Linux point to a lower total cost of ownership because they can leverage their UNIX expertise on a free and open operating system running on cost-effective Intel architecture workstations.

    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.)

    • 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.

      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!)

      • That comment was a little off the hook. I need to get some prozac or something.

      • Good MS admins are very hard to come by, because in my experience if they get good at Microsoft software -- actually understanding how it's supposed to work -- they get sick of it and switch to *nix. As much as people don't want to admit, Windows really is an inferior operating system that has no business in the data center. (Unfortunately, demands of Windows on the desktop may bring it in, but that can be minimized with tools like Samba.)

        In any case, I agree with you and I found your disk monkey comment amusing :-)

    • MCSEs are a dime a dozen

      Feh. Inexperienced or bad MCSE's may be cheap. But if you hire a dummy to administer your network -- you have a dummy administering your network. Bad value, even if its cheap.

      In my experience, good, experienced administrators are not significantly cheaper for Microsoft's platforms than are good, experienced *nix admins, and no more plentiful or easier to find either.

      Furthermore, in my experience, you often need fewer *nix admins for a given number of users (or a given number of servers), so in many cases *nix is cheaper to administer in the long run.

    • The thing to realize is that many people running Pro/E are running on HP-UX workstations, so they do have the *nix experience. True, this software has been ported to Windows, but most of these packages (Pro/E, CATIA, Solidworks, Algor) started with roots in UNIX

    • I think it is a very wise choice on PTC's part to offer ProE on the Linux platform. It is awesome software and only makes sense to offer it on a powerful and stable OS like Linux.

      While your point about Unix consultants being more expensive is true during the initial deployment stage, those costs drop off once the system is in place (assuming consultants). This is not as much the case with Windows, which is why you need those dime a dozen MCSEs. If a company had to pay as much to support Windows as Unix, no company would be running Windows.

      Having worked on and supported both ends of the Windows vs. Unix spectrum, my experience has been while the initial setup and configuration of Windows may be shorter than say Linux, the overall support required by the Windows platform quickly eats up any savings a short and easy installation may provide. In the long run, the support costs involved with running Windows is far greater than the support costs running Unix.

      This is why I think PTC's desicion to offer Pro/Engineer on Linux is great news for shops that use their software. A lower TCO can only mean increased profits. Who can deny the snazzy of that?

    • First, I think that this is good news. I hope for the day when I don't have to hear "Well I would switch but XYZ app isn't on Linux".

      But your statement about people not wanting to switch off of Novell/Lotus/NT 3.51... I have to ask why should they? I have a church that has been running Mandrake 7.x for well over 2 years now with 0 downtime! It acts as a PDC and a file/print server. That is all they ever needed. We are just now looking at migrating to RedHat 7.3, because they want to do some more with the server. I know of shops with Novell 4.x that have been up for 3+ years with no downtime. Their data gets backed up and they are happy. I agree that in most shops it doesn't make sense to stay back on software forever, but in a lot a places it makes a heck of a lot of sense.

      I currently support a Novell 5, NT 4.x and RedHat Linux shop. I like stuff about all three and hate stuff about all three. If the grass is greener on the *nix side of the house, then when the heck are they going to loose the "Owner, Group, Other" file permissions? Specifically when will it ship with most major distro's? Have you ever tried to admin a system with over a couple hundred people and had to deal with this. It sucks when compared to Novell and NT. It is kinda sad in my opinion that the latest UNIX systems still haven't addressed this feature, but NT 3.5 and Novell 2.x did. That is why some of these shops don't want to switch. That and the fact that until Solaris 9, the UNIX answer to directory service was LDAP. Of course this was LDAP with no real tools to admin anything.

      • You really should do a bit more research before making clueless generalizations. Various Unixen have support ACLs for some time now. If you want a Unix with ACLs, simply bother to look.

      • Re:TCO (Score:2)

        by Fnord ( 1756 )
        I agree that UNIX needs ACLs. However several of the major commercial UNIXs have supported ACLs out of the box for a while (most noteably Solaris and AIX). No none of the Linux distros use ACLs, but there is a kernel patch out there, and even if you don't feel like monkeying around with your kernel, version 2.6 (and distributions based on it) will use ACLs as the primary security model (from what I've read rwx security will actually be implemented on top of ACLs). And as for LDAP, if you have the right tools LDAP is a beautiful thing. And if you don't have nice tools....its very scriptable.
        • 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.)

      • First, I think that this is good news.

        And I agree.

        But your statement about people not wanting to switch off of Novell/Lotus/NT 3.51... I have to ask why should they?

        Because supporting Novell, Lotus Notes, and NT 3.51 on the desktop is a nightmare, that's why. I agree in that servers can be left alone (heck, I have a box on a Linux 2.0 kernel that has yet to reboot), but on the desktop it does not make sense to use software that was obselete in 1996.

        when the heck are they going to loose the "Owner, Group, Other" file permissions?

        It's efficient and not all that hard to use. It's just as flexible as NT 3.5 and Novell 2.x -- what can NT 3 do that *nix file permissions can't?

        Have you ever tried to admin a system with over a couple hundred people and had to deal with this. It sucks when compared to Novell and NT.

        I administer a network of a couple hundred people. It's my day job. I've had few file permissions issues, and far more issues with NT boxen shooting themselves in the foot. (In the past week, two Win2k print servers having their Print Spooler programs stop responding under zero load for no apparent reason. Of course, it was still "Started", so Win2k didn't give it a swift kick in the pants.)

        Besides, if the grass is greener on the Windows side of the fence, why does *nix beat the tar out of Windows in terms of administration? I can reconfigure network cards via SSH, even the one I'm connected through. I can change the hostname without rebooting. I can create and schedule complex tasks with confidence that they will actually run. I can swap out critical system components without creating any downtime. I can partition, format, and allocate new storage space on a file server under full load. Not to mention the fact that the *nix command line is many, many, many times more powerful than the Windows point-and-click interface.

        until Solaris 9, the UNIX answer to directory service was LDAP

        Ever hear of NIS?

    • I have to diasgree....I have foudn that the ones that have MSCEs are the ones that are least likely to be able to think on their feet..

      Its kind of like asking someone who can just operate a saw to do good quality woodwork..

      Once you identify the ones who can think in your system adm pool of people you wil not have a problem..unless of course there is no one in that group that thinks..

  • Good, that's one of my only reasons to stay MS! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dr_Marvin_Monroe ( 550052 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @05:32PM (#3675659)
    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 ditto the idea for SolidWorks to get onto Linux.

      Last summer I asked a SolidWorks sales VP, Boulder-Denver, if a Linux port was in the pipeline. He said no; "We're sticking with MS."

      Has anyone had any success using 3d cad on a linux box; what is it called, VariCAD?
      eof
    • I did my college internships with a company in Colorado called IntegWare. They made at the time a very good (if fairly ugly) PDM solution that tied directly into Pro/E as well as many of the then-popular document markup programs. I'd imagine it's only gotten better in the last few years, as they've still got the same people heading up the company.
    • I'm not surprised at their lack of response. Solidworks is a sweet package, and it's really easy to use, but they don't give a rats ass about their user's opinions. That's pretty crappy when you consider that the users are paying as much as $9k per seat for the privilege of being ignored.

      Also, SolidWorks is very tightly integrated with Excel and is scriptable in VBA. Until Excel and VBA are officially supportewd on Linux there is not a chance in hell that you will see SolidWorks for Linux.

      Conversely, Pro-E has had a Unix version available for some time now, or at least that's what I've been told. I imagine it wasn't that big of a leap for them to get it running on Linux.

    • 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 [varicad.com]

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

      LoB

  • Linux is becoming the default in ASIC engineering (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TechyImmigrant ( 175943 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @05:35PM (#3675674) Homepage Journal
    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.
    • 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. ;)
    • 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 [intuitor.com] since it is possible you don't understand. Or perhaps you are too stupid to ever understand hexadecimal and will be stuck with decimal.
    • "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."

      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.

  • 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.
    • Submitted by a cow-orker of Potatohead's:

      We've talked to people at "the corporation formerly known as SDRC" more than once about a Linux version. In the end, they said they could only port to so many *nix platforms, so which one did we propose they supplant? We read that to mean "not likely". After all, this was an engineering company at heart (read conservative), and they weren't about to drop a few existing customers for a potential of many more...

      Now as a division of EDS, we don't hold any more hope for them than before. EDS has embraced the .NET route, and this is sure to impact the PLM-Solutions division.
  • THIS is a good thing. It's very good to see one of the leading 3D modelling/design companies make their product available for Linux.

    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

  • Pro/E Infor (Score:3, Funny)

    by bill ( 12141 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @05:38PM (#3675696)
    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...
    • 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.

      Uh, dude, what about Catia, Unigraphics (the Solidworks full version, I think) and my personal arena of modeling wizardry, IDEAS from the folks at SDRC before it got bought out by the Unigraphics company. Catia is used by Chrysler (I think) and Ideas is used extensively by Ford. (I'm in the Auto industry, what can I say.) Ford MAY be going to Catia in its new projects since the SDRC buyout.

      Anyway, back on topic. CAD packages are in real need of some linux support. The Catia and Ideas workstation in our office run on Solaris, on overpriced leased hardware. I will admit that Unix has impressed me greatly. It almost never crashes, even when using a buggy program, and I can usually remote login and kill the app that is hanging my tube. I hope that other CAD software mfg'ers follow the trend. It would really cut our costs and hopefully make hardware upgrades more frequent.
    • I would think that SolidWorks would be REALLY looking at Linux now that this news is out. After all, if the Pro/E people are looking for a better cost solution isn't that what SoldWorks marketing strategy is?

      They'll be on Linux in no time. IMHO.

      There is VariCAD for lighter weight CAD work now. 2D and 3D.

      LoB
      • 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.

        • 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
          • 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.

            • 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
    • "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."

      Others in this category are SDRC I-DEAS and Catia.

      I-DEAS is used by Ford and Toyota.

      Catia was used to design the Boeing 767 Jetliner.

      These pieces of software are powerful because you can model pretty much anything you want in 3D space and assign it material properties. Then you can do various stress/strain, fluid mechanical, vibro-acoustical and other such Finite Element modelling. This saves you big money because the requirement for building models is reduced.

      Furthermore, these products can help you design the manufacturing process, once again reducing your costs.

      Still, this is just the tip of the iceberg and I have probably used only 5% of the functionality of products like these. (I am an engineering student.)

  • 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.

  • Maybe a bit late for PTC... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Papineau ( 527159 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @05:42PM (#3675717) Homepage
    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.
    • You should give IronCAD a try. Windows only, at the moment, but DAMN intuitive to use. Hmmm, I should get paid for a comment like this :) But as a mech. eng., I like anything which is not Autocad :)
    • I think I must be the only person in the world who actually likes Pro/E's menu driven interface. I really like being able to read the names of actions on the menus instead of having to guess at what different icons do. But then again, I also use the command line in AutoCAD to the exclusion of the icons...
      • But then again, I also use the command line in AutoCAD to the exclusion of the icons...
        I agree with you on that last point. Especially when you need to use a couple of variations of the same function (like draw a circle by it's diameter, then 3 points, then center+radius, etc.), the command line is preferable. But AutoCad as a whole has mostly been left behind in terms of ease of modifying a model, etc. It still does the work with older drawings, but as soon as you don't have any (or don't mind redoing them in something a bit more sane), you'll find you don't want to use it again. Pro/E, Catia, SolidWorks, IDEAS, to name only those with which I have first-hand experience, are the way to go as far as modeling goes. For floor plans, AutoCad still has some traction, because it's ok for 2D drawings. But for 3D parts (even simple ones), forget about AutoCad (or use at least use MechanicalDesktop/Inventor if you can, preferably one of the 4 I mentionned earlier). It means not having to update different views by hand (and possibly missing one or introducing errors), having a much better grasp on the shape for odd shapes, and all around easier modifications (because you have a tree of all the features which form the part, so you can modify an earlier feature and the subsequent features will update themselves), instead of only lines and arcs in AutoCad.

        Rapier, the end of the comment is not meant to you (as you seem to already know that), but more to the people for who AutoCad is one of the only MCAD programs they heard of (as it's pretty much dead now, except for old drawings).
        • I agree that for serious modeling a parametric modeler is the the way to go. I used AutoCAD for years and then moved to a company that uses Pro/E. It was awsome. But, AutoCAD is still usefull if all you need is a quick sketch to get the message across.

          By the way, I've used mechanical desktop and was serious unimpressed. If you're going to do 3D it's a great improvement from AutoCAD, but it's nowhere near as usable as Pro/E.
    • There is a ProE forum at www.prouser.org. Mentions of Linux always raise a lot of "Cool - when" responses. Most of the major CAD packages have come from either a UNIX or main frame background, as PC's have only had the required horsepower for 5-6 years. This is a market where $1000+ graphic cards are still discussed, and were the debate of how much memory is needed in a new workstation starts at 1G, with questions as to whether this is enough or not (NOT, if you are doing serious work on large assemblies.) The advantages of better memory and swap handling, better network stacks and stability keep SUN in business, as a PC with Windows maxes out at 1.6G of RAM (you can add more, but it won't be used). If you need 4G to do the job, you need UNIX.

      The discussions abour SolidWorks and AutoCAD have their place, but putting a whole tractor in electronic form (I work for Deere & Co), with every bend in the sheet metal and bump on the transmission housing, requires more that those products can deliver. Is it worth it? It is when all pieces fit the first time, with no reworking of tools or expensive trial pieces for fit-up checks only.

      While ProE is far from perfect, it is closer than the other tools I have tried. I was certainly sad the day I lost HP-UX and moved to WindowsNT, however. Windows2000 hasn't eased my pain.

      I am a Linux user at home, and would jump at the chance to use it at work for ProE. I don't know the the IS group in a large corporation will be able to be that open minded, but I certainly welcome the change to give it a try.
  • 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.
  • 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!
  • As Far as I know, Pro E has already been ported to Linux.

    Now if only SDRC I-DEAS was available for Linux
    :)

    • Yes I am replying to myself.
      I thought that Pro E had already been ported to Linux because of something I read on SDRC's chat board.

      Although I'm not a regular Pro-E user, Its great news for Mechanical Engineers / Designers. In my opinion, the greatest advantage of running CAD software on a *NIX box is that I can more easily write scripts to do my work. PERL is right there at the command line, and makes it easy to dump a list of 3D point coordinates into a macro for creating or modifying parts. Yes, you can do the same stuff in windows, but I think we can all agree it's easier with Unix.

      Congrats Parametric Technology!
      • I believe I remember reading that Unigraphics had ported to linux (or it might have been their lower end CAD package).

        But you're right on about having I-DEAS and other CAD packages on *nix. You can do an amazing amount of automation on the *unix platform that is a pain in the ass on Windows. I'm especially familiar about automating things for I-DEAS after working with for 5 years.
  • 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?
    • It definately does. Our company SELLS Sun and does much Pro/E work for a(THE) large skid steer manufacturer and we're switching away from Solaris boxes to windows just as soon as our purchaser gets the boxes ordered. Main reason? $20,000 sun boxes are barely comparable to $3500 Intel boxes. Now if only we could have waited another 6 months to make the switch, but our old Ultra2's are about dead now.
  • 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 [ansys.com], Inc.'s New ANSYS 6.0 Simulation Software Suite Compatible with the LINUX RED HAT 7.1 Operating System

    ANSYS [ansys.com] 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.
    • But what he forgets to mention is that Ansys Designspace has an atrocious UI. That, and the fileformat which is bloated and quite closed off. Don't believe me? Give it a try, and you'll decide even Autocad is better :) Well, that's pushing it, but you get the point.
  • 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.
  • Could this software benefit from oh, say, a beowulf cluster?

    /me is splattered with tomatos into oblivion.
    • Strangely this guy may not be a troll.

      I am a mech engineer, and the majority of my day is spent driving this software (I also the resident consultant).

      Pro/E has been trying to get their app to use several computers for a couple of years. They currently have a menu pick for "distrubited computing". It doesn't do any thing, but its there.

      At the pro/user conf. in Orlando (1998?)they had a cluster of Sun's machines running an analysis.

      Mechanica (the FEA package)is supposed to support multi-processors, but I don't have a mp box to test it on.

      Hopefully they get something working soon. We have bunches of boxes doing nothing most of the day, it would be nice to run some large simulatons/animations distributed.

      • Strangely this guy may not be a troll.

        Sure I am.

        Seriously though, after posting I realized that the question was slightly valid. But I'm sure thats what every beowulf-cluster troller starts to think after a while.

  • 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.
  • 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?

  • 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.

  • 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 [ibm.com]'s Tivoli [tivoli.com] 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.

  • Poor SGI (Score:1)

    by dso ( 9793 )
    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.
  • 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.

  • Thought they already did it.. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Mike Hicks ( 244 ) <hick0088@tc.umn.edu> on Monday June 10, 2002 @08:10PM (#3676603) Homepage Journal
    Huh?!? I thought I'd heard they were planning this back in 1998 or 1999. Oh well, better late than never, I suppose.

  • 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.

  • OS costs are immaterial, Windows "good enough"... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by aquarian ( 134728 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @09:10PM (#3676869)
    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.
  • 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.

  • On a similar note... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CAIMLAS ( 41445 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2002 @04:21AM (#3678115)
    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.

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