“When it comes to Apple products, the iPad and the iPhone get all the headlines. But in recent years, the company’s Macintosh line of computers has enjoyed a remarkable revival that has been vital to Apple’s emergence as the most valued technology company on Wall Street. In the latest sign of that comeback, Autodesk plans to announce on Tuesday that it is bringing its flagship AutoCAD design and engineering software to the Mac for the first time in nearly two decades.”
How come one segment of CAD software (CAE) is almost 100% Linux based while others are still toying with Windows (and port to Mac is considered a big step)?
Is that because CAD folks don’t need a robust (as in “high performance, scalable, network transparent”) work environment?
Is here any CAD engineer? How do you run simulations, verification, share design data etc?
CAE is not 100% linux, but pretty close. For certain tasks, like large routing and placement jobs, which require globs of memory and as many computing cycles as you can throw… linux clusters are very cost effective approach. Also most major EDA packages were for the most part Unix programs (HP-UX and Solaris being the major platforms I remember), so porting them over to linux was a relatively trivial process.
I have seen many places with windows workstations as the front end, and large linux clusters to do the back end. Engineers prefer linux, because most of them cut their teeth in solairs (which used to be the main platform for most CAE packages) and they prefer unix, so that is where the adoption of linux for the front end is coming into place.
Think of it as a similar situation from large animation studios, which started doing modeling in windows and the rendering on linux farms, and are now some of them moving more and more of the modeling into linux as well. There is a similar break down between 3D animation and CAE in regards to the modeling/fronted and rendering/backend.
Also CAE is traditionally associated with EE and CE types, so they are more likely to be also fairly educated with regards to computing, so there is not a problem of adoption regarding Unix. Where as most mechanical, and architectural professionals do not have a similar level of proficiency with computers, or are that interested, thus windows environments have been the preferred system for a lot of these CAD packages like AutoCAD.
There are some exceptions like CATIA, which used to be the “killer app” for AIX, and some other CAD tools. But most of them moved over to Windows a while ago anyways.
Also, one of the big disadvantages of linux is how diverse it is, so CAE tools only support very specific distro configurations. It is OK for large organizations which can afford to set a large number of CPUs to a specific version of linux (in most cases it is also a fairly outdated distro). And most CAE shops tend to be relatively large, chip design being a very expensive proposition. Whereas small mechanical design and architectural shops usually have the CAD computer also being used for word processing, spreadsheet, etc.
I have worked in places which had servers with different distros each running a very specific EDA tool.
Probably the main obstacle to the adoption of OSX as a viable mainstream EDA is that OS is not that attractive when it comes to the server/backend part of it. Alas, since it runs X fine, you can always run most linux tools on a remote X session, since they are not that graphically intensive anyways.
Edited 2010-09-01 04:31 UTC
As a Mechanical Engineer I beg to differ that CAE is most familiar with EE/CE.
I meant CAE as in VLSI design tools. Sorry for the misnomer, it was late at night.
Ugh.
We are still talking about OSX’s one-legged implementation of X, right ? The one where you can’t even simultaneously use a mouse and a pen tablet in X without pointer positioning getting completely wrong ? Where it requires two clicks to click a button in an utility window ?
Seeing GIMP run on top of it, I’ve always thought that it was coded by some random guy ages ago and left by Apple as an afterthought, in order to say “Look, we are geeky !”. In my opinion, anyone in their right mind wishing to port software on OSX should just ignore its existence and use native libraries right away.
Edited 2010-09-01 08:27 UTC
No, I am talking about running a remote X session on a server running the CAE software, and displaying it an OSX box.
I have had ZERO issues running X clients on my OSX desktop. So I have no clue what you are talking about. Then again, I don’t run X clients locally on that box.
I know almost next to nothing about CAD, but I’m setting up a friends architect’s office. They use AutoCAD and from what I’ve seen they are more or less using it as “paint that can plot”. I also have some friends that have taken AutoCAD courses, and they too use only an extremely small subset of its functionality (that could probably be covered by something that doesn’t cost $4000).
I don’t know if this is a general trend, but I gather that there are a lot of people out there that use AutoCAD because they just “have to” and not because of its strengths, much less because it’s “high performance, scalable, network transparent”.
As I said, this is only from personal observations, so I could be completely off base.
Here’s the thing..no architect cares about performance, network transparency, etc..
All they need is a tool that they can use to draw their plans. How everything operates on the inside doesn’t concern then and isn’t really their business.
I’m a civil engineer (structural) and I work with a lot of architects. Rarely will you ever find an architect who is also a computer geek who cares about the level of technology used in his products or if it has collaboration tools or not.
The reason why autocad is so expensive is that it is meant for professionals and people who use it make a lot of money out of it. My company has done projects worth 50 million dollars before (with over 10 million in pure profit).
PS. Maya is a 3d modeling too, not a tool for drawing layouts of buildings, etc..
Varicad is too cheap for a big company to use it. I haven’t tried it myself. It could be equal to AutoCAD but still too cheap for a big company to trust in it’s quality.
Edited 2010-09-01 12:12 UTC
The reason why autocad is so expensive is that autodesk believed they had an effective lock-in (via engineering firms having a huge library of existing DWG-format drawings), and that the “market” would therefore pay whatever price autodesk asked.
Autodesk no longer has that DWG-format lock-in. Some engineering firms are too risk-averse to try to replace autocad, but many are not. It may come to pass that the market may no longer be willing to pay autodesk ransomware prices.
Edited 2010-09-01 12:12 UTC
The actual cost of AutoCAD is really not that much of a deal considering other business expenses associated with the type of business which use that product, and the return of investment is rather obvious.
There are actually competing CAD packages which are even more expensive than AutoCAD, if anything AutoCAD was viewed as the cheaper alternative during most of the 80s and early 90s.
Oh, and there is also another thing that most companies need when purchasing these type of packages: support.
You’ll find out that the reality of how business operates may be in stark contrast from the perspective of an individual who is not in the position of purchasing such products.
What do you think about their purchase of Robobat and Robot (given your field of work)?
How about ArchiCAD? ( http://www.graphisoft.com/ ) I’ve seen it being used in the past by students – is it used much in industry besides the few examples that the organisation provide on their website? it seems like a fairly good package from my limited usage of it.
The problem is Linux.
It can’t get anywhere on the desktop because it is too divided against itself.
The undercurrent of open source ideology doesn’t help either. Companies like Autodesk are routinely denigrated for not wanting to follow open source ideology.
Now please bring your software to our divided platform you proprietary bastard.
And even if they choose one of the enterprise platforms then it is even more fun as they have to deal with the frankenstein of different API’s and each with their own quirks. There is a reason why I gave up on Linux years ago and you’ve hit the nail right on the head – I purchase a Mac and everything just works. I purchase a Windows 7 computer and everything works without any problems – I can choose from big name mainstream software packages, my hardware is fully supported and problems are resolved rather than pushed to the back burner. Personally for me the open source world sounds a bit like a ideology that someone at college latches onto until that person confronts the real world and realises that it is unworkable and doesn’t address the complex requirements.
Edited 2010-09-03 13:35 UTC
I guess the reason is that Autodesk is writing more and more software with the Qt Toolkit, I suppose mostly their UI at first.
One of the examples that runs in Qt now is Maya.
Let’s see if Linux might follow some day.
Edited 2010-09-01 11:48 UTC
There are now available some decent CAD products which do support Linux:
http://www.bricsys.com/en_INTL/bricscad/index.jsp
http://www.varicad.com/en/home/
Perhaps Autodesk is feeling some competition that offers more value to customers by virtue of not being tied to one desktop OS platform only.
http://www.bricsys.com/en_INTL/bricscad/comparison.jsp
Edited 2010-09-01 12:02 UTC
They are not big enough, you DDoSsed the sites just by posting the links. If I were a CIO or IT manager, I would not trust a product that can be DDoSsed that easily.
Some people have little understanding on the reality of business and the cost of tools.
That is why you hear kids complain that a pro graphics car (a Quadro or FireGL) is so expensive, they don’t understand that the business buying these boards… depend on them to generate tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars per seat, so in the big scheme of things a couple thousand dollars is a minimal investment for such return. And that is where the difference is, the mindset of a kid with a small disposable income of a few hundred bucks to spend of a 3D gaming card is not necessarily the same as the purchasing approach for a business.
Also, one thing that Autodesk has is support, and lots of it.
Cheap cad packages may make sense for individual or fledging/starting operations. But when you are making designs which costs hundreds or millions of dollars, a couple thousand bucks really is not that big of an investment.
Couldn’t agree more.