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needthephone

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 4, 2006
813
0
sydney
Has any body used Solidworks or Pro Engineer on an Imac? I have parallels and MS Vista so no compatibility problems.

Anyone???
 

Jasonbot

macrumors 68020
Aug 15, 2006
2,467
0
The Rainbow Nation RSA
needthephone said:
Has any body used Solidworks or Pro Engineer on an Imac? I have parallels and MS Vista so no compatibility problems.

Anyone???

Um, er NO! Any CAD in parallels will die, it just cant process the video properly. Try blender, it's a freeware CAD programme available for mac/PC
 

yippy

macrumors 68020
Mar 14, 2004
2,087
3
Chicago, IL
Paralles doesn't do graphics things like CAD at all. However, CAD in bootcamp is another issue. That I would say would work quite decently although I have never tried it.
 

needthephone

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 4, 2006
813
0
sydney
Are there mac versions of pro E or Solidworks then-sorry I haven't checked. I always thought macs were great for graphics. Not being able to use decent CAD software seems a limitation .
 

cr2sh

macrumors 68030
May 28, 2002
2,554
3
downtown
Are there mac versions of pro E or Solidworks then-sorry I haven't checked. I always thought macs were great for graphics. Not being able to use decent CAD software seems a limitation .

You can use any cad software you want on a intel mac.

Macs are great for graphics.
Macs are also great for audio.
Macs are great for design, engineering and anything else you could possibly want to do.

If you're going to spend the money to buy autodesk software the iMac is really the cheaper of the two costs.
 

skubish

macrumors 68030
Feb 2, 2005
2,663
0
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Are there mac versions of pro E or Solidworks then-sorry I haven't checked. I always thought macs were great for graphics. Not being able to use decent CAD software seems a limitation .


Macs are great for graphics. The issue is parallels doesn't work well for graphics. If you use bootcamp it will be fine.
 

Erasmus

macrumors 68030
Jun 22, 2006
2,756
298
Australia
I'm hoping to get a macbook soon for the start of my second year at Uni, and will be wanting to run SolidWorks on it. Can anyone give me some kind of indication as to the performance hit that the program would take as the Macbook only has integrated graphics? I think I would be using it in Boot Camp, but how much does the graphics card control CAD?
 

dukebound85

macrumors Core
Jul 17, 2005
19,131
4,110
5045 feet above sea level
I'm hoping to get a macbook soon for the start of my second year at Uni, and will be wanting to run SolidWorks on it. Can anyone give me some kind of indication as to the performance hit that the program would take as the Macbook only has integrated graphics? I think I would be using it in Boot Camp, but how much does the graphics card control CAD?

as i mentioned, proe works great on my macbook..................
 

Erasmus

macrumors 68030
Jun 22, 2006
2,756
298
Australia
as i mentioned, proe works great on my macbook..................

I don't know what Proe is... So I guess that means you think SolidWorks would work fine...

All I know is that some of the stuff I started making on the Uni computers really crunched them, especially when making animations. I believe they were 3 Ghz Pentium 4s, and they probably only had integrated graphics too. So, my question is, is a dual 2 Ghz C2D integrated graphics macbook going to run SolidWorks better, or worse than the Uni computers, and if worse, about how much?
 

dukebound85

macrumors Core
Jul 17, 2005
19,131
4,110
5045 feet above sea level
I don't know what Proe is... So I guess that means you think SolidWorks would work fine...

All I know is that some of the stuff I started making on the Uni computers really crunched them, especially when making animations. I believe they were 3 Ghz Pentium 4s, and they probably only had integrated graphics too. So, my question is, is a dual 2 Ghz C2D integrated graphics macbook going to run SolidWorks better, or worse than the Uni computers, and if worse, about how much?

Pro Engineer is a cad software that my school uses in its mechanical engineering department. Much like solid works in how it is used. Chances are that your macbook will not run it as "good" as the uni computer since if your university's labs are like mine, they use top of the line workstations with huge amounts of ram. However, it does run well on my macbook cd 1.5gig ram and i experience no slowdown when using it for assignments, oor anything else that i have tried so far. it will probably not be as efficient when dealing with large amounts of loads or doing interative calculations as the schools computers i imagine but that is to be expected.

hope that helps.

just in case you wanted to see what proe is, here's the link

http://www.ptc.com/appserver/mkt/products/home.jsp?k=403
 

Erasmus

macrumors 68030
Jun 22, 2006
2,756
298
Australia
Thanks. I don't know how much RAM those computers had, but I seriously doubt whether they had 2 Gb. They aren't that flash. I think I'd get 2 GB in the MB anyway for future proofing, due to the fact that Apple fills both slots up with RAM.

Well thanks. A Macbook should be able to handle SolidWorks for me pretty well. I'd probably spend more time running MatLab on it anyway, for which I'm sure it will be more than adequate.
 

needthephone

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 4, 2006
813
0
sydney
Thanks for the advice.
When Iv'e looked into bootcamp it seems to be quite involved to set up and I don't think I would be confident enought to install it. When I last looked you had to make copies of driver files etc and it looked very easy to screw something up in a major way and effect the mac part too

Is this the case or is it easy to install??

Parallels is a breeze to install and I was under the impression (wrong obviously) it could do all boot camp can but in a more user freindly way.

Will apple ever have bootcamp pre instralled-is this going to be afeature of leopard?

I'll have to keep to my Dell Precison I think - grrrr. if its just for CAD I can live with it although its only a year old it has always locked up occasionally (even straight out of the box and I have som many virus catches and firewalls it makes it almost unuseable!_do you want to permit or block this action prompts all the time ahhhhh) like only PC's seem to do especialy when I use the internet. Is it just me but the mouse response slows down, windows won't close and after ctrl alt delete its a case of the on off button to reset...

Thanks
 

dukebound85

macrumors Core
Jul 17, 2005
19,131
4,110
5045 feet above sea level
bootcamp is easy to install. just print out the directions. just make sure you pick drive c to install windows on lol

as far as the drivers, you download them, then burn it and once in wondows just pop the cd in. not hard at all

id give it a go if you want windows native
 
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