Vista anyone?

Hope I'm not posting this twice.... is anyone else running ProE on
Vista? I don't know if it's set up for Vista yet or not. I'm the
official guinea pig at my work.

 

I'm looking forward to this: is it any good?

 

I won't see it for years. These people just discovered XP and only because
they hit a wall with Win2K. One concern I heard expressed about Vista was
its wavering support for OpenGL. I haven't been able to find anything
definitive on this regarding the production version. All the propaganda is
slanted to gamers and Direct3D. Other things I've seen imply that OpenGL is
part of the API which Pro/e ignores. Perhaps this is no different than it
was in XP, but I can find no unambiguous statement to that effect.

Other concerns would be whether they've gotten beyond the traditional
Windows idiocy on networks and networking (profiles? roaming profiles?
"mapping network drives" [is it a network or isn't it?]) And have they
finally included a system level programming language for access to all their
APIs which would get it close to being a real, networked OS. And finally,
since it is "closed source", how hostile is it to Open Source and endeavors
such as Java which is more and more the GUI foundation of Pro/e.

David Janes

 

I don't know about any of this stuff... I just want something that
works. Seems to be doing that so far. I think th interface looks better
than XP which was too cartoony IMO. Not that it maters - I just set it
back to windows Classic anyway.

I've been told to go easy with downloaded programs like Firefox tho
because they aren't set up for Vista yet.

 

I have a demo version of Vista 64 bit that I'm going to try at home,
although I guarantee it won't receive significant testing.

As usual, Vista will probably add 'features' that turn out to create
some bugs with applications, and Pro/E is especially fidgety in this
regard. If it were a character on TV, it's sensitivity and
catastrophically dramatic breakdowns would cast it on a soap opera. So
I don't see any reason why XP->Vista will be much different than
2000->XP was, especially if all of your hardware is functioning well on
the new OS.

It's the 64 bit I feel is much more critical to worry about. If you
make the jump to 64, you'll have much less support w.r.t. printers and
hardware and that trip is no fun right now.

Dave

 

No, it's 32 bit. I believe there's a lot of tweaking that needs doing
in order to run other apps on a 64 bit computer.

 

I've been wondering for some time whether PTC would move to DirectX -
any thoughts? (I quite clearly ain't an expert)

 

Generally speaking, the 32-bit emulation is very well supported from
what I hear. So while it's wise to test every app on a new 64 bit
setup before assuming the world is round again, it is safe to say that
most 32 bit apps should have no trouble in the 64-bit world. They will
of course not get any of the 64 bit memory addressing advantage, but
most apps will never need that.

It's the device drivers and apps that work with hardware at a lower
level that make 64 bit hard to swallow. It seems that the majority of
printers, for example, have little or no support. Given how
hardware-dependent Pro/E's stability is, I'm not going to bother with
the 64 bit migration until it's needed.

Dave

 

I should say my computer is a 64 bit job but the version of ProE is 32
bit. I don't know how that works tho. One of our guys was running the
64 bit version on his computer (although he doesn't use ProE much -
he's an industrial designer and tends to use Alias) but I know his
other apps were a problem. I'm guessing that you use a different
version of the operating system with 64 bit.

 

I am also being set up to be the official guinea pig at work for
determining weather our apps will work with vista or not. Are you
saying that you are running pro on vista now?

 

Yes, I'm running Pro on Vista. Have been for a couple of months. I'm
finding it crashes a bit more often than I would like, but not enough
to call IT our of their cave.

 

Did you have any issues installing it? I just tried installing it on
vista but got some sort of error. It didn't tell me much. Just that
the application failed to install and that it was going to close. I
didn't get a chance to look into it further yet.

 

Cumon, this is XP+, man! One bump in the road and your getting excited!?!
Don't go 'chickenlittle' on us. Of all the programs I've ever installed,
Pro/e, under any operating system, has always been the most difficult, the
most quirkiest. It certainly didn't take Vista for users to have trouble
installing Pro/e. Acourse, I'm always mor'n a little interested to hear what
these problems might be, so let's hear from alla you users. (Or should I
say, alla you guinea pigs?)

David Janes

 

No issues. Our IT guys did it so I don't know how it went for them.
We're running WF 3.0.

 

I just got WF 3.0 M060. Its just seems to be a bit jerky when rotating
the solids. Have you experienced this? I think it has to do with vista
not supporting openGL. Everything else seems to be working fine though.

 

Compared to what? We're running M040, it isn't jerky. The image
quality is lower than 2001 though.

Have you experienced this? I think it has to do with vista

 

John, the reason for this is because Pro/E is programmed to be
portable across several operating systems. OpenGL was and still
stands as the only common graphics programming method that exists on
both Unix and Windows platforms. DirectX is currently a Windows-only
thing, and unless OpenGL goes obsolete I really doubt PTC would care
one bit about switching over.

Several years ago, OpenGL barely existed on windows, and was just a
Unix thing. About that same time, there was the push to make CAD
applications run on Windows, to take advantage of the cheaper
hardware. Bill Gates released Direct3D and DirectX at about that same
time and pushed very hard to make it the 3D programming standard on
Windows. But the market forces of the 3D CAD industry and one game
software writer: John Carmack, of iD software with his game Quake3,
pushed back hard enough to make OpenGL work well on Windows. There
were other factors, but IMHO those two things were pivotal. Bill
Gates provided the least possible support for OpenGL on Windows (since
obviously he wanted Direct3D to take over), but the market forces were
so strong that nVidia, 3Dlabs, and ATI all spent substantial money
making OpenGL happen. I consider it to be a huge success, when you
look at the cost/computing power of the windows and unix workstation
markets. Long live OpenGL!

Dave