Floor plan drawing program?

[Joseph Sinclair]

I don't know about CATIA (it's mostly used in automotive), ProE and Cadence most definitely do have Unix support (Linux/Solaris for Cadence, Solaris for Pro/E) and have no plans to drop that support (they'd loose most of their customers if they did), not sure where you read otherwise.
Most Cadence products, in fact, are Linux/Solaris only, only about 5% of their products are capable of running on Windows at all, and none of them can run on 64-bit Windows at the current time(they are working on that, though).
My statement about Windows capability was intended to describe current software availability, not base platform capacity (although part of the reason for the lack of software in this arena is that it's just too darn hard to get it working within Windows' quirks and constraints).

That said, Any general-purpose platform can run any type of software that runs on another general-purpose platform.  The determinant of what's available is what the software engineers create for the platform, not what can be created.

Kurt Granroth wrote:
> Joseph Sinclair wrote:
>> This is kind of funny... AutoCAD is not (and IMO never will be)
>> high-end CAD software.  It's expensive middle-tier stuff. All of the
>> top-end CAD/CAM software (like ProE, CATIA, Cadence, Synopsis,
>> etc...) is Linux and/or Unix software (with some cross-platform for
>> the companies with PHB's setting policy).  Windows just can't handle
>> the kinds of activities serious pro CAD/CAM software needs.  I
>> suppose Architects may use stuff like AutoCAD on Windows, but the
>> engineers, IME, all use Linux or Solaris.
> 
> I hadn't actually heard of any of the "top-end" software systems you
> describe (not in that market) so I had to look them up.  I couldn't find
> out anything on Synopis but of the three remaining examples, TWO no
> longer have Linux support at all and CATIA is going Windows only for
> their next version.  So apparently the top-end systems don't agree that
> "Windows just can't handle... serious pro CAD/CAM software needs".
> 
> Now I know you were trying to show that it's silly to say that Linux
> can't handle CAD systems... but it's equally as silly to claim that
> Windows can't, either.
>