1. Cost: by the time you accumulate all of your basic engineering tools you can easily spend in excess of 30K per seat. Unless your independently wealthy, this isn't very practical for the hobbies, student or new entrepreneur / small business.
2. Planned Obsolescence: Unfortunately, in order to stay in business a software company must continue to sell software. Even if the software product is perfect, if the software company doesn't continually produce new versions or upgrades, they will go out of business. When you also consider the fact that engineering software is a small market, the software company must charge a premium for the product in order to stay in business.
3. Draconian license policies: Although this is number one on my list, I have to give the software companies the benefit of the doubt. After all the primary business of a software company is to make money from sales of their products and if everyone is stealing their products they cant stay in business. This leads to ridiculous and unfair usage rights along with some really annoying software protection devices such as dongles and on-line registration practices.
4. Rapid Development: This is probably the most important reason for undertaking this project. If your a professional engineer, your probably aware that most of the “main stream” engineering tools are geared more toward collaborative engineering rather than rapid development. As a hobbyist or small business owner, your team size is probably very small so its more important to develop quickly.

1. Access to a functioning computer with an Internet connection and a CD ROM burner.
2. A blank CD
3. A computer that you will turn into your engineering computer

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