Old Autocad trials?

[L. Rahyen]

On Saturday May 5 2007 13:42, Dan Kegel wrote:
> http://wiki.winehq.org/LinuxApplicatonRequestSurvey
> says that Autocad is the #2 most requested
> application on Linux.   The latest version might be
> a challenge to support, since it depends on .net 2.0,
> but we could start by supporting older versions.

	After a quick look (long ago) at the problem of running semi-old Autodesk 
products (which have new protection system but doesn't require .net 2.0) like 
AutoCAD and 3ds max I think main problem that makes them to not work is new 
protection system. For example Ihave seen reports about launching old AutoCAD 
and old 3ds max 3 and some other Autodesk products but all of them have old 
protection system. 3ds max 4 for example doesn't work at all because of this 
(program gives error about not working copy protection system).
	Of course there are some other bugs like some problems with installation of 
new versions (maybe solved, I didn't try for a long time) and others (for 
example support of .net 2.0 in case of most recent versions) but bug with 
copy protection system should be solved first because it prevent work of 
semi-old versions  (and new versions as well but there are some other bugs 
need to be solved to make them work too) of AutoCAD, 3ds max and other 
Autodesk products.
	I didn't spend a lot of time trying to solve this bug and I didn't tried to 
install and run AutoCAD for a long time (because there is no reports about 
success and I havn't enough free time to fix this myself) so I'm not sure 
about current status of (semi-old and new) AutoCAD under wine.

	AutoCAD and 3ds max actually last 2 Windows programs I personally use and 
which doesn't work under Wine - I use VMWare to work with them. Not perfect 
solution of course but it is only real option for me because I need to work 
with Linux programs simultaneosly. I hope some day bugs which prevent work of 
recent AutoCAD and 3ds max under Wine will be fixed and I will be able to not 
use virtual machine any more.

> Before I go wild buying old autocad books from Amazon,
> does anyone out there have old copies of Autocad
> (full or trial) they'd be willing to send me for testing?

	I recommend you to search these programs in file sharing systems. Personally 
I can't use them (due to some technical problems because of stupidity of my 
ISP) but I often ask some of my friends to download something from file 
sharing systems like BitTorrent and others. If you decide to use this 
approach you should install clients for each file sharing system (it is good 
idea to look for something in more than one file sharing system) then you 
probably find there both old and new versions of AutoCAD.