Hello, Following Adrian's and Phil's comments, we are not really in the ProDESKTOP style 3D end of the market, our main program (2D Design) is intended to serve as an intro to CAD/CAM work. It has features you'd expect in say AutoCAD lite (or QCAD) but also some more illustration type features such as Corel (or SodiPodi). The point being that in the average secondary graphics class are children who might want to be engineers, architects, graphic designers, textile designers, etc etc... So we reckon they all need a basic grounding before specialising later. 2D Design also has built-in drivers for the 2D and 2.5D machines we sell so you don't have to get involved in 'post-processing' just make a simple project. The nearest I've seen on Linux is CAM Expert which is a commercial product from the same guy who produces the free QCAD, but ours is simpler to use. 2D Design runs quite happily under Wine, though there are issue printing via CUPS. Ed Lea hacked some new Wine code last year to enable our CAM machines to operate from parallel and serial ports, but I don't know if his code has made it to the official release. Regards, Phil Thane - Support Manager, TechSoft UK Ltd.
On Fri, May 14, 2004 at 01:32:01PM +0100, Phil Thane wrote:
Ed Lea hacked some new Wine code last year to enable our CAM machines to operate from parallel and serial ports, but I don't know if his code has made it to the official release.
I think it has, but I've not had any time to check recently. If anyone is having any problems getting any TechSoft products to work in Linux with WINE then feel free to drop me a line - I won't necessarily be able to help, but I'll give it my best shot. -- Ed. Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
Just looking at SourceForge, it is possible that some investment of time and/or money in re-vitalising on of the proejects might prove worthwhile. Re: Pro/Desktop The silly thing is that while Pro/Engineer is available (and was possibly initially written) for Solaris and thus Linux, Pro/Desktop is not available for Linux. We approached PTC via Sun when we were looking at the transition to Linux and PTC replied that Pro/Desktop was written with the MS API in mind and was not economic to migrate. As the UK government has been supporting the uptake of Pro/Desktop one might feel that it is acting in a anti-competative fashion, as it will _only_ run under one, proprietary, OS. There has only been one reported attempt that I can find to run Pro/Desktop under Wine - and the program started (which is I believe a good sign). This might make an interesting project for someone with more expertese, money or need than me ;-) ===== rgds, Richard Rothwell -------------------------------------------------------------------- rind (n) acronym for 'rind is not defined' ____________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html
Hello,
Following Adrian's and Phil's comments, we are not really in the ProDESKTOP style 3D end of the market, our main program (2D Design) is intended to serve as an intro to CAD/CAM work. It has features you'd expect in say AutoCAD lite (or QCAD) but also some more illustration type features such as Corel (or SodiPodi). The point being that in the average secondary graphics class are children who might want to be engineers, architects, graphic designers, textile designers, etc etc... So we reckon they all need a basic grounding before specialising later. This was exactly my comment to our D&T chap. His point is that it's more of a design tool rather than a traditional CAD. The problem of course is that it's easy to design items that can't be manufactured (easily).
2D Design also has built-in drivers for the 2D and 2.5D machines we sell so you don't have to get involved in 'post-processing' just make a simple project. This was down to the step size and the path of the cutter rather than the
I used turbocad in the past (In my opinion better than the so-called industry standard and silly priced AutoCAD), but I've taken DTPro on and think it's brill. My camping trailer is a masterpiece and looks as cool spinning on the screen - with every nut, bolt and stud modelled - as it does sitting behind my Volvo :-) ( as you can see I do 'sad' and am happy to humiliate myself by declaring Volvo ownership) This is going the same way as the rest of IT in schools, no depth to knowledge (there he goes again, up on that horse!) project. The same file was output to all of the demonstrated machines. It may be that the different optimisations for each of the machines would have shown their strengths on different jobs.
The nearest I've seen on Linux is CAM Expert which is a commercial product from the same guy who produces the free QCAD, but ours is simpler to use. 2D Design runs quite happily under Wine, though there are issue printing via CUPS. Ed Lea hacked some new Wine code last year to enable our CAM machines to operate from parallel and serial ports, but I don't know if his code has made it to the official release. I have to say that pro desktop is processor, memory and graphics hungry, tweaking your graphics card can make it fall over. I'm using the granite version and it's not what you might call solid despite its monster price.
Adrian
Regards,
Phil Thane - Support Manager, TechSoft UK Ltd.
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participants (4)
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adrian.wells
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Ed Lea
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Phil Thane
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Richard Rothwell