Ok, I exagerated, i admit it!

BTW interesting job you got !

you're correct, jamaso, autodesk will not come after you for a single non commercial pirated copy.
HOWEVER they regularly sue firms out of existance for copyright violations.
Companies have no choice but to buy autoCAD (rather than microstation or other competitors) because everyone, like you, has learned to draft on a cracked copy. it's the most effective, but anti-competitive scheme imaginable.

on another note, does anyone know if an old r13 unix version could be made to run on linux?
another way of solving the problem might be to use plugins to extend the drafting capabilities of 3ds max, since it's owned by autodesk, and is starting to include a lot of the better layer-manager capabilities....

Hi

Well i to am sitting with the same problem which causes me to have to boot 2 os'es and it entirely sucks, I look at linux and I see a world of good programs that one can use, but then the much needed programs like cad which i use are unavalible,

The only real goodies are oOo and the gimp which are supplied for free and are dam good programs. So basically if you are in the art, movies, or administration it is ok. Just dont try design for your career which is sad.

I have had a look at Qcad and others but all of them dont come with near enough functionality as autocad (plus you have to buy them, Yes i am in this for free and if i can get it for free mmm well you know) unless i just havent gotten hold of the right package yet!

Hopefully one day a couple of people will get together and make a really good drawing package for linux and it will take off. For now though I have to boot the dam dozey box to run the necessary programs (Autocad which we have slowly faded away from as its line drawing is good but thats about the best of it and then there is Solidworks which is genuine 3d software. If it wernt for these packages i wouldnt use windoze at all!)

I personally prefer not to use wine or Vmware as the wole point was to get away from proprietery software yet it looks like a lot of linux users turn to this just to reload windoze (if you do this then why in the first place did you move to linux ??)
Strange.

Anyways thats just my R5 worth..

cheers

Maya from Alias is ported in Linux for long time and some do design with it.

Well, you haven't said anything that hasn't already been said or thought by thousands of people before. Rather than use a comeback like "if you aren't part of the solution, you are part of the problem", I'll try to be a little more constructive. As you know, there are a lot of things that go into writing programs, even small ones. What makes Linux so good for most is the exact thing that makes it so bad for people trying to make money with it. Most companies, even if they have the communities best interest in mind, simply can't afford the support required to provide their software on Linux. There are simply too many variations of the theme. Even then, they certainly aren't going to provide their major money maker for free. Linux is free! Why does everyone assume that because the OS is free that all it's software is too. If someone gave you Windows XP Pro for free, does that mean you would only run freeware on it? Probably not. I think everyone i getting way too caught up in furthering the dream and not really thinking about reality.

I use Vmware under Slackware 9.1 even though it is not officially supported. The installation/setup scripts that come with Vmware assume that you are using a distro that uses a System V style initialization. Slackware uses more of a BSD style initialization. I followed the instructions on this web page for how to get around that problem and get Slackware to work with Vmware.

http://www.cs.ucr.edu/~jbyrne/vmware.htm

I also had to go into my XF86Config file and comment out the line that disables the XFree86-DGA extension. Getting both the host operating system and the guest operations system to share USB devices and parallel port devices can also be tricky, especially for the Linux version. I use the standard 2.4.22 kernel that comes with Slackware 9.1. I have seen a few posts from people who use Slack and Vmware with the 2.6 kernel.

I do not run Vmware most of the time but, when I need to use a Windows program it is more convenient than rebooting. The guest operating systems that I have installed include Windows 2000, Windows XP, Red Hat 8 and Red Hat 9. A major drawback to using Vmware Workstation is that it does not always work with all distos and sometimes not the latest versions.

I believe that LinuxCAD can read dwg files although it is not free and I have not tried it. If I am not mistaken, it mainly supports pen plotters and perhaps only supports inkjet printers in a more limited way if at all. There may also be a few other Linux programs that can read the AutoCAD dwg file.

Codeweavers make a slightly enhanced version of WINE with a more user freindly front end. Their product is called CrossOver Office. I was under the impression that AutoCAD would not work with CrossOver Office but I am not sure if that is still true. CrossOver Office 3.0 has just came out. I was surprised to see in jamaso's post that he had found some promissing looking instructions for getting AutoCAD to work under WINE. I am somewhat skepical, but it would be great if it works.

I got away from Windows because I hate it, but only some software will work on it... so rather then bending to M$ I only use VMware to use those apps, I dont use it for word, sounds games or antyhing like that I prefer KDE to Windows Desktop, it's alot more stable and I can delete tmp files and files I don't need without having this message printed 80 times on my computer screen, I mean it's kinda dumb to reboot a computer be cause of a "This file is in use" message ... I think M$ took the term " Random Access Memory" a little too far... If something is in memory then why do I need to have it in the same location on the hard disk as it was when I started the program? If its in memory then it would not look for the file because it already loaded it in memory.

So instead of playing "Wintendo" on my box 24/7 have to reboot my system 50 times a day I install VMware do what I need to do and thats that... simple!

You need Autocad 2000 or better. I recommend 2000i or 2004.
2000i needs MSIE 5 , 2002 MSIE 5.5, 2004 MSIE 6, 5005 MSIE 6SP1 or you cannot install !
Autocad 14 would be the best working emulated as a Windows software but it has many features left and is today unsupported so the file standard is dead. The next file standard is 2000/2000i/2002 and the newest is 2004/2005 (needless regarding the features). Version 2000i and 2002 are still upgradable (and so considered supported) and the facto file standard today and for a couple of years left.

Then if you can't register (because you have a hardware problem) try to make a net installation and try to circumvent the protection. To keep being legal do not install and register elsewhere out of a same dualboot system.

Feedbacks of your tests would be great ?