Hi all,

Just a thought. In attempting to completely move over permanently into Linux, I may have hit a small snag. Most of the things that I might ever need to do are handled quite nicely at the moment by my rh9 distro.

Except for one last little thing. AutoCAD. Does anyone know if there has been any success using an AutoCAD install with a vm? Has Wine or Winex produced any good results using AutoCAD. I wouldn't personally mind trying out any of the current linux CAD programs, but my work uses ACAD almost exclusively, and as such I sort of need to be able to access those files.

Any thoughts, ideas, etc?

what version of autocad is it?
and just for your needs, you may be interested (or not) in this :
QCad

QCad is 2D only, unfortunately, but here are a few links to check out...

http://sal.kachinatech.com/E/2/

http://www.gnu.org/directory/graphics/3d/

http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue54/frost.html


they list various programs and give a little info on them

mcd

i appreciate the responses guys, and i will check out those pages in further detail. really, i guess my question is more geared towards efforts to get autocad to work in linux itself. i know that the earliest versions of autocad were written for unix, but that of late they have switched almost exclusively to windows.

just hoping there was a chance that i could work in autocad natively while still staying in my lovely linux box...

AutoCad 2000 and above will not run on a Linux box. I believe there has been limited success with R14 but R13 and below will run using VMware but I have never tried it.
It sucks because I run 2000 and above

well i'll restate pld....what version of cad do you have?

Drozz: I am using ACAD 2002 at the moment. I would like to get it to run if possible, but would be willing to explore the possibility of using an older version (hopefully still being able to do the things that I need to).

It just seems to me that this would be one of those big apps that would really help alot of people move to linux if they were interested in doing so...

Figure MS Office is replaced fairly nicely by OOo, and many of the more popular pc games out there are now fairly well supported (id software, valve, etc..). This would certainly be a boon to those of us who require this app for our work.

I would switch my work machine in a heartbeat if I could get away with it (using ACAD). Oh well.

Figure I could always brush up on coding and attempt it myself!

check this
these guys have gotten acad14 to work by doing some different things, so maybe you can give it a try...and i've seen articles with people saying they have gotten acad 2000 to work, so it is possible if you have the patience....this seemed like a more in depth article so that is why i am posting this one..
oh and scroll down, to see the english don't get fooled by whatever language the beginning is written in ..

Thanks Drozz!

I'll check out this link and see what i can get done. I'll come back with any good info I can come up with (in the hopes of helping any others with my same problem)...

There is Pro/ENGINEER. It's not ACAD but if you can possibly use it then it's a gun program. There's almost nothing you can't do on it.

i have used Pro/E almost exclusively before I came to my current job. The modelling engine (GRANITE) I feel is much more in tune with my personal tastes, but for large scale projects it tends to get a bit unwieldy, IMO. Thanks for the suggestion, but given that EVERYONE in my current company uses ACAD2002, I am sort of forced into following suit at the moment.

Such a shame, too. I really bet that being able to run ACAD would pull ALOT of engineer-types over to the fold...

I have been looking for a while myself on how to get AutoCAD to work under Linux without much luck. I have 3 different versions of AutoCAD that I try with. AutoCAD 2000, 2002 Architectural Desktop and 2004. If anyone has more luck finding a way or comes up with a way to get any of those versions to work please let me know. I will keep looking and trying ways myself as well.