I read Ralph Grabowski’s blog regularly. A few days ago, he mentioned Medusa4 Personal, from CAD Schroer. Actually, he mentioned that it is free for personal use, runs on Linux (and WIndows), and that he had an installation problem with it.
I double checked, and indeed, CAD Schroer’s installation guide for Medusa 4 Personal doesn’t mention that you might have to use the “sudo” command when installing the program. You have to type “sudo sh medusa4_v3_1_1_linux_personal.sh” at the command line to install it. No big deal.
I was able to install Medusa4 Personal on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty, with no difficulty. The program runs just fine.
Here’s a little history of Medusa, from Todd Spraker:
- 1980 – Medusa was developed by CIS (Cambridge Interactive Systems) in the UK getting the name CIS Medusa. It ran mostly on Unix based computers namely the DEC (Digital Equipment Company) VAX minicomputers.
- 1981 – Prime Computer Co. acquired exclusive rights to market Medusa outside of Europe. Medusa was developed to run on Prime computers and became the start of Prime Medusa which eventually got up to revision 5
- 1983 – Computervision buys CIS Medusa and continued to develop the software, eventually taking CIS Medusa up to revision 7.
- 1984 – Prime gets joint ownership of Medusa which allows them to market Prime Medusa worldwide
- 1988 – Prime buys Computervision taking full control of Medusa. Prime develops Medusa-12 by combining CIS Medusa-7 with Prime Medusa-5 to run on the UNIX based workstations which were taking a growing position in the computer market. Medusa-13 was eventually developed with a very different user interface from rev-12. MEDEA electrical was also developed to offer an additional wiring capability
- 1998 – Parametric Technology Corporation (now just PTC) buys Computervision and Medusa.
- 2002 – CAD Schroer (a German company) buys Medusa from PTC
Medusa has always been a highly regarded 2D mechanical drafting system. In the same league as Cadam and Anvil-1000MD. (When AutoCAD was released, and Autodesk talked about it providing 80% of the capabilities for 20% of the price, they were comparing it with products such as these. It took many years for Autodesk to catch up.)
If you decide to check out Medusa4 Personal, remember that it’s not an AutoCAD clone or work-alike. If you’re an AutoCAD guru, it might take you a while to get used to Medusa4.
If you’re not looking for an AutoCAD clone, but rather are trying to find a productive and professional mechanical drafting tool that you can learn to use without taking a bunch of classes, you might really like Medusa4 Personal.
