Engineering Tools in the NT Environment

Big business invades the engineering industry

Science and engineering have been usingengineering tools such as CAD, computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), finiteelement analysis, and simulation applications since the early days of thecomputer. In the last three years, these tools have become affordable andeasy-to-use. Many excellent tools are coming to the engineering market with aprice tag low enough to land them on every engineering desktop. The price isright, and these tools all have a usable standard interface in a stable,user-friendly, multitasking environment: Windows NT.

Windows NT: The Driving Force
Two factors are pushing the NT landslide in engineering. First, the suddenonslaught of affordable, well-written, and usable engineering software based onMicrosoft standards makes inexpensive hardware feasible. NT lets high-endsoftware run on widely available hardware. Second, engineers need access toordinary business software.

Five years ago, elite (and expensive) engineering tools were available onlyon UNIX platforms (sometimes, only a proprietary one), and inexpensive toolswere available for DOS. This division was far more than an OS choice. It was anarchitectural and even a paradigm choice. The 386 Intel chip fared reasonablywell in integer and floating point-comparison tests. But, without a solid,stable, multitasking OS to build on, the cheaper Intel-based hardware was notpossible, or pleasant, for high-end engineering tasks requiring extensivemathematical and graphical horsepower. So serious engineers with the budget tobuy "real" tools did not consider DOS-based IBM and clone PCs. Bigcompanies spent their money on Sun Microsystems, Digital Equipment, HP, andSilicon Graphics. These UNIX machines provided state-of-the art performance atstate-of-the art prices, and because of the limited market, the engineeringsoftware that ran on them was beyond pricey.

Like the rest of the corporate team, engineers now need business software.No UNIX applications for project and time management, communications/groupware,and office automation exist in affordable, usable, or standard format, soengineers have not used them extensively. However, the engineering community ishaving to re-evaluate its operating environments as companies move towardstandardizing business operations on one platform. MIS departments are droppingPCs on engineers' desks. Why not use these PCs for engineering work, too,instead of having multiple systems? Now the role of NT in engineering emerges:It provides a robust and powerful environment to run engineering tools and torun business tools.

More Than a Technical Solution
Besides NT's technical implications, you have to consider economics. TheModel T would have failed if not for its revolutionary price, and the sameapplies to NT. Beyond its low $300 price tag, NT workstation lowers the price ofthe overall computing solution by allowing more affordable engineering softwareand hardware, too. And, solid evidence shows that the market is supportingenough competition for this trend to continue.

Without NT, this highly competitive climate would not exist. Workstationvendors would continue to argue that you can't compare machines based on power,but that you also have to consider the architecture and OSs. UNIX-only vendorsclaim NT is slower, or "not stable enough," or "just as expensiveonce you compare NT head to head with a UNIX workstation." But such claimsjust haven't held up. After customers review NT's price/performance on Intel,Alpha, MIPS, or PowerPC, the market will shift toward NT. NT is the onlysolution that lets an engineer run 32-bit Microsoft products simultaneously withhigh-end engineering tools on one of four hardware platforms. No longer dobuyers have to worry about OS idiosyncrasies, availability of ported software toa particular hardware and operating system platform, and strange marketingploys.

In the Engineering Workplace
CAD/CAM companies were the first big group to embrace NT. While othersoftware developers are still deciding whether to port applications to NT, someCAD/CAM developers are on or near their third release of NT-ported software, andthey aren't turning back. Two years ago, Parametric Technologies released itspreviously UNIX- and VMS-only CAD/CAM solid modeling software (Pro/ENGINEER) onNT. Now it's on its third release for NT. More than 30% of Parametric's customerbase now has the NT version. Intergraph, which was a proprietary UNIX hardwarevendor, now pumps out high-end NT hardware and built its new NT CAD/CAM softwarefrom the ground up. Autodesk, which less than one year ago recommended DOS, isnow porting first and primarily to NT. In the last six months, just in the CADarena, five companies released affordable solid modelers, such as SolidWorks and3D/Eye. Many companies in engineering disciplines, such as finite elementanalysis and dynamic motion simulation, are following this path, too.

NT is not the save-all solution to an engineer's computing woes, and NTcertainly will not replace UNIX. Openness is an issue that UNIX vendors harp on,but most engineers don't give a hoot about it. A more relevant concern is thatNT is still missing UNIX functionality that some users can't do without (e.g.,an efficient multiuser environment that lets several people use a computerresource simultaneously). But NT is providing a stable platform forengineers--even if they are not especially computer literate.

Many skeptics said the horseless carriage would never be viable for themasses. Some in engineering say the same about NT. Don't believe a word of it.