Mac version of Pro/E on the horizon?

[Tmac]

Does anyone know if PTC is even considering a mac version of Pro/E in the future? I know Boot Camp works just fine, but it gets pretty old after a while.

[ptc-191798]

They have dabbled in that arena before with Pro/CONCEPT which I am not even sure if that's a product anymore or if it is being discontinued. Given that SolidWorks is bringing their application to Mac then perhaps more incentive for PTC to follow suit.

Consider Autodesk has their high end surfacing applications (well really was Alias tools) on Mac as well. Time will tell.

Nothing official that I've heard.

[MarcMettes]

It's not a technical issue. Pro/Engineer already runs
on Unix and OSX is Unix. It's not rocket science.

It's all about the business. PTC would have to evaluate
whether it makes business sense to do it. Make the
business case for it, and PTC will do it.

Are they going to lose business by not porting? Are
they going to gain business by porting? For either of
these questions, if "yes", then how much?

I think they will apply their experience with doing a
Linux port of Pro/Engineer and take it slow. My guess
is there are very few of their customers that would drop
Pro/Engineer because it doesn't work on a Mac.

[VladimirPalffy]

Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 - Platform Support & System Requirements

click here >> Hardware Notes - Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0

[ptc-191798]

The question is more subjective and rumour milling, the OP wasn't asking if it is supported currently.

I for one would like to see Mac version ported.

[Polleke_CGC]

Autodesk is releasing Autocad for Mac shortly, but I haven't heard of an Inventor release for Mac.

I think that the big problem of porting Pro-E to Mac is hardware related. There are no real CAD graphics cards supported on Mac.

An Nvidia Quadro, or ATI FireGL on Mac ??? You won't find them even in the Mac Pro line.

You can run Pro-e on a "games" card (like the one used in the Mac Pro line), but this is not ideal for pro Pro-E use...

[BurtLand]

I'm still waiting for PTC to complete the port from UNIX to Windows - xtop is still there.

I wonder how most MAC users would cope with Repeat Regions in their drawings.

Add to that Menu Manager, WildFire, Lightning and MS Ribbon interfaces which are Windows only and not MAC

.... boy theres some work to do to just get to Windows 7.

[rschaft]

Why not make it OS-independend!

[Polleke_CGC]

I really think that that is not an option.

Pro-e needs to be fast. Platform non dependent programs don't excel in being fast.

Pro-e was a native Unix application. After de introduction of Windows NT 4 it became cheaper and almost as performant on Windows as it was on Unix.

I think it is pretty normal that you can still tell what is the origin of Pro-e...

[rschaft]

That fastness largely depends on your graphics card, so it has not so much to do which OS you are using.

Pro/E has an Unix base so than this would be the preferred OS.

[Polleke_CGC]

I think your answer gives the main reason why Pro-e doesn't support OS X : you can't buy Apple PC's (for now ?) equiped with the necessary graphics card for the "real" 3D CAD user.

You need a "real" OpenGL CAD card (Nvidia quadro or ATI fireGL/firePro, and Apple just doesn't deliver... On het Windows workstation market this is no problem at all.

Beside this, the sofware of PTC also includes Pro Mechanica, which mainly uses the "normal" CPU, but also Pro E is quite a CPU-user. You need both a fast CPU and GPU...

[ThomasPhore]

Pro/E is professional software. Mac Pro desktops are usually available with Quadro cards. I think we can rest assured that they will be very consistently available going forward now that Autodesk and Solidworks are Mac. Probably laptops too in future as more and more of these apps become Mac.

I'm a Mac user so I can't use Pro/E anywhere except my work computer. This is very annoying. As CAD software continues to become more and more popular with a wider range of the public (see the broad use of Solid Works by all kind of content creation users as example), I think it's going to be to Autodesk and Solid Works' tremendous advantage that they are on the platform that is most popular for other forms of content creation. Mac is king in music and video with Logic and Final Cut.

I know many 2d designers (Illustrator, Photoshop, etc) who are becoming more and more interested in getting involved in 3d and I would love to introduce them to Pro/E but the industry is all Mac and there's no way they are going to install Windows just to use Pro/E when they can use Solid Works for Mac instead.

[Polleke_CGC]

You can't buy an Mac pro with a quadro card directly from the Apple store (only one or two 5770 ATI cards or 5870).

Nvidia has 1 quadro for the Mac.(FX 4800).

I don't think Apple is really interested in the 3D CAD market... .

[ThomasPhore]

Actually, it looks like the Mac Pro is getting pretty much the all-around best CAD and rendering hardware there is out there right now (the Fermi stuff) http://pressroom.nvidia.com/easyir/customrel.do?easyirid=A0D622CE9F579F09&version=live&releasejsp=release_157&prid=686603

The reason I'm calling this the best all-around right now is because of how the most widely used photo-rendering softwares at the moment (e.g. the mental ray engine which is used by so many like Bunkspeed Shot and Solidworks native rendering etc) require Cuda for GPU acceleration).

[Polleke_CGC]

Djeezes : Nvidia has still 1 quadro card for the Mac, and now the Mac Pro is the best hardware ?

What about the 5000 and 6000 series of the Quadro ???

A "normal" Dell or HP (read Windows) workstation is still a better option for any 3D CAD solution. You can finetune your workstation with several options...

[ThomasPhore]

I was talking about Nvidia Fermi being the latest and greatest in CAD cards. The Fermi cars are a huge leap over the previous gen and the 4000 is right in the sweet spot of them as far as performance for the money with a large number of CUDA cores and lots of memory. Additionally, it can be used in SLI for those who need even more power.

[Polleke_CGC]

The 5000 and 6000 serie of Nvidia use also the fermi architecture (http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/quadro-fermi-overview-uk.html). Nvidia ONLY delivers the 4000 series for Mac.

I really don't see why the OS X workstation suddenly would be a better performer then a windows workstation.

The 6000 series uses 448 Cuda cores, the 4000 only 256...

The mac gives you very little options in hardware choice in comparison with a windows solution...

[DanMarotta]

Did you see my Creo on Apple post?

http://communities.ptc.com/docs/DOC-1535

-BostonDan

[pwyndham]

That apple points to the same thing I was told at a conference here in Seattle. "There are a lot of People talking about Creo on MAC". I am not a MAC person, but it would be nice to see the availablity.

[ptc-191798]

We've seen AutoCAD ported, NX. Dassault has teased showing future tech on Mac (SolidWorks proof of concept) so if Creo comes sooner than later I think we'd see that a product like Creo would legitamize the market and we'd see a mass movement for CAD on Mac.

[BenLoosli]

Siemens NX has had an official port to Mac OSx since their V6 release. It has been in development in conjunction with Apple since V4. That is about 5 years now that NX has been on Mac OSx. Apple uses NX as their primary mechanical design tool and they refuse to use Windows for obvious reasons. With the release NX6, the Mac was made available to all Siemens' customers.

[JamesAvis]

I was among the beta testers for Creo 1.0 and they told us that there would be a (possibly) free sketcher application for Mac. Other than that and their fascination with apps and what seems to be an effort to make a PTC app store for third party Creo apps, I've seen no evidence of putting ProE on the Mac. Of course it works fine on my late 2008 Macbook Unibody using Bootcamp and Windows 7. I've been meaning to try using WINE as well, but just haven't had time.

I talked to Mike Campbell about getting ProductView on iOS and he seemed open to the idea.

[lbeidler]

A viewer app for iOS could be hugely beneficial. iPads out on the shop floor, viewing parts, drawings, etc. That could be a game changer.

[BenLoosli]

Siemens has again beat PTC to market.

TeamCenter Mobility on a iPad was shown at the opening session of PLM World on Monday.

[BurtLand]

how long will it be before a good PC iPAD clone hits the market?

how long would it take to port ProductView to iPAD?

how much power does a 1GHz processor with 512Mb ram have?