If you have this tight finance why not go with opencad or freecad?
I'm fairly certain importing correctly from a 35 years old format is not impossible, though there could be surprises for sure.
I understand the familiarity vs productivity issue and that learning something new is always painful, but if you want to avoid sw calling home, go for open source.
(I'm impressed by the way that something this old gets not just replies to questions but living servers to answer. I wonder if the answering machine is also from the 80.)
CAE is an area where open source has always been terrible. They just can't do the very complex UIs that are needed. They're good at back-end stuff, but people need to point and click. FreeCAD is nice but endlessly more frustrating and unintuitive than SolidWorks/etc. At least from my experience.
Sure, but at least it's an option for those so inclined, unlike commercial software, where your choice is just to not buy it or convince the developer to fix it for you (which works if you're a big enough user of their software).
I've worked with a lot of small business people and the HN group just doesn't culturally get what the guy is saying...
Say you're not going for billion dollar unicorn or broke, but for a life long small business. You always have non-main line of business systems that are technically obsolete but it doesn't matter to 99.9% of day to day operations because it works and when it doesn't work its only 0.1% of the time you spend anyway. To replace it when it completely breaks, its fully depreciated so to speak, you could pay $5K today or $5K next year, you certainly have $5K, but how exactly do you benefit by throwing down the cash today? I guess you get the tax deduction today rather than in 5 years but who cares? There's no way 0.1% of your day to day operation can have a significant bottom line effect no matter how much the new technology improves things in its little 0.1% corner of operations.
Even worse, when you forklift upgrade its going to be a hit to your productivity for "awhile" and you're busy today so you simply can't afford it. But sometime in the next five years there is certain to be a recession and then you already have the money and then you'll have the spare time to convert. Just not today. Its only 0.1% of your business and you don't want to turn away paying customers today to min/max that last 0.1% today. Play games with new toys when there's 10% unemployment and you have nothing to do for a week. In fact during that future recession you'll get newer technology than today plus it'll probably be cheaper if they're hurting for customers.
When its technology, 100% tech people are blinded by technophillia, but if it was an obscure metalworking tool that only gets used once a year for a few minutes, even tech people understand that when you're a busy one man shop, once that tool is completely depreciated and obsolete, waiting for it to break is the wisest possible choice.
Absolutely. FFS, I sell RS232 devices. RS-frickin-232. In 2017.
There are businesses out there that make a living supporting devices that were designed to run on 5.25" or 3.5" floppies. The machinery still works fine, but now the owner can't load files because replacement drives can't be found, or they can't buy floppies, or... So a business springs up to interface a thumb drive to a DOS HDD controller.
Same does my father with his PCB/EDA software. He ha a lot of libraries and stuff made with was now a old version of ten years ago. And he will not change.
I'm fairly certain importing correctly from a 35 years old format is not impossible, though there could be surprises for sure.
I understand the familiarity vs productivity issue and that learning something new is always painful, but if you want to avoid sw calling home, go for open source.
(I'm impressed by the way that something this old gets not just replies to questions but living servers to answer. I wonder if the answering machine is also from the 80.)