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AutoCad for Mac on new Macbook Air?

A

amasia

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 18, 2010
7
0
Stockholm, Sweden
Long time lurker, first time poster.

I am looking to upgrade from my Macbook Air revA to the newest version. How does AutoCad for Mac run on the new Airs? Its an Air, so I'm not expecting that much, but my revA won't install AutoCad and I'd like to get away from dual booting into Windows to run AutoCad and Solidworks.

Thanks for your feedback.
 
its fine on my 11'' mba with 4gb ram although I have not put it through its paces to be honest.

I wouldn't expect to ever do much than light work on it.

It does look far better than a 13" mbp though due to the higher resolution.

BTW acad for mac is fantastic! I really do like it.
 
Hello all,
this is my first post..maybe I have to introduce myself first.
My name is Lorenzo, and I'm writing to you from Italy.
I am ready to buy my first mac, a 11" macbook Air, but I have some trobles I'd like to discuss with you.

Macbook air will be my second computer, my little notebook (I already own a powerful desktop PC), but sometimes I need to use softwares like Autocad, Solidworks (with parallels) ad Matlab with the 11"(only for light works).

What do you think, will they work fine? Have you ever tried to use softwares like Solidworks (or something like it) with parallels?

Lorenzo
PS: I'm pretty sure I made a lot of grammar mistakes, forgive me plz :)
 
lorenz90 said:
Hello all,
this is my first post..maybe I have to introduce myself first.
My name is Lorenzo, and I'm writing to you from Italy.
I am ready to buy my first mac, a 11" macbook Air, but I have some trobles I'd like to discuss with you.

Macbook air will be my second computer, my little notebook (I already own a powerful desktop PC), but sometimes I need to use softwares like Autocad, Solidworks (with parallels) ad Matlab with the 11"(only for light works).

What do you think, will they work fine? Have you ever tried to use softwares like Solidworks (or something like it) with parallels?

Lorenzo
PS: I'm pretty sure I made a lot of grammar mistakes, forgive me plz :)
Click to expand...

Don't mean to sound harsh, but even though part of your post is asking about AutoCAD you still are Hi-Jacking the OP's thread. You need to create your own since you have other questions. :)
 
I Run Win XP and AutoCAD Just Fine...

on a maxed-out 13.3" MBA. No issues, no problems.

There's no way I would use Bootcamp. I want to be able to access all of my applications without rebooting. I use Parallels (upgraded to Parallels 6.0) and so far have had a fairly stellar experience, with just a few minor hickups.

I'm running AutoCAD LT 2010, which while not the same as the new AutoCAD for Mac is still a very robust application. I also run CS4 (MacA) with no issues.

I'm using XP instead of Win 7 for a lower overhead approach. Please note however, that my main machine is a 27" iMac and that when I run AutoCAD on teh Air I *usually* have it hooked-up to a larger monitor.

Seems to be okay so far. Go for it!
 
Thank you a lot for the replies,
I suspected the 11" was a bit slow for those softwares...I will go to the apple store to see effective weight and dimentions of the 13". If it fit in my schoolbag I will buy it. (In Italy we have few apple stores, and they usually have not much macs on display :( )

For HLdan: Excuse me, I had not opened a new topic because in the first post Amasia was also talking about Solidworks.
I thought It was better than open two very similar threads; I don't knew this forum's custom. Next time I will open my new thread :D

for treynolds: I readed you have the 13" air witk the top CPU; How about the differences between yours and the base 13" CPU?

Lorenzo
 
lorenz90 said:
For HLdan: Excuse me, I had not opened a new topic because in the first post Amasia was also talking about Solidworks.
I thought It was better than open two very similar threads; I don't knew this forum's custom. Next time I will open my new thread :D



Lorenzo
Click to expand...

Ah, my apologies, I didn't see the Solidworks in the OP. Hadn't had my coffee at the time. :)
 
lorenz90 said:
for treynolds: I readed you have the 13" air witk the top CPU; How about the differences between yours and the base 13" CPU? Lorenzo
Click to expand...

Lorenzo, I haven't tested ACAD on the 1.86, but I don't believe there would be an issue. The biggest difference will be made by the amount of RAM, not processor speed, followed by the amount of drive space.

Also, since ACAD is now native for the Mac, I'm sure that it's more efficient, as you wouldn't have to run ACAD on top of Windows on top of Snow Leopard, as I'm doing.

Best of luck, Tony
 
thanks for your help and insights.

i'm deciding between the 13/1.86/4GB RAM/128 SSD, and the 13/2.13/4 GB/256 SSD. same as lorenzo, i was wondering if the processor bump would have a big impact on performance of autocad (or general performance).

i believe my stock revA performance is held back by the slow HDD, so I can't tell if the processor speed is something i really need. i will use mostly word, keynote, illustrator, skype and ACAD. nothing too intense, but i hate replacing computers before 2 years, so i'm inclined to max out the specs to last.

also, the whole thing about backlit keyboard. how much do you miss that capability? i'm so used to having it now, but i think i should be able to deal.

thanks!
 
to be honest I think no MBA is going to be great for Autocad.

I tested it out on a 13" MBP 2.4 with an SSD in it [a much more snappy machine than my 11" MBA I may add], and it wasn't great.

I reckon it is the video card that holds it back and really I would recommend a 15" MBP if it is your only machine.

If a secondary machine you may get away with it, but any complicated models are not going to be much fun.

As I said previously, it is great on my mac pro and a different experience to the MBA, and that is just drawing a couple of lines !! Still to test it out properly really, but I guess I could with some drawings from work.

Cheers
 
Any reports back?

I've been thinking about surprising my boyfriend (an architect) with an mba 13 for Christmas, but he would definitely need it to run Autocad well -- this would be his primary computer (at least for now). He has serious lust for it, but I wouldn't want him to be frustrated given the model's limitations (especially the max 4 gigs of ram...) Would it be better to surprise him with a more practical (but also less design-lustworthy) mbp?
 
OxyMoron said:
I've been thinking about surprising my boyfriend (an architect) with an mba 13 for Christmas, but he would definitely need it to run Autocad well -- this would be his primary computer (at least for now). He has serious lust for it, but I wouldn't want him to be frustrated given the model's limitations (especially the max 4 gigs of ram...) Would it be better to surprise him with a more practical (but also less design-lustworthy) mbp?
Click to expand...

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=15435044

It is supported, as to how well it work I don't know.
 
Still wondering...

Hi!
I am attending an AutoCad class in a couple of weeks and I need to buy a new laptop for this. I really want to buy a Mac, but I have to know first if it's powerful enough. I will be using AutoCad, Revit and Inventor, so parallells or bootcamp will be necessary. Is there any chance one of you mb air 13" or Macbook Pro (one of the later models) owners could try to open a somewhat complex model in one of these programs and see if it's usable? I am very curious about this and I can not find conclusive answers on this anywhere. Any actual experiences with the autocad programs and Macbook Pros would also be very interesting. I would have to use boot camp or parallells as revit and inventor is not yet released as Mac versions.

I am from Norway so please bear with me on my English :)
 
AutoCAD for Mac on Mac Book Air

I have been trying AutoCAD for Mac on my 4GB RAM 11" Macbook Air. My, what an interesting way of looking at AutoCAD. I am a light AutoCAD LT 2007 user. To go from that to trialing full blown AutoCAD for Mac is weird. Wish I could afford the£4,000 needed for it.

The drawings I was working on were civil engineering drawings. Some have aerial photographs attached and pdfs inserted. The aerial photographs were about 28 MB in size.

It works well. very well. Have also run it to an external 20" Apple Cinema Display. No problems at all. The 11" display is fine, other than when you need different menus and properties open.

The only thing was that I ended up using a mouse bluetoothed to the mac Book Air. It made life so much easier for me. Other people will have their own preferences.

Hval
 
Last edited:
macbook air

i have a brand new macbook air 4gb hard drive 13in and for some reason AutoCAD 2013 is extremely glitchy. I need help.
 
amasia said:
Long time lurker, first time poster.

I am looking to upgrade from my Macbook Air revA to the newest version. How does AutoCad for Mac run on the new Airs? Its an Air, so I'm not expecting that much, but my revA won't install AutoCad and I'd like to get away from dual booting into Windows to run AutoCad and Solidworks.

Thanks for your feedback.
Click to expand...

I've had no issues with AutoCad on my MBA. 13inch 2011 edition with 256 ssd/4gb ram
 
I am a needing to get a Autocad 2017 on a laptop and I am very interested in an apple laptop - would a apple macbook air 13 inch be suitable to run Autocad 2017 on ?
 
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