AutoSOLID
This package really isn't a graphics package and doesn't eve fit here per se but I just wanted to mention it because both it changed my paradigm of what computer can do and also because it seems to have been erased from history on the net and I though I would record it here. AutoSOLID is probably exactly what you thought. IT was a way to create to evaluate solid models from AutoCAD drawings and wire frames. It may have also had supported AME solids introduced in Release 11. Way back in 1992 this program would do FEA (Finite Element Analysis) on your AutoCAD designs (I believe, but I can't verify on the web). I only ever encountered its use commercially in one place.
screenshot source: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~cadwest1/gallery/Chair_Leg.html
I see it really primarily as a shame that Autodesk had all the cards to rule the 3D market 10 years ago but just sat on them. Now they have killed (or are supposed to be discontinuing) Mechanical desktop, my dream application if it had been carried to its logical conclusion, an replaced it with a pathetic hollow shell of a program called Inventor. This was suppose to make Autodesk more competitive with Pro-E and Solidworks but they never considered that maybe people using AutoCAD did not want that interface paradigm, or maybe there marketing told them so. I was forced to chose Solidworks because of this debacle but I did so grudgingly, and if Inventor is ever made to be superior to Solidworks I would advise a switch back, but I think its a day late and a dollar short as Solidworks is probably the Pinnacle of commercial software. If all commercial software was written like Solidworks then I wouldn't need to use Open source programs.
bahr@seclorum.us
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Brian Carl Bahr