CAD and Cam Applications on HP-UX Unix Workstations
8 hours ago
- #1990s Engineering Software
- #HP-UX CAD History
- #PA-RISC Workstations
- HP 9000 PA-RISC computers were a leading choice for CAD and CAM on Unix systems in the 1990s due to their strong floating-point performance.
- Key CAD software supporting HP-UX on PA-RISC included I-DEAS (until 2007), Unigraphics NX (until 2007), CATIA (until 2008), AutoCAD (until 1994), Nastran/Patran (until 2011-2012), and HP's own ME10/ME30/SolidDesigner (until 2008).
- HP introduced graphics technologies like PowerShade (1992) and HP PEX for 3D visualization, later adopting OpenGL in 1995 to align with industry standards.
- The transition from mainframe-based CAD/CAM to Unix client-server models in the early 1990s saw many companies move to HP-UX and other RISC platforms.
- I-DEAS, originally by SDRC, was widely used in automotive and other industries, with versions from 1986 to 2007 supporting various HP-UX releases and PA-RISC workstations.
- CATIA, developed by Dassault, was ported to PA-RISC in the mid-1990s (V4) and supported until V5R19 in 2008, though it was less dominant on HP-UX compared to other CAD systems.
- AutoCAD had limited Unix support, with versions 11 to 13 (1990-1994) running on HP-UX before focusing on Windows and macOS.
- HP's ME10 (2D) and ME30 (3D), later replaced by SolidDesigner and spun off as CoCreate, were core MCAD offerings on PA-RISC until the mid-2000s.
- MSC Software's Nastran and Patran, used for CAE and FEA, leveraged PA-RISC's FPU performance and were supported on HP-UX from the early 1990s until around 2011-2012.
- The CAD market on Unix declined in the early 2000s as Windows-Intel and Linux platforms became more prevalent, phasing out HP-UX and PA-RISC workstations.