Mac Pro for engineering?

[CntrlENG224]

Hey all newbie here looking for some tested advice. I have had it up here with my Dell PC here at work. I almost have approval to switch my entire company to mac. ( this took a lot of work) My question is will a mac pro be sutable to run my apps through a VMWare or Parallels? AutoCad 08' is the most used program and is opened when I arrive to work and doesnt close until I leave. Its mostly 2D electrical drawings, however I do also make 3D drawings that are gonna require some serious graphics power. The other apps that I run arn't so power hungry but I do a lot of logic controller programming and I am a little apprehensive about driver issues when i try to program a controller through a com port under a virtulization software option.

So what do you guys think. I know i am prob gonna have to upgrade from the stock graphics card and dump about 2 more gigs of ram into it but other than that do you think a stock 2.66 Ghz model will acomplish this? Is anyone out there running a similar setup that has some insight?

Thanks again for any and all help

 

[Mackilroy]

Hmm. If you're running AutoCad 2008, it probably wouldn't be too much of a performance hit, as I've used AutoCad on both high-end PCs with a powerful graphics card and on my MacBook and the MacBook seemed about as fast as the PCs. Neither virtual solution is perfect, as they can't virtualize a graphics card, but you'll at least be able to get the most out of the processors. Maybe as a test case you could get one or two Mac Pros, install Parallels and Windows and then AutoCad, run it and see how you like it?

 

[CntrlENG224]

cool thanks for the info. Things would be so much easier if autodesk would just make a mac version as they have already done with maya, Oh well.

 

[ironic23]

i've used my mac pro for creating huge assemblies (>9GB) in ProE via BootCamp and it's been working great. have done some Ansys and ProMechanica simulations too and it's worked like a charm. not sure about running these programs in a virtualized environment though. might not be the best idea, but with the mac pro, you'll be able to get the best of both worlds (windows & os x)!

if i had my way, i'd get a mac pro at work instead of the (wannabe) sun ultra 40 m2 workstation.

with that said, i'm sure you'll be really pleased with the mac pro for engineering applications. good luck!

 

[Aea]

To be frankly honest here, I think it would be completely foolish to run AutoCad through an emulator, it's a waste.

If you absolutely need AutoCad (since there is no OSX Version), you should run it through Bootcamp or just get a high-end windows machine. Chances are the windows machine will be slightly cheaper, depending on whether you buy pre-built, build your own, warranties, etc. The Mac Pro is one of the best deals on the extreme high end (octo-core), but below that it's just another fish in the pool. Get the Mac Pros (maybe wait for the update, whenever that is), and run windows on them for Auto Cad.

Disclaimer : This opinion is based upon my horrible experiences with Parallels and Crossover. Haven't tried VMWare.

 

[RedDragon870503]

A mac pro will do anything.

Anything.

 

[CntrlENG224]

Thanks for all your input. After thinking about it I will most likely run Autocad and other window's specific programs through boot camp. Like i said before my entire office will be switching to macs so it wouldn't make sense for me to buy another high end pc and go though the networking nightmare. I wonder why it is so unusual to see macs in an engineering environment. In my opinion my macs at home are a dream for me and my engineering work. Everything from the organizational stand point to the creative aspect macs are just the way to go. Not to mention they never crash. My pc at work almost on schedule gets to over loaded and crashes. I have done everything to remedy it upgrades, maintenance and still it will just not cooperate. This is also a pretty high power workstation PC. Anyways thanks for all your input and maybe one of these days we will see a lot more macs in engineering and force companies like autodesk to port their software to mac native

 

[SDAVE]

A mac pro will do anything.

Anything.

Will it hook you up with chicks? Didn't think so.