Anyone running Win 7/AutoCAD on Mac?

[MacAndMic]

I bought a macbook a few months ago (2.26 Core 2 Duo) as I wanted to venture into the Mac world. I bought this model as it was the cheapest and figured it would be my test. Had I not liked it, oh well, an $800 investment that at least my kids could cruise the net with.

Fast forward, I absolutely love Mac, everyday computing tasks to me are so much better than windows, I simply could never go back. With that being said, I am thinking of taking this Macbook and giving it to my niece as payment for MANY future baby sittings so that may put me in the market for a new one but will the latest i7 satisfy my needs?

I do not prefer to have several machines (as I currently do) and would like to have all of my info and tools when I travel so I would like to buy a new MBP i7 and run both Mac and Win OS's. Running Windows 7 64 bit is a requirement as I own a Shop Drawing business and require AutoCAD for everyday production. My company also produces add-on programs that are currently on the market for AutoDesk products so there is no substitutions, it is my living.

So, will the new i7 be powerful enough to run Win 7 64 bit and AutoCAD (09 thru 11) as well as my current i7 920 PC with an ATI 4890 Video Card? Would I ever look back and tell myself that this was a bad decision?

Thank you for reading my long-winded message and any input you may have.

troutspinner

 

[yellow]

Win7 64b works great.. can't speak to how well AutoCAD works though.

 

[len57]

Win 7 64 bit on Mac

Interested in which of the several available methods you are using to run Win7 on your Mac. Recently I had Windows XP Pro installed using Bootcamp. Hard Drive wound up corrupted and was able to recover through Time Machine and Back-up to my Passport. Have now restored HD to Mac only.

Am evaluating Netbooks or perhaps better as an alternative for Windows. Just heard of something called IMHO Sun Virtual Box.

 

[yellow]

Currently, both Win7x64 on Bootcamp, used primarily through Parallels, and a separate Win7x64 which is VM only.

 

[jdechko]

Yes, you'll be fine. The only time you might notice a slight degradation in performance is if you were running 3D models with a lot of faces.

On an even more positive note, Autodesk officially recognizes AutoCAD through BootCamp and will provide support. There's even a rumor that Autodesk is working on a native Mac version of AutoCAD.

 

[JacaByte]

I'm planning on doing just this with a 15" i5 Macbook Pro. I'll tell you how it runs when I get the Macbook in the mail and install everything, but I suspect it'll be a vast improvement over the AMD Anthlon X2 6000+ I had been using.

 

[JacaByte]

Okay, it runs flawlessly under boot camp, but you'd better not use Parallels to run your boot camp partition or Inventor will give up the ghost due to licensing issues. If you solely use it on one platform or the other you should be fine.

 

[iphonematt]

I use the Autodesk Suite in Windows 7 x64 on my 2 year old MacBook Pro (specs below) and they run just fine. I imagine they would run spectacular on a new i7.

 

[Eddyisgreat]

Okay, it runs flawlessly under boot camp, but you'd better not use Parallels to run your boot camp partition or Inventor will give up the ghost due to licensing issues. If you solely use it on one platform or the other you should be fine.

I use solidworks and I second these sentiments. I installed SW in bootcamp, ran fine, then switched over to Fusion in OS X, ran fine again (albiet not well), then switched back to bootcamp and it started calling me a dirty pirate.