Bryan J. Smith wrote:
>> For those that didn't know of IntelliCAD prior,
>> it was started by 3 (was it?) former AutoDesk guys who didn't have
>> any NDA or other agreement that prevented them from building a clone.
<begin off topic CAD history lesson>
Not exactly. The IntelliCAD project was actually started by Softdesk - a
third-party provider of civil and architectural software that ran on top of
AutoCAD. When AutoCAD Release 13 turned out to be a toad, Softdesk sales
sank. David C. Arnold, CEO of Softdesk, decided he needed an alternative to
AutoCAD and started a secret project to build an AutoCAD clone, thus cutting
out Autodesk. Autodesk tried to purchase Softdesk and kill the project.
But the FTC stepped in and wouldn't allow the Softdesk sale to take place
unless Autodesk sold IntelliCAD.
They sold it so a small company call Boomerang (I think). After the sale,
Visio purchased Boomerang and started competing against Autodesk. Autodesk
responded by creating a Visio clone. When Microsoft purchased Visio, they
had no need for a CAD package, so they created the IntelliCAD consortium as
a way to experiment with a new open-source-like development model. It
didn't amount to much and Microsoft lost interest.
Bryan J. Smith wrote:
>> Visio bought them out, then Microsoft bought out Visio, and then
>> IntelliCAD was quashed as a product. Not coincidentally, AutoCAD
>> dropped AutoLisp and adopted VBScript, and became Win32-only
>> shortly afterwards.
Autodesk committed to Win32 and VBA before the IntelliCAD project had
started. They needed to completely rewrite the core, which was started in
Release 13, and completed in AutoCAD 2000. Faced with such small revenue
from Mac and Unix sales, and growing interest in NT workstations, Autodesk
committed to Win32 for the rewrite. They had just hired Robert Carr
(Framework, later Ashton-Tate) and he was put in charge of the architecture.
Carr strongly believed in Win32 and C++. The Autodesk founders were Unix
guys who wrote in C, strongly objected, but most had already left the
company. Newly hired CEO Carol Bartz (formally of Sun) approved the project
and Carr began dumping the old C code. Carr is a nice guy, but his projects
seem to be cursed. AutoCAD R13 was the worse product in the history of the
company and was never really right. Carr left Autodesk shortly after.
AutoLisp was never dumped and still exists in AutoCAD 2005.
<end off topic CAD history lesson>
Ken Elliott
=====================
-----Original Message-----
From: slug@nks.net [mailto:slug@nks.net] On Behalf Of Bryan J. Smith
Sent: Sunday, November 28, 2004 11:30 AM
To: slug@nks.net
Subject: [SLUG] Re: AutoCAD Clone for Linux - IntelliCAD now in beta
On Sun, 2004-11-28 at 10:04, Ken Elliott wrote:
> All you AutoCAD guys might want to check this out. IntelliCAD is a
> low-cost AutoCAD clone that reads/writes DWG and builds upon your AutoCAD
knowledge.
> http://www.bricscad.com/news/BricsCad%20goes%20Linux%20English.htm
IntelliCAD is a consortium of licensees now:
http://www.intellicad.org
For those that didn't know of IntelliCAD prior, it was started by 3 (was
it?) former AutoDesk guys who didn't have any NDA or other agreement that
prevented them from building a clone. So they basically built a $500
AutoCAD clone that read DWG _directly_ and did _full_ 2D/3D.
Visio bought them out, then Microsoft bought out Visio, and then IntelliCAD
was quashed as a product. Not coincidentally, AutoCAD dropped AutoLisp and
adopted VBScript, and became Win32-only shortly afterwards. Now IntelliCAD
is largely sold for a flat licensing fee.
BricsCAD ( http://www.bricscad.com/ ) is one of them. They make their
release 100% WINE (run-time) compatible, including full OpenGL support.
I've been running their betas since April -- excellent performance on nVidia
cards. I can't tell if I'm running under native Win32 or WINE (originally
had a GeForce4 Ti4200 128MB, now have a GeForce 6800GT 256MB).
How long Microsoft will continue to allow a licensee to make their product
WINE compatible, I don't know. I assume they can't do much, unless it
becomes really popular. BricsCAD says they are working on a native port via
WINELIB, but I have to believe Microsoft would yank their license if they
did that. The WINE run-time version seems to work perfectly for me with any
stock WINE build for Fedora, so I don't see much reason for a WINELIB port
(given the possible loss of license).
-- Bryan J. Smith b.j.smith@ieee.org -------------------------------------------------------------------- Subtotal Cost of Ownership (SCO) for Windows being less than Linux Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) assumes experts for the former, costly retraining for the latter, omitted "software assurance" costs in compatible desktop OS/apps for the former, no free/legacy reuse for latter, and no basic security, patch or downtime comparison at all.----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
----------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is provided as an unmoderated internet service by Networked Knowledge Systems (NKS). Views and opinions expressed in messages posted are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of NKS or any of its employees.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.3 : Fri Aug 01 2014 - 18:33:26 EDT