Any way to open a dwg (Auto Cad ) file

[NoOp]

On 10/07/2008 05:35 AM, Karl Larsen wrote:
> Robert Hodgins wrote:
>> On Tue, 2008-10-07 at 14:09 +0200, Nils Kassube wrote:
>>   
>>> Karl Larsen wrote:
>>>     
>>>>     Please give up trying to read an Auto Cad file with something other
>>>> than Auto Cad. My son is a Civil Engineer and owns his company. He has
>>>> to pay $4,000.00 for each version of Auto Cad he uses. This software
>>>> runs ONLY on Windows. When running it takes about 95% of the CPU time
>>>> on a pentium.
>>>>       
>>> Sorry, I don't understand your logic. You just provided 3 reasons why it 
>>> _is_ useful to try to read DWG files with something other than AutoCAD.
>>>
>>> - $4000 is not exactly cheap.
>>> - It only runs on Windows.
>>> - It takes 95% CPU.
>>>
>>>
>>> Nils
>>>     
>>
>>
>> This might help:http://lx-viewer.sourceforge.net/
>>
>>
>>
>>   
>     It looks like this effort has the libraries from Auto Cad that make 
> their viewer work on Linux. As you see on the page there are a lot of 
> legal questions. Auto Cad has sued a lot of people with great success.
> 
> Karl
> 
> 

Yup & they've been in a legal fight regarding opendwg for some time.
Their latest is trademark:

http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?qs=75429699
[current as of 10/05/2008]
Defendant
Name:	Open Design Alliance
Plaintiff
Name:	Autodesk, Inc.

A little back history:
http://aecnews.com/articles/2098.aspx
Autodesk Sues Open Design Alliance for Trademark Infringement
Posted on Monday, November 20, 2006 1:55 PM

.dwg/DWG is like Microsoft's .pub (Publisher) files... so proprietary
that even their own customers have problems with them.

And and interesting read:
<http://fastcad.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=7;t=000031;p=0>

Bottom line (for me) is that I'd think twice about installing the
OpenDWG libraries on my system.