The lock up in the boot process, from my experiance is from your graphics card or driver not working correctly.
I have found this on my laptop, I have good graphics for native linux programs but for some reason or another the driver linux provides for my intel chip does not work well with graphics intence 3D programs in WINE.
I have tried PRO-E WildFire and Catia V, I am no major programer and dont have the time to make everything work nicely, I have read about succsuess with both of these programs. I just have two laptops so I can use Catia V in windows, and do everything else in Ubuntu 7.10. I do have FreeCAD in my linux but its not as user freindly so I dont use it.