Glad to see it.

I did part time work using Mechanical Desktop till I realized it just wasn't going to get any better than the hack on top of AutoCAD it was, and I didn't feel like reinvesting in another platform (And Autodesk doesn't allow you to sell your license). Grrr.

That brings up a long standing peeve of mine (and I'm sure others). AutoCAD used to be built with a very "Unix" mindset. Its menus, dialogs, and command line (and even the status bar) were all scriptable (and built using those scripts in the default install) around a core engine. I took (and later tutored) a class at the local community college that devoted a semester to doing just that. Great stuff. They had Unix versions too. I remeber playing with a version of R12 for AIX.

When they rewrote the whole thing for R13, they decided to go all Windows. Since then they have replaced more and more of that scriptable stuff with plain Win32 code. What a waste. They could have capitalized on the rise of Linux.

I've heard rumors that MS threatened Autodesk that if they didn't go Windows only, MS would enter the CAD market. Notice how MS had to spin off Intellicad (AutoCAD compatible CAD program) from Visio when they bought them, though that was Antitrust more than anything I suppose.

I hear Solidworks is heavily tied to the whole VBA thing and Excel in particular. I don't see that coming to Linux anytime soon.

If the full (or new) Pro/E UI is anything like ProDesktop Express for Windows (freely downloadable from somewhere on www.ptc.com), then it should be a pretty slick setup. The PDE interface has been very easy to use from what little I've toyed with it. But I imagine any of these newer interfaces are better than Mech Deskstop was.

Ah memories.

It's nice to someone here has some interest in CAD.

We use SolidWorks at work (four designers). We used to use AutoCAD (mainly) and Pro/E (a little). I've done some work with Solid Edge Origin (limited but free version) and Pro/Desktop.

Pro/Desktop is NOT the same program as Pro/Engineer. PTC bought a Windows CAD program, renamed it Pro/D, and later changed the kernal from Parasolid (from EDS / UGS) to Granite (their own kernal). It's by far the best free program out there, because it does assemblies. It also does allow a lot of control, but via COM objects. The available documentation on the web for the COM interface is pretty bad, but supposedly it's available on the CD-ROM. I will probably pay the $15 to find out. (COM is OK if you call it from Python)

As far as user interfaces go, based on my experience and talking to others, the original Pro/E is clearly the worst. It requires a lot more time to learn and a lot more steps to do anything. Pro/Desktop is much better, but not as slick as Solid Edge; it's hard to describe, but Solid Edge definitely requires less mouse movement.

Solid Works used to be clearly behind Solid Edge in user interface, but right now I'd guess it's just a bit behind. The new Pro/E Wildfire interface looks really good; it could be even better than Solid Edge, but until you use it for a while, there's not telling how good it is.

So, my ratings (best to worst): Pro/E Wildfire (if reality matches hype), Solid Edge, Solid Works, Pro/Desktop, and then by a wide margin, Pro/E. BTW, there's some good information for Pro/D available on the web.

Tony

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