Rick Dorrington

Any plans for this?

Copy/Paste is good but there is a better way. One of our old systems had a command called "duplicate". Essentially it did the copy/paste in one keystroke (Command-D...Mac thing).

Tom, You really set yourself up this time. Cheers, Rick

Hey tom, I think the problem may lie in the fact that you have the wrong team. Try changing to the Red Sox and see if it helps. Rick

There is some truth to the job statement but it doesn't make it right. By all means keep doing "things" the hard way. Meanwhile I'll keep making money and enjoying my leisure time while you struggle and toil away because I appear to get things done quicker, cheaper and better. (Metaphorically speaking here) Seriously, do you start a campfire to make your toast in the morning? Crank start your car? "All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions" -Adlai Ewing Stevenson 24th U.S Vice President

It might. Grab somebody with a box running OS X. Install the X11 component and go nuts. I'd be interested to know as well. Better late than never though. This is where I think the IronFolks could make a statement and possibly own this market segment. Better hurry before Autodesk releases their stuff and pollutes the waters. IronCad and Apple..Made in heaven.

Sure, call me. For those not entirely aware and who think I'm a nut. http://www.apple.com/opensource/

I also would like to use Open Office but frankly it's not ready for prime time. I know that a lot of people are using it successfully but they are usually pretty savvy computer people. We are re-vamping our entire system and there is no way that I could possibly get 30+ people to use OO. I wish I could because looking at the cost of the licensing that I have to give to Micro$oft is making me ill, especially considering that most people actually use very little of the functionality of the Office Suite. We have tried other solutions but the hassle is aggravating. Most users only know as much as double clicking on the file. If that doesn't work then call the "IT" guy. I fully support the Open Source movement and we are doing our part by moving a large portion of our system to the Apple platform. Hopefully in the next round of updating the situation will be different.

Well.... I have also been in this situation having been invited to sit on a local college board as a stand-in because of my position in industry. All I can say is that you may as well clamp your head in a vise and end it all now. I found the "educators" to be a bunch of no-brain lemmings who had zero interest in listening to the invited "experts" because their decision to proceed was a foregone conclusion. It turns out that educational institutions must- by their charters- hold a certain number of "meetings" and other BS sessions in order to keep their funding and status. The schools are full of has-been or never-been social rejects who only care about keeping their cushy positions and in no way would any one of them stick their neck out further than their top button. The reason that they use Autodesk products and Pro-E is because that is what they "heard about" and "everyone" uses it. I'm not sure about incentives but by the look of it IronCad has a pretty sweet educational deal. I raised the point that we have not a single customer using Autodesk products. Several others expressed the same sentiment but to no avail. Autodesk or bust, end of discussion. "Advanced" courses were to offer Pro-E. Ok, now that I have that off my chest I don't really think it's fair to paint them all with the same brush. I have had/known some excellent teachers/administrators and have a lot of respect for what they do. The problem here is that most of the time you are dealing with administrators who got where they are by nodding up and down a lot and probably get very little respect or regard from the real teachers. (Not unlike your day job) I do recall from a press release a few years ago that there is a University in our area that did install a fair bit of IronCad. I remember thinking at the time that they must be a very progressive bunch of people who really care about their programs. I do not know how it has worked out for them but I am curious. The funny thing is that we regularly get calls from the local college wondering if we can or will accept co-op students. We tell them that we don't use Autodesk products and that we're not interested. It takes too long and costs too much to bring someone up to a productive level with the type of work that we do. Of course there are exceptions to this generality but separating the wheat from the chaff is not that easy in such a short timeframe. We have a program with the local high school whereby twice a week the shop class actually comes to our facility and the students work on things. It has been very successful over the years and many (if not all) of our apprentices start this way. I think you need to decide how much you are willing to give. If you can accept that this is not going to happen but for the sake of trying you give it what you have then it might be worth it. If the only solution acceptable to you is IronCad then you are probably setting yourself up to go postal on someone. Sad to say but sometimes it's not worth the aggravation. Rick P.S. I have this "friend" who gets a call from local College that needs night teacher with his skills and because he is well respected in the industry. Figuring out pay vs hours plus gas plus travel time plus student time = less than minimum wage. When said "friend" points this out they say "well that's what it pays". My "friend" laughs to himself and leaves. So why do night courses end up being taught by less than talented people in a lot of cases? To fill the hole. Again, not in every case because there are some people who genuinely do it for the personal satisfaction and/or because they don't really need the money and have the time. For me (I mean my "friend") the personal satisfaction did not outweigh the ridiculously low wage.

Steve, Unwind a bit. Just my poor effort at humour. No need to be offended. We're actually a pretty friendly crowd. Since you're relatively new here: Remember Rule #8 Don't_take_Rick_too_seriously I can honestly say that I can't recall ever seeing a flame war on this board and I've been here for about 4 years. The thing is that most of the people here have been down the SW/SE/Pro-E/whatever road before and really love this product, and for good reason. Your first post was a bit confrontational and frankly a bit surprising. We don't often see that around here. Rather than rip into it I decided to chuckle instead. Getting too old to care I guess. This group is probably the most civilized I have ever met. Ask intelligent questions (or not so intelligent) and you will get informative answers rather quickly. The IC staff are amazing and we can't say enough good things about them. Peace and welcome aboard.

Start Flaming Here.......

For what it's worth. The short answer is that I have done this and it's not really viable, yet. On the other hand, I have been following with some interest a start-up company called Transitive Corporation. Apparently they have a technology that allows code written for one platform to execute on many other platforms with very little performance degradation. Yeah, I can hear your eyeballs rolling up, heard it before and all that. However, ponder the following press release: Transitive’s QuickTransit™ Software Broadens Application Support for New Silicon Graphics Prism™ Visualization System for Linux Independent Software Vendor Opticore First to Certify Applications Using QuickTransit Los Gatos, Calif. – October 11, 2004 – Transitive Corporation, the leading provider of software that enables transportability of applications across multiple processor and operating system pairs, today announced that Silicon Graphics, Inc. (NYSE: SGI) will begin shipping Transitive’s QuickTransit software on its new Silicon Graphics Prism advanced visualization system in early 2005. QuickTransit, which Transitive launched one month ago, allows software applications compiled for one processor and operating system to run on another processor and operating system without any source code or binary changes. Silicon Graphics Prism is the world’s first complete advanced visualization system for Linux®, bringing unprecedented visualization capability to the open source community. QuickTransit enables Silicon Graphics Prism users to transparently run any application that currently runs on SGI® systems based on the MIPS® processor and IRIX® operating system on the new system, which is based on the Intel® Itanium® 2 processor and Linux® OS. QuickTransit also retains full functionality and performance levels that typically exceed native speeds on existing MIPS platforms. As a result, QuickTransit significantly accelerates the availability of a broad range of independent software vendor (ISV) and customer-written applications on the Silicon Graphics Prism. Therefore, existing SGI customers can more easily migrate to the Silicon Graphics Prism and take advantage of its improved performance and new features. New customers will also benefit from the increased application support provided by QuickTransit. “SGI is the first of several major customers that Transitive will announce over the coming months,” said Bob Wiederhold, President and CEO of Transitive Corporation. “The Silicon Graphics Prism is state-of-the art for visualization applications and demonstrates that QuickTransit can provide the functionality and performance necessary to quickly bring a large number of ISV and customer-written applications to new platforms, thereby making these platforms significantly more attractive to end-customers.” “QuickTransit software allows us to dramatically accelerate application availability on the Silicon Graphics Prism, delivering significant value to our customers who demand the increased performance expected from a Silicon Graphics system,” said Simon Hayhurst, Product Line Manager, Visual Systems Group at SGI. SGI will begin shipping QuickTransit software to its customers by early 2005 as a standard component of the Silicon Graphics Prism. Existing SGI customers will be able to download QuickTransit to their platforms at that time. End-users will be able to use QuickTransit free of charge for 30 days at which point they will be required to license the product from SGI for continued use. Opticore is First ISV to Support QuickTransit SGI and Transitive are working closely with ISVs to attain full certification of their applications on the Silicon Graphics Prism through QuickTransit. QuickTransit allows ISVs to quickly provide a fully functional, high-performance solution on the Silicon Graphics Prism, while circumventing the often lengthy and expensive process of completing a full native port. ISVs have found QuickTransit to be an invaluable tool to accelerate their support of Silicon Graphics Prism. Opticore is the first ISV to publicly announce certification of their applications through QuickTransit. Additional ISVs are expected to announce certification over the coming months. “QuickTransit has enabled us to deliver increased performance and outstanding capabilities on Silicon Graphics Prism with a rapid and easy certification process that required no source code or binary changes,” said Lars Pettersson, CEO of Opticore. Computer OEMs, ISVs, internal software development groups, IT service providers, and agencies interested in QuickTransit can contact sales@transitive.com to speak to a Transitive representative. About Transitive Corporation Transitive Corporation is a pioneer and leader in providing solutions that allow the transportability of software applications across multiple hardware platforms. The company’s hardware virtualization technology allows software applications that have been compiled for one processor/operating system to run on another without any source code or binary changes and at speeds comparable to native ports. The technology dramatically reduces software developers’ cost, risk, and time-to-market of supporting multiple hardware platforms, facilitates OEM customers’ migration to new platforms, and makes significantly more software available on hardware platforms. Transitive Corporation is located in Los Gatos, California with a research and development team in Manchester, England. The company is privately held, with funding participation by Pond Venture Partners Ltd., Manchester Technology Fund, Crescendo Ventures and Accel Partners. For more information, please visit Transitive’s website at http://www.transitive.com About Silicon Graphics SILICON GRAPHICS | The Source of Innovation and Discovery™ SGI, also known as Silicon Graphics, Inc. is a leader in high-performance computing, visualization and storage. SGI's vision is to provide technology that enables the most significant scientific and creative breakthroughs of the 21st century. Whether it's sharing images to aid in brain surgery, finding oil more efficiently, studying global climate, providing technologies for homeland security and defense, or enabling the transition from analog to digital broadcasting, SGI is dedicated to addressing the next class of challenges for scientific, engineering and creative users. With offices worldwide, the company is headquartered in Mountain View, Calif., and can be found on the Web at http://www.sgi.com I say if it's good enough for SGI then this technology probably has some merit. Imagine what the IronMagicians could do with it. Did you notice that they are interested in talking with ISV's?

Tom, Check your mail. Rick

The new shop management software we are looking at has some sort of integration with AutoVue. There are several levels of AutoVue and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with or comments about it, especially in regard to IronCad. Thanks, Rick