Linux/mac?

[Nick]

Is there any thought for porting to these two OS's?  Currently it is slim pickings for Linux and I would love to have a quality cad program to run under it.  I don't run OSx, but I saw that there is a TC for mac so this might be a no-brainer. 

[Royal]

Lots of thinking.  I'm an old Mac guy (my old product, WriteNow for Macintosh, was voted one of the, "Top 10 Most Insanely Great Apps for the Mac" on Mac's 20th anniversary)... so I ask this question gingerly:  Do Mac folks want a Mac CAD app?  Or is the big market -- those running AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT -- content running under boot camp?

[Nick]

My vote is for Linux   Mac hardware is to $$

[xenophon]

i vote Linux too

[linea]

I vote linux too. There is a demand for architectural cad programs for linux. There are only two; Cycas and Octree, neither is very robust.

[Nick]

Lots of thinking.  I'm an old Mac guy (my old product, WriteNow for Macintosh, was voted one of the, "Top 10 Most Insanely Great Apps for the Mac" on Mac's 20th anniversary)... so I ask this question gingerly:  Do Mac folks want a Mac CAD app?  Or is the big market -- those running AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT -- content running under boot camp?

Isn't there already a A/CAD (now DoubleCAD) dwg viewer for mac?
http://www.imsidesign.com/Company/InTheNews/January152008PressRelease/tabid/653/ItemId/1853/Default.aspx
How much more work is it to complete the functionality to bring it inline with XT or XT Pro?

[Royal]

That's not an answer to my question. <smile> 

But by your question to my question, can I assume you want a dedicated Mac app... and not something running in boot camp?

P.S.  A lot of work.  That's why I asked the original question... just seems like most Mac users are content using AutoCAD under boot camp... even though this is counter to all the Mac folks I know... so the question is why do all that work when there may be a solution (boot camp) working to everyone's satisfaction?

[Nick]

I personally don't care, I'm not a mac user, nor do I plan to be anytime in the future.  I just figured the ground work has been laid... <shrug>

I still prefer Linux, and the price tag really fits into the linux user's ideals 
On the other hand I think you could get some paying costomers wanting to upgrade to Pro once they figured out XT.
The current Linux selection is slim.  The choices are not very good and/or expensive and not really a competitor to AutCAD LT.

[Royal]

Agree with your thinking.

[Nick]

BTW- I wouldn't make this a priority, but rather a back-burner, as-you-have-time sort of project, especially since the market share is pretty darn slim compared to Windows.

However, with the current state of the econemy OSS (Linux) might make up some ground.  Who Knows...

On the other hand, I almost got it running with wine on Ubuntu, so if you went that route most of the work might already be done and it might simply be a matter of tweaking some .dlls and such to get it operational using wine, which IMO would be completely excetpable.  After all that is pretty much what google is doing with it's apps (google earth, picasa).  Rumor has it they are working on porting Sketchup among others to Linux. 

[LemoyneArchitect]

Given IMSI's support of the Mac with TurboCAD and TurboSketch, I was really hoping to find that DoubleCAD was available for the Mac as well.

I know a number of people that immediately went out and bought Windows and installed it on their Intel Mac so that they could finally run AutoCAD.  And then had all the typical Windows problems...

Right now I'm doing my preliminary design in SketchUp on my Mac, along with multi-media, Adobe CS and web stuff, and then when it comes time to do the construction documents I grudgingly fire up the PC and AutoCAD.  If DoubleCAD was available for the Mac I'd buy it in a heartbeat - and then transition the other people on PCs with AutoCAD over to it so that we'd all be on the same platform.

[wmanning]

Thanks Lemoyne...

One of our big concerns is that the TurboCAD Mac and TurboCAD PC products are completely different code bases.  Because of that, DoubleCAD is a closely related cousin to TurboCAD PC, but a distant relative to the Mac version.  A port will be a very big project.

That said, the Mac market might be comparatively small for Autodesk because they are such a big company, but to us it might be a big enough market to be worth the effort.

Since TurboSketch days we have learned a lot more about Mac development too, and I think it shows with IDX Renditioner for the Mac (TurboSketch's replacement product).

Thanks again,
William

[psycho-mullet]

Do Mac folks want a Mac CAD app?  Or is the big market -- those running AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT -- content running under boot camp?

Yes they do!

My first question when I saw DoubleCAD was: Is it available for Mac?

There are a number of offices (I used to work for one) who prefer mac's and will not use autocad simply because they don't want to run windows or boot camp (or feed the evil autodesk). The switch for many offices is a no brainer. There are a number of offices as well who prefer mac's but have switched to PC's simply because it doesn't make sense to buy into mac's and run bootcamp, if they could run this app in a native mac OS they would switch back. And there are pragmatics like myself who have stayed away from mac's because all the software I need for work is PC only, but if it were available on a mac, I'd buy one. Being Mac compatible would also give you a leg up over Autodesk.

[wmanning]

Thanks.  Well reasoned... you're not as psycho as you think... 

-- William

[LemoyneArchitect]

Just to expand a bit, I think that DoubleCAD could tap a large Mac market in those that have the need to be dwg compatible but do not want the expense of adding both Windows and AutoCAD as well as the troubles of a dual-boot machine just to run AutoCAD on a Mac.  Then the issue is that you have to switch back and forth from using AutoCAD and all of the programs on the Mac side instead of seamlessly using one operating system.  I think that the combination of an alternative to AutoCAD and an alternative in being able to use a Mac may influence a lot of people.

Here in our office, even though we are working on PCs due largely to having to run AutoCAD in order to be compatible both with consultants as well as client needs (a number of recent government projects have required AutoCAD files specifically), we have lately been discussing downgrading to AutoCAD LT due to both the expense of the full version for a small office as well as the fact that we just are not using anywhere close to the full capabilities of the full version.

But looking at the comparison chart between LT and DoubleCAD, even at the same price the "extra" features offered by DoubleCAD would easily sway us in that direction.