Re: Re: Stress calculation

>In my quest to unshackle myself from the microsoft juggernaut, I
>mentioned I intend to change to Linux OS.
Give some thought to a Mac. With OS X Macs are all true UNIX machines (Open source BSD), only with the mac interface for people who don't want to think about command lines. You have the advantages of both and the disadvantages of neither. Cross-platform incompatibilities have pretty much vanished in the last five years, so that's not an issue.

I'd be less than honest if I didn't add that you probably won't have your choice of CAD software, at least for a while, since AutoCAD and Microstation and high-end stuff like Pro/E don't run of either BSD or older Mac systems. I do know that the Ashlar CAD packages are as good as anything on the Wintel side from a few essays into the demos, and Vectorworkd is also a very good package, although I haven't used it. Both can import and export other CAD formats, so it isn't necessarily an issue.

If you want to bail out out of MS apps gradually, Microsoft Office has a very good OS X version, and there's plenty of other open source or commercial packages. OS X also has a solid C and C++ compiler bundled, and my son (Software engineer at Adobe) recompiles software downloaded from SourceForge routinely as an exercise.

>But I still dont understand what
>puts the bread on the table during development. Spare time projects?
I have this running fantasy of finding myself with a couple of hundred grand to feed myself and a couple of engineers with programming skills while we take some older FEA software and update it for the Mac. I figure it'd take most of a year to modernize a classic like ADLPIPE or STARDYNE or one of the SAP versions into an absolute killer app that engineers would slobber over. But I have to figure out how to keep my credit rating intact between now and the time everyone beats a path to my door and the money starts rolling in ;->

Christopher Wright P.E.    |"They couldn't hit an elephant at
chrisw@skypoint.com        | this distance"   (last words of Gen.
___________________________| John Sedgwick, Spotsylvania 1864)