AutoCAD to Amiga !
21-May-88 03:53:34
Sb: #125593-AutoCAD to Amiga !
Fm: Joel Halbert 73147,353
To: John Foust 72237,135
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John, I'm glad to hear that you've done these conversion programs already,
but I can't go along with "several hundred dollars". It's too bad that
AutoDesk feels you can't be taken seriously unless you charge ridiculous
prices – but what's even worse is that they might be correct (at least in
the IBM PC world). Your experience with them reinforces what I've been
saying about AutoCAD for the Amiga.
In the Amiga world, I think you'll have almost zero sales at anything like
those prices (but I could be wrong). Again I state my experience – LOTS of
engineers in our company have Amigas at home, but there isn't a single one
that is owned by the company. _Perhaps_ you'll sell copies of the program
to existing AutoCAD users or CAD managers who routinely buy a copy of
_any_ accessory program. If you want to sell it to me, charge the prices
you charge for the intra-Amiga stuff ($50 retail, plus extra for the
modules if they're good). Actually, I haven't really had the need (yet) to
do AutoCAD<–>Amiga conversions.
How about charging the Amiga price for a disk that runs on the Amiga only,
and anything you can get for the MS-DOS executable disk (or the MSDOS and
Amiga disks together). That way you could separate the products (and the
associated advertising, etc.). I could do everything I need with the
Amiga-executable only, because I'll transfer the files via modem or
equivalent. And people with A2000's and bridge cards can transfer that
way. But the primarily-IBM (i.e. primarily-AutoCAD) customers would tend to
want an IBM-executable version. Note also that the Amiga disk should still
have bidirectional transfer capability.
At the moment, I'm most interested in the HPGL to Aegis Draw Plus
converter, which can be one-way only because Aegis Draw already knows how
to make plot files. This will let me incorporate HPGL plots into
Professional Page documents. If the price is too high, though, I'll get
along without it or write my own.
Finally, I'd much rather see transfer capability among various Amiga
programs – XCAD, Aegis, SoftCircuits, UltraCAD whenever it comes out, etc.
– than the IBM to/from Amiga. Maybe this will be addressed some day by one
or more IFF formats, but I'm sure you'd have at least a one or two year
sales window before that happens. And just think – you won't have any
problems charging a low price, because they're Amiga-only! Joel