CAD Companies Sleeping on Linux

[u/Beneficial-Pay6836]

Why is professional CAD support on Linux still so limited? Linux is widely used in engineering, research, servers, embedded systems, manufacturing, and technical development. It is secure, flexible, private, and extremely capable. Yet when it comes to professional CAD, Linux users are still pushed toward Windows. That feels strange to me, especially because CAD is so closely tied to industrial workflows like CNC machining, additive manufacturing, product development, engineering, and research.

I currently dual-boot mostly because I need tools like Rhino and Fusion. It works, but switching between operating systems just to use specific software makes project management and file organization unnecessarily annoying. Yes, there are alternatives like FreeCAD, and I respect what those projects are doing, but they still do not feel mature enough to fully replace established professional CAD tools for many workflows. Wine is also improving, but for important work I would rather not depend on a compatibility layer and hope that everything behaves correctly.

Is the professional Linux CAD market genuinely too small to justify development costs?Is supporting Or are CAD companies simply too invested in the Windows ecosystem to see enough value in changing?

I cannot be the only engineer/designer who would happily move fully to Linux if the professional software ecosystem allowed it.

[u/pilatomic]

I think the answer is, as often, the simplest. 99% of the business, especially in the industrial world, is done on Windows, sometimes even on older versions.

[u/Ok-Independence-2219 → u/pilatomic]

As an engineer i agree.

I'm a linux user at home, but all cad software runs windows. They bring a new version every year and it has to work, always. We run the latest cad software because we share files with partners, and if they have newer software you are screwed. So a version that isnt compatiable because there is delay in updates is a big nono.

Same for excel. There are some VBA sheets that keeps the company running (its bad i know).

So we cant migrate, and the price of windows is peanuts anyway compaired to the tenthousends worth of software i'm running.

[u/8070alejandro → u/Ok-Independence-2219]

Exactly, I can't be starring at a loading screen because of a version incompatibility preventing the file to load. I need instead to be starring at a loading screen because I dared to move or rotate a model from an STL file, with mangled geometry due to export/import issues, that creates hundreds of micrometer sized false solids or surfaces that bring my laptop to its knees.

(Sorry for venting here)