Engineers Using Macintosh Computers... 2

[DaveVikingPE]

Though at my day job I use the Nasty Technology, at home I'm free to use my Mac.

I have/use/like:

PowerCADD 2000
Dr. Frame
Dr. Beam
Wingz

And lots of neat programs to do engineering work. I've even downloaded and played with an FEM application written in HyperCard!

 

[FrankHartzell]

Dave:

It might interest you to know that I have been using FrameMac, a classical 2D frame analysis for any kind of frame, since the early 80's !!! The program ran on my original 128K Mac with the original Mac OS and it still works on my Mac G3, OS 9.1. I think that is a real tribute to Erez Anzel, the program author. He moved from the USA to Toronto sometime in the late 80's or early 70's and for a while did business as Compuneering but I I haven't heard from him for years and years.

Daystar has purchased the old MultiFrame 3D analysis program which ran on Macintosh computers. Their website is:

http://www.daystarsoftware.com/products.html

Frank Hartzell

 

[DaveVikingPE]

Awesome!

You don't happen to have an old copy of MSC/PAL lying around, do you?

 

[FrankHartzell]

Dave:

What is MSC/PAL? Is it perchance PASCAL which is the language used by Erez Anzel for FrameMac? If so, I might well have an old disk with some version of PASCAL. In my younger, more optimistic, days, I had illusions about learning to program. I know I have(had?) a book on PASCAL and I probably wouldn't have bought the book if I didn't have the program. Let me know if that is what you mean and I'll try to find the disk. I have a huge box full of old floppies. Can your computer read a 400K disk. I still have a working MacPlus with an old OS which I occasionally fire up to read some old file.

Perhaps I could email the application to you.

Frank Hartzell

 

[DaveVikingPE]

MSC/PAL is McNeal-Schwindler's NASTRAN for the Macintosh. Maximum strength finite element program. It was pretty darn spiffy back in 1989. I learned to use NASTRAN on a VAX computer and the idea of that much power on a little Mac was quite intoxicating.

I have a Pascal compiler for the Mac, somewhere... But thanks for the offer!

I use PowerCAD 2000 on my computer (now it's a G4 Cube, 500 MHz) for plans.

 

[rlnorton]

For those looking for MSC/PAL on the Macintosh you might look at LapFEA (

http://www.lapcad.com).

My recollection is that LapCAD bought the rights to MSC/PAL and integrated the analysis capability into LapCAD.

Gurt continues to support the Macintosh platform, and has pretty reasonable pricing. According to the November issue of Mechanical Engineering a 1,000 node version is only $199, with other sizes ranging up to $1,999.