Architosh Staff (info@architosh.com)

28 Feb 2001

ProEngineer for Macintosh: Progress and Ideas

Architosh started a "Demand' forum thread on PTC's ProEngineer for Macintosh almost a year ago. You can read the forum post at DemandMac.com.

Progress and Ideas

There are now over two dozen interesting posts on this topic. There is clear evidence that ProEngineer for Macintosh could be a hot product if they would port the Unix app to Mac OS X. In fact, Apple's industrial design studio uses ProEngineer along with other Unix workstation apps like Alias/Wavefront's StudioTools. It would be great if Apple could design Macs using Macs!

One of the last post by a reader named Ameuniot touched on some essential selling points of ProE on OS X.

"There are a lot of product designers who would love to do their mechanical CAD work on 'some' port to a Mac. The power of AltiVec, OS X, dual processors, and the Cinema Display are all such compelling factors. When you are spending eight hours a day modeling assemblies, it's well worth the expense."

Indeed! We have heard this argument more than a few times. In fact, next to request for Autocad on OS X, ProE is our next biggest request, even more so than SolidWorks.

Rhapsody at Parametric Technology Corporation

We have been told by an ex-PTC programmer (whose name we have kept confidential) that when Apple first made the Rhapsody strategy clear and began development tools for it PTC was an early taker of the strategy. This programmer began development work of a Rhapsody version of ProEngineer but was unable to complete that task.

Apparently the interest was really there by PTC management but the tools provided by Apple were lacking at that time ('97/98-ish). We asked our contact about PTC's thoughts on Mac OS X given that early failure with Rhapsody and he was unsure, having left the company more than a year ago. He admitted being a huge fan of the Mac in engineering and said he would be willing to recommit to a effort to help PTC port ProE to OS X in the future.

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