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[claustrophobia9]

Originally Posted by phatphil

An equivalent works fine, for example I have 2 or 3 different programs alone on my computer right now where I could open an MS word document, edit it, and resave it in the same .doc format, and no one would know the difference. Cross platform compatibility is increasing rapidly. They actually do make PowerPoint for Mac, I have it: http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx. As for that CAD program it all depends what format it saves in, there are a slew of Mac CAD programs available that I would guess at least one of them can open, edit, and resave as a format that I-deas saves in. Unless it uses it's own proprietary file format used by no other programs, which if it does the odds of a person being required to use that program on the job would be much slimmer, than a more popular program like AutoCAD.

autocad is only more popular because it is much cheaper. all american car companies use i-deas. i-deas saves in what i believe is a unique format, my CAD/CAM teacher told me that there is no program that will be able to edit them to the full extent, and ideas runs near $3000 per insallation license. on the program menu they had a special plugin that downloaded tutorials for certain companies, there were a lot of big engineering companies out there, so clearly it is the program of choice.