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Free progeCAD Upgrade Until 2010 Includes USB, Network and AutoCAD LT Upgrades

Sydney, Australia - CADDIT has announced several very exciting developments for progeCAD (design software) users.

First, we are happy to confirm that progeCAD 2010 is now deep in development. This coming release of our favorite low-cost "AutoCAD clone" will include several important new features, such as ability to read and write the new AutoCAD 2010 DWG file format. progeCAD 2010 Professional will also offer unprescedented speed and stability, based on the new IntelliCAD 6.6 toolkit.

Second, as of Friday, 06 November 2009 AEST, all new and upgrade purchases of progeCAD 2009 Professional from CADDIT will be elligable for a free upgrade to an equivalent 2010 version license upon release. This "buy 2009 today - get 2010 tomorrow" offer applies to all new and upgrade progeCAD Professional, progeCAD USB, progeCAD Network NLM licenses purchased on or after this date. It also applies to "cross-over" upgrades from AutoCAD LT, IntelliCAD, TurboCAD, ArchiCAD, Chief Architect and several other design software programs after this date. As last year, large scale corporate users will benefit the most from this offer. Users' progeCAD 2009 license(s) will be deactivated once that user has successfuly upgraded to 2010.

A follow up announcement will be made here when progeCAD 2010 is actually released.

Third, we are in final preparation of a new release for progeCAD Smart! progeCAD Smart 2009 will be available strictly for non-business use only. proegCAD Smart! is not open-source software. Design professionals, engineers, contractors, businesses and enterprises should use progeCAD Professional in 30-day trial mode for evaluation. Company employees should not use progeCAD Smart! for this purpose. More information will be available upon announcing the product release.

progeCAD development and support has advanced considerably. CADDIT enjoys direct access to product developers, internal bug tracking and extensive manufacturer support. We encourage users to give the latest 2009 release a free try. Australia and New Zealand users may download the full version progeCAD trial HERE, or request a free progeCAD CD HERE.

Date Published: Nov 09, 2009 - 1:22 am

Press Release: The Open Design Alliance (ODA) today announced the availability of a new enhancement request system

Phoenix, AZ, October 26, 2009 – The Open Design Alliance (ODA) today announced the availability of a new enhancement request system designed to improve communication between ODA Sustaining and Founding Members and ODA development.

As a member-driven organization, the ODA has consistently delivered technology that stems directly from the focus set by members through long-term development relationships and close communication. The newly implemented enhancement request system further strengthens the role of members within the organization by enabling them to enter and vote on new requests for ODA platform components, enhancements, and features. Members will also be able to collaborate on requests with each other and with ODA development.

ODA Chief Technical Officer Neil Peterson stated, “The ODA has experienced tremendous growth in recent years. As the size of our organization and the sophistication of our platform increases, we need to adopt infrastructure tools which are better suited to handling the increased communication load. The new enhancement request system will play a key role in future growth by providing an organized framework for expressing and prioritizing new ideas and development goals. It’s a strong addition to the membership infrastructure of the ODA.”

More information about the ODA and its members is available at http://www.opendesign.com/.

Date Published: Oct 26, 2009 - 3:17 am

AutoCAD Compatibility Improves with progeCAD 9.0.28.10 Product Release from CADDIT.net

Sydney, Australia - CADDIT announced today the Australia / New Zealand international release of progeCAD Professional 2009 9.0.28. This important upgrade offers several requested performance, reliability and DWG-compatibility enhancements. Over two months in development and testing has been invested in the release of 9.0.28. This upgrade is free to all progeCAD Professional 2009 stand-alone, network, USB and office license customers.

progeCAD is CAD design software offering many features found in Autodesk AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT, at much lower cost. This includes AutoCAD DWG™ / DXF™ / DWF™ 2009 editing, 3D Google Earth Export, Spell Checker, Quick Dimension, Polar Tracking, eSnap (like oSnap™), PDF import / export, ACIS 3D solid modeling, raster to vector conversion and advanced hatching using a similar interface to AutoCAD. progeCAD has become very popular in Australia as one of the most reliable alternatives to AutoCAD for small to medium business - especially in the Australian architectural design and large mining industries.

CADDIT offers IT professionals optional direct access to local installation and technical support for their design CAD software from their Liverpool-Sydney offices in New South Wales. The latest free update for current progeCAD users was over two months in development, and includes many enhancements requested locally in Australia, including:

• Improved SAVE performances
• Fixed Text Style combo
• Fixed Layout print settings recording
• TRIM options selection fixed
• Fixed CopyClip and PasteClip between progeCADAutoCAD
• Fixed block insertion point set in the BLOCK dialog
• Disabled BLOCK command during REFEDIT mode
• Fixed UNDO option in TRIM and EXTEND command, used after FENCE and CROSSING option

progeCAD 2009 users who have direct internet access and the progeSOFT autoupdate feature enabled should be notified of the upgrade automatically. progeCAD users with limited or no direct internet access to their progeCAD workstation can download the new version and install it directly over their existing 2009 installation.

Previous version IntelliCAD and AutoCAD LT users are also encouraged to try the latest progeCAD 9.0.28 release free for 30 days in full-function trial mode. German progeCAD users can visit progeCAD Deutschland for information about the latest version.

International users may download progeCAD directly from CADDIT.net and many other sites.

Date Published: Oct 20, 2009 - 7:11 am

Outsourcing Disasters Put Consumers at Risk

Outsourcing manufacturing and even development to overseas companies became a fact of life with international agreements and the economic globalization which quickly followed. Foreign export subsidies abroad and lowered import tariffs at home offer a powerful case for simply sourcing what we want from somewhere else. The benefit to consumers are cheaper display prices. However, the products themselves can have hidden costs which total much higher than the display price. Here are just three costs not on the price tag:

Safety: September 2009 saw the latest chapter in a long string of expensive and time-consuming product recalls of items manufactured in China. Just the other day one of our staff found themselves face to face with this reality in their own home, having narrowly avoided possible injury when the powder metal blade retainer for their new, one-day-old imported lawn mower cracked a large chunk off after just ten minutes of operation. This safety-critical part was stamped from powder metal and probably given insufficient oven time to bake - which means there are hundreds - thousands somewhere just like it. Back at the store our colleague watched as the entire model line seemed to have a similar flaw and started immediately getting pulled from the floor. How much could that have cost someone?

Economic: Training overseas personnel has opened the door to a flood of skillful black-market copycats, counterfeiters, patent and trademark pirates who apply inside knowledge to cleverly reproduce almost any product illegally, which becomes expensive and difficult to police. Local jobs and skills are lost overseas forever. Eventually, the local economy finds itself borrowing from China to buy from China.

Human Rights: Those employed overseas in the manufacture of low cost goods for export often discover their original expectations wrong, working in appalling conditions, with no way back out. Middlemen, business brokers and investors receive the entire net profit from the supply-demand relationship.

The real differential in the final consumer's decision is actually not cost, but timing. When presented a choice between "pay now or pay later", MBA 101 states that credit-based consumerism such as what is encouraged in the USA will pick "pay later" - even if it means paying more. Darwinism 101 responds that if cutting out fierce business competition could therefore be timed early, it technically justifies almost any other consequence in quality, ethics or community interest. Darwin knows that consumers will still have opportunity to pay their fare share of it all, just a bit "later".

Uncontrolled serial product outsourcing can be a disaster. Not surprisingly, there is growing understanding about the importance of highly selective outsourcing, supplier evaluation, certification and inspection by qualified local staff and agency, while maintaining tight product control, domestic R&D, and a healthy ratio of credible domestic suppliers and know-how at home.

Date Published: Oct 13, 2009 - 2:52 am

Alibre V12 Released in Australia, V11 Upgrade Information

Sydney, Australia - CADDIT announces that the Australia localized version for Alibre Design is available for free download HERE. Alibre V12 offers new features and enhancements over V11, particularly when working with large assemblies and in "shaded & visible edges (wireframe edge)" graphics mode. CADDIT recommends Alibre Design V12 as Alibre's strongest feature/dollar CAD value product release yet. A full list of enhancements can be read in the Alibre Design README document after installation.

It's worth noting that a few adjustments have been made in packaging. Alibre Design Expert now includes Alibre Translate (for reading CATIA, Inventor, Pro/ENGINEER, SolidWorks, SolidEdge etc) free. Alibre Design expert also includes Alibre CAM 3 axis CNC milling, Alibre Vault PDM, Machinist Toolbox and Alibre Motion for mechanical simulation.

Both Alibre Design Expert and Professional versions include a single license for Algor DesignCheck single part linear FEA, direct editing, extended part libraries and Hypershot Web photo-realistic 3D rendering studio.

Current users of Alibre Design 11, as well as those who recently took advantage of the recent Alibre Standard promotion sale, may upgrade their account to version 12 by clicking HERE, logging in and following the instructions to download the new Alibre 12 trial version. NOTE: Alibre 11 users in Australia will need paid and active Alibre Maintenance to upgrade to version 12. Alibre 11 users may still buy into maintenance by clicking HERE.

The full procedure for Alibre 11 upgrade to version 12 is also available in this PDF document. Comments about this new release of Alibre Design can be posted to our new Alibre Forum.

Date Published: Oct 07, 2009 - 7:06 am

Chief Architect Software Shafts Resellers as "Thank You"

I have been working in CAD support for over a decade. But it's not often that I read a CAD homepage like these quotes, as of 04.10.2009, from what was once Chief Architect in Australia (original misspelling included):

"Chief Architect Inc's USA short sighted management has made the decision that in an effort to support all Chief Architect users 'more efficiently' (?) they will totally eliminate the middle men.. i.e. their remaining commercial Chief Architect dealers acoss the world, before the end of the year.. and have started the ball rolling by terminating the contracts of Gordon McDermott and his dedicated team at BayCAD in New Zealand.. and of course ourselves here at Chief Australia.

May we however suggest that you read between the lines, and instead of the words 'more efficently' substitute.. 'now we'll be able to have ALL of the income from sales and support internationally.. not just the major portion of it'.

From a personal point of view.. we have spent thirteen years building up this business, and dedicated it almost exclusively to the sale and support of Chief Architect software. It has now just been totally destroyed by Chief Architect Inc with only 60 days notice.. notice initally delivered by email no less! So now we're all unemployed!...

Interestingly, there has been no contact with us at all from Greg Wells, the President of Chief Architect.. not a quick phone call offering a word of thanks, no golden handshake (God forbid).. or even so much a letter of appreciation for our years of hard work in establishing and building Chief Architect's user base here in Australia.. just a single sentence in an email that they sent out to our customers.

So on behalf of our loyal Australian users we'd just like to say..

Thanks for nothing Chief Architect!"

WOW.

I wasn't actually surprised by the story, had already heard it from another former reseller. And although this kind of disloyalty disgusts me, it doesn't necessarily surprise me either. I find the apparent ingratitude from Chief Architect USA somewhat bold. But I would be surprised if a seasoned mid range CAD developer would really be so out of touch and so naive to believe that many will continue paying an Aussie-four-grand for an engineering package that doesn't offer local support. I guess time will tell what they really have in mind...

Date Published: Oct 07, 2009 - 10:58 pm

Mathcad Download from CADDIT, Joins PTC

Sydney, 10 September 2009 - Parametric Technology Corporation (Nasdaq: PMTC) Asia Pacific Channel has formally enlisted CADDIT for service and support of their engineering software portfolio. This takes place as new staff join the CADDIT central office in Liverpool, Australia. PTC Mathcad can now also be downloaded directly from CADDIT in Australia, with a bonus pack of seven industry add-on modules.

Mathcad offers a unique "What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG)" calculation whiteboard for visually solving complex engineering, scientific, medical and mathematical problems in algebra, trigonometry or calculus. Resulting 2D and 3D graphs may be arranged as the user needs along with original formulas, text, notations and graphics. Mathcad is better suited than average software such as Excel for documenting important technical or mathematical concepts. Mathcad is used by a large number of Fortune 1000 companies including Boeing, General Electric, IBM and Kellogg.

CADDIT.net offers an easy-to-use website for quickly comparing and buying CAD design and engineering software in Australia. Special pricing for Mathcad student/academic version as well as business and enterprise license discounts are now offered directly on CADDIT as well. “We are very fortunate to have recently acquired new staff who truly understand this software, and we will shortly be hosting a series of live webinars demonstrating how Mathcad can be a very inexpensive way for industry to solve common problems” states the company director regarding their new support of this powerful scientific and visualization software tool.

Selected preview sections for the upcoming scientific webinar series can be seen on the CADDIT forum.

CADDIT is currently offering Mathcad with a bonus pack of seven add-on modules: the full electrical, civil and mechanical engineering libraries, Wavelets and data analysis extension packs together with the Mathcad image and signal processing extensions. A 25% discount on single pc nodelock commercial licenses is available from the CADDIT.net website (for Australia only).

Download Mathcad for a free full-function demo from CADDIT.net in Australia HERE (Australia only).

Date Published: Sep 10, 2009 - 7:17 am

progeCAD-Deutschland releases first free progeCAD Tutorial Software

This announcement is in English and German (German version below).
Weimar-Germany, September, 6th 2009 – progeCAD-Deutschland has launched the release of free tutorials for progeCAD Professional in German language. The tutorials are supposed to assist CAD beginners as well as advanced users in working with progeCAD effectively. The tutorials come in the form of an E-Book.

The first part is entitled "progeCAD-Tutorial 1". It addresses the absolute CAD-Beginner and is intended to make the start with progeCAD Pro as easy as possible. In 9 brief chapters basic file and drawing functions are explained. The examples contain also command sequences, which can be tested out immediately in the progeCAD command line. For better understanding many screen shots were added.

"progeCAD-Tutorial 1" can be found unter this web location: http://www.progecad-deutschland.com/training/progecad-pro-tutorials . This is also the location where additional progeCAD tutorials can be found in the future.

###########################

Weimar-Deutschland, 6.September 2009 – progeCAD-Deutschland hat mit der Veröffentlichung von kostenlosen, deutschsprachigen Tutorials für das Programm progeCAD Professional begonnen. Die Tutorials sollen CAD-Anfängern als auch fortgeschrittenen Benutzern dabei helfen, progeCAD Professional effektiv zu nutzen. Die Tutorials haben die Form eines E-Books.

Der erste Teil trägt den Titel "progeCAD-Tutorial 1". Er richtet sich an den absoluten CAD-Anfänger und soll den Start mit progeCAD Pro so einfach wie möglich machen. In 9 kurzen Kapiteln werden grundlegende Datei- und Zeichenfunktionen erklärt. Die Beispiele enthalten auch “Befehlsfolgen”, die sofort mit der Befehlszeile in progeCAD Pro ausgetest werden können. Zum besseren Verständnis wurden auch viele Screenshots eingefügt.

"progeCAD-Tutorial 1" ist unter dieser Url zu finden: http://www.progecad-deutschland.com/training/progecad-pro-tutorials . Hier werden auch später die weiteren progeCAD Tutorials zu finden sein.

Date Published: Sep 06, 2009 - 4:57 am

Preview of Alibre Design 12 Release, New Features

Only days remain before the public release of Alibre Design 12 as of time of this article. Alibre 12 definitely continues the standing tradition of delivering powerful, easy-to-use features at low cost. Here is a list of some of them, grouped by their work space:

New commands and tools in Alibre Design:

Alibre Design will offer a 3D-text feature tool allowing text to be added as a parametric part feature. Individual features will support colour change for better identification, and the user will also be permitted to set the default 3D new part colour. Edit commands will include multiple clipboard paste in "rubber stamp" mode. Toolbars will be more customizable, and additional box select modes will speed up editing. Editable 3D section veiws, colour schemes and light sources are also supported now.

The Alibre Sketcher will display missing constraints as degree of freedom callouts (with configurable colourisation). It will also offer optional real-time dimensioning and placement while geometry is drawn, rather than requiring this be completed as an additional design step. This option saves users considerable time in constraint specification. Alibre Sketch will also offer quick bi-directional conversion between model sketch figures and reference geometry. Constraint and snap options for drawing have been added, as well as a new axis mirror option. 2D drawing space will support a new freeform table creation for relevant model data fields.

Alibre version 12 files will offer a convenient thumbnail view from both Windows Explorer and Alibre Vault PDM, which makes file selection easier.

Assembly:
The assembly space move and rotate commands have been merged into a single dialogue for faster model placement by the user. Assembly part arrays / patterns now offer placement preview. View performance for large assemblies has been greatly improved.

Alibre Sheet Metal Design:

Contour and lofted flange support is added. Now sheet metal designs can include tapered corners or profile flange with variable radius along its length. These "lofted flanges" are nicely flattened in Alibre (along with the rest of the part) for the initial pattern stamp or cut-out.

For more information about Alibre 12 improvements, feel free to contact CADDIT in Australia HERE. There is also a downloadable PDF version of this list available HERE.

Date Published: Oct 07, 2009 - 11:31 pm

$99 Alibre Announced, Special Promotion in Australia

PRESS RELEASE (Modified for Australia)
Richardson, TX (August 11, 2009) - Alibre, Inc. (http://www.alibre.com/) today announced the boldest marketing initiative in the history of 3D CAD - making professional grade 3D CAD software, including parts, assemblies, and 2D drafting, available to anyone for under $100. In Australia the promotional price will be AUD $149.00, sold through CADDIT.net.

For a limited time, anyone can get Alibre Design for $99 (regularly $999). Alibre Design is the core CAD component of Alibre's product offering, providing a complete parametric toolset for unlimited 3D part and assembly design and 2D drafting. Capable of creating complex mechanical designs with thousands of components, full assembly motion, automatic 2D drawing updates, and many other benefits, Alibre Design is similar to products such as SolidWorks, Inventor, and Pro/E. Tens of thousands of Alibre Design users in 50 countries and 15 languages use the software to design, verify, and virtually test their products.

With today's announcement consumers have the option of spending $99 for Alibre Design or a minimum of around $5000 for competitors' software. Paul Grayson, Chairman and CEO of Alibre, Inc., says, "Alibre has the unique ability to offer its professional engineering products at a fraction of the cost of the competition. But by lowering the price to $99, the offer is irrefutably the best in the history of 3D CAD. It's absolutely unheard of given the tools we're offering, without restrictions of any kind, and we expect a lot of people and businesses to take advantage. It's really that simple. We also know that our competition can't begin to come close to this, not even within a few thousand dollars."

Alibre is ideal mid range 3D CAD for Australia, offering the best of both worlds in design function, interoperability with other systems like CATIA and Pro/Engineer via Alibre Translate, and - most of all - value. Alibre Design Standard includes the basic 2D/3D design tools as well as Tutorial access, IGES & STEP import/export and Excel spreadsheet driven design. In Australia see CADDIT.net for more information, other countries can see Alibre.com for their nearest representative.

Date Published: Aug 11, 2009 - 9:50 am

"Foreign DWG File" Scare Tactic from Autodesk?

AutoCAD 2010 users might see this "Trusted DWG" message box when opening DWG file created in progeCAD:

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See it? Looking scary ..almost like an anti-virus warning? But read closer: "This file was saved by an application that was not developed or licensed by Autodesk." Well, duh... We knew that already. So why the big warning? Have a wild guess, then read here.

Now our concern changes from what was "bad file warning" to "how do I stop this idiot box from opening every time I open a file from progeCAD?" The answer in AutoCAD 2010 is simple: either click the little check box at the bottom which says "Always open DWG files regardless of origin" or disable "Open - Foreign DWG file" in the System "Hidden Message Settings" - it amounts to the same thing.

progeCAD is a low-cost compliment for AutoCAD users to reliably create, edit and print AutoCAD files without the high cost of AutoCAD software. A free 30 trial of progeCAD may be downloaded HERE.

Date Published: Jul 28, 2009 - 1:40 am

Free Fonts for CAD and Graphic Design

Wikipedia defines font (also fount) as "traditionally defined as a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface". Good use of fonts can help accomplish goals like making ideas stand out tastefully, making content clear and easy to read or translating information in another language. There are three major font categories: bitmap, outline and stroked. TrueType fonts (originally developed by Apple) and Postscript Type 1 (developed earlier by Adobe) are examples of bézier vector outline type fonts.

Scalable vector outline and stroked fonts usually offer the best results in modern design. During the mid 90s fonts cost about $40 for a single face, but needed to be purchased in packages. Today there are many sources where usable fonts can be downloaded for free. Here is a list of some links for these...

Showfont.net is a site written in frames offering free TrueType fonts and previews, organized alphabetically and downloaded free after verifying the captcha image. Handy for some unusual themes and logos.

http://www.betterfonts.com/ offers many of the same fonts, presented differently with no captcha check. http://www.creamundo.com/en/ is similar but also offers web pages in Spanish.
http://www.searchfreefonts.com/ has a large collection including many varieties of standard typefaces like Swiss 721 and Arial.

Specific to CAD, there are several sites for downloading AutoCAD SHX fonts:

CRCweb/RAND still hosts several free SHX fonts and hatch patterns HERE.
There are a few AutoCAD fonts on cadforum.cz HERE
FreeCADapps still hosts the 19-font pack acadfont.zip HERE
CBEN.net has a small selection of free CAD fonts.

These are just a few of the resources available, we are sure there is more. Feel free to add you favorite site to the list in the comments below.

Date Published: Jul 24, 2009 - 8:02 am

Does Google Abuse Position to Promote Their "CAD" Software?

I am not sure how many follow the PageRank™ system that Google uses for 'assigning a numerical weight (of importance) to a web page'. For some time now Google has been assigning Sketchup.com a higher PageRank(PR 8) than Autodesk.com(PR 7). Could Sketchup.com possibly be a more important resource on the web than Autodesk.com?

According to most web traffic indexes, Sketchup.com doesn't receive a small fraction of the traffic which autodesk.com gets. Autodesk.com is also a much older site than sketchup.com. By Google's own index, Autodesk product names are searched several times more than "Sketchup" as a key word. Most of those searches are strictly related to Google free version of Sketchup. Sales of Professional version of Sketchup don't actually surpass Autodesk - not by a long shot. But Google does happen to own Sketchup.

Here's the problem. I think Google doesn't actually know much (or care) about CAD software, much less the needs of engineers and architects who use it. Some people (like myself) wouldn't even consider the free version of Sketchup to actually be a true CAD program. Yet Google PageRank seems to assume the position that this brand is arbitrarily more important, somehow more significant, more useful than any other CAD resource on the web. This artificial manipulation of "significance" influences the results people see when they search for terms like "CAD".

Is this what happens when a large company in control of a large infrastructure uses that position to cross-promote unrelated products from other sectors? Google could just as easily buy an accounting package tomorrow, brand it as Google something and suddenly their site has PR 8. Just like that.

It's probably true that Sketchup is a significant product, as many use the free version for creating buildings and other features in Google Earth. Other CAD programs, including AutoCAD and progeCAD can do this as well BTW. But would anyone besides Google consider the site (and by natural connection, the product) more significant than ALL other CAD software sites?

Date Published: Jul 16, 2009 - 1:18 am

Joy of progeCAD 2009 under Wine in Debian Linux

At CADDIT we are always trying new things, sometimes just for the sheer fascination. This article outlines some updated steps to running progeCAD without buying a Windows license (although some free libraries will be needed). Understand that progeCAD is at this time not officially supported on Linux, either using Parallels or WINE emulation layer. So don't try this at home unless you are really brave and have lots of time to waste (not to mention progeCAD licenses).

We were able to accomplish several things following these steps: install progeCAD, activate progeCAD (online method), load a file, etc. Our test involved using a stand-alone license key (although NLM client might also work). progeCAD runs stable but slow (depending on your core(s) speed and OpenGL acceleration). Here we go:

1) Update to the latest WineHQ (1.1.x). Debian users can add the following line to /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt etch main
2) apt-get install libwine wine wine-dev
okay you really don't need wine-dev development packages, but like isn't that the whole point of Linux .. whatever .. okay next step...
3) Install IE6. No joke. A platform like progeCAD often connects to a lot of the same dependencies as the world's most favorite web browser ..okay ..whatever.. we use ies4linux for this. Please visit the site for download directions specific to your favorite distro and get lovely IE6 and friends rocking in your local .wine profile.
4) Install VBA. This is possible now because ies4linux already set up DCOM libs for us. Winetricks is probably the best trick for this:
wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
and run the ./winetricks GUI and pick what you want, but at least pick the VBA6 runtime. Winetricks should do the rest for you.
5) Install progeCAD. You can download progeCAD HERE.
6) progeCAD install seems to go well right up to the VBA installation at the end it flops (so far - we are working on it). But no matter, you can always reinstall Windows VBA for progeCAD IntelliCAD by sorting into your local subdirectory:
~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/progeSOFT/progeCAD\ 2009\ Pro\ ENG/vba/
and installing VBA manually:
msiexec /i VBAOF11.MSI

WINE actually sets up a KDE icon on the desktop for you to launch progeCAD, we didn't try GNOME or XFCE. Otherwise you may have to create an action leading to the icad.exe executable in your .wine profile. So progeCAD should work now as so...

Some comments, progeCAD is a lot less demanding on system resources than AutoCAD, so it was actually possible for us to still work with progeCAD under this emulated environment. Real time pan and zoom function using the mouse buttons worked too but was so slow on the machine with on board graphics it could hardly be called real time anymore. The command interpreter disappeared once while minimizing / maximizing the progeCAD Window in KDE, but moving the window a bit around somehow brought it back again. Go figure..

Date Published: Jun 22, 2009 - 10:19 am

$5000 Reward! Report Crack or Pirate Software in Australia

Mick (name changed) is $10,000 richer. Several months ago he alerted the Australian Business Software Alliance to a local business which was running several illegal copies of AutoCAD on workstations without proper licenses or support. Management ignored the problem until they were officially served notice by the software authority. And in 2006 the BSA doubled their bounty on illegal users from $5000 to $10,0000.

This story could be just one of many. Pirate software costs the Australian economy half a billion dollars every year. Up to half (50 percent) of all CAD software in Australia could be illegal. Still, many users feel somehow clever, cool - even cocky - about finding illegal versions of software to use without registration or proper support.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Business owners and users alike have recently become more alert to problems caused by crack software for another reason. Much pirate software used today is actually bait for opening business data and infrastructure to organized cybercrime - much of it going undetected until it's too late. Here's how:

Today's warez industry is a complex business where organized crime plays at stakes much higher than making a few dollars on illegal software sales. Hackers begin with the latest off-the-shelf virus. "For as little as US$250, you can buy off-the-shelf malware, not detectable by major AV vendors and, for an extra US$25 a month, you can subscribe to updates that will ensure your malware remains undetectable," according to Kerrie-Anne Turner in Australia's Voice and Data eZine.

These stock viruses and trojans are embedded within crack software downloads. Once installed, the system is often irreversably compromised - even unbootable. More often, however, the infected PC becomes part of a botnet - a network of computers remotely controlled by someone else. As a botnet peer, a host PC can be asked to perform almost any task - from uploading confidential files to granting network access to outsiders and participating in illegal (and sometimes traceable) activities.

Since most complex CAD software requires local administrator rights to be installed, it is ideal for cloaking botnet clients which can run with unlimited system access. Botnets have developed into one of the internet's largest illegal sources of income. Botnets are commonly used to host illegal web content such as child pornography, to send out spam or to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. And all of this often without the computer's owner noticing anything really amiss.

In 2005 a botnet was foiled which turned out to be 15 times larger than police initially thought. A full investigation revealed 1.5 million infected PCs worldwide to be part of their illegal network. Many of the infected PCs were running up-to-date antivirus software. To date, hackers continue to rival each other in building larger and larger botnets.

Businesses who outsource to companies using cracked software also risk compromising sensitive IP and customer data. "What sounds too good to be true usually is" - especially when someone seems just too eager to share a copy of AutoCAD for $20 (or even free). In final analysis, the twenty-first century is a far more dangerous place for product design and manufacturing companies to be risking their reputation to run illegal or unsupported platforms.

Date Published: Jun 09, 2009 - 5:48 am

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