Macbook pro 13 inch 2011 autoCAD, MATLAB, solidworks?

[children]

I use auto cad and rev it on a daily basis and I got the 17in.

Screen real-estate really do make a difference. I would go for the base 15 on that alone.

 

[mfa333]

I am an engineering student as well, just about to undertake a PhD actually. I use MATLAB a lot for my studies, and I must say upgrading my late 2008 Macbook to the 2011 13"MB Pro made a huge impact. It's really night and day for me.

However, I must say that I upgraded the RAM from 4 to 8Go, which comes in really handy if you want to have several programs - including Matlab - running.

I can't say anything about Autocad though as I don't use it, but I am pretty sure it would work well.

Don't hesitate if you have any more questions

How's MATLAB performance on 2011 13" MBP? because I'm planning of getting MBP for MATLAB use.

 

[tjb1]

I have the 2010 2.66 15" with 8gb ram and I run Mastercam X4, Mastercam X5, AutoCAD for Mac and Solidworks just fine. I sometimes use my 26" Vizio tv or a 24" samsung monitor when I need more screen. Be aware though that most tvs dont support the same resolution as the computer so if you are ever to mirror it one will suffer...with the Vizio my computer suffers and goes to a horrible resolution but the samsung supports the same resolution.

 

[brentsg]

I would get the 13" no question.

Sure, the screen's too small for serious CAD packages and the like, but I wouldn't want to do this on a 15" either.

Pick up a 13 for the portability and use a proper monitor for your design and modeling work.

 

[snaky69]

How's MATLAB performance on 2011 13" MBP? because I'm planning of getting MBP for MATLAB use.

I haven't tried it on your particular machine, but I have MATLAB 2010a on mine, and it works just fine. Though it feels like it is a bit slower than it's windows counter part when calculation algorithms. Nothing measured, just a feeling of slowness. I had to do a small calculation using the Gauss-Seidel method for my math class, it took 6000 iterations or so, and it takes the computer roughly 10-15 seconds to crunch the numbers, the same program run in windows takes about 5-10 seconds. The rest of the UI is the exact same.

One thing that I haven't gotten to work is the comment shortcut, which is supposed to be cmd-\, it just doesn't work for some reason, I might be doing something wrong but I don't think so.

 

[dutkutug]

Hi
I think 13" (2011) will suit your needs more than you think of. I had the 13" c2d with 2gb ram during my phd studies (past 4 years) which involved at least 48 hour lasting nonlinear dynamic analyses including both matlab and autocad companion. Well, the con is the screen size, however, if you have an external 22" or bigger monitor it would be no problem at all, indeed you get used to 13" while you are doing paper work and coding. There is no doubt that it has the less horse power and gaming experience in contrast to 15 or 17 versions. And the pro: MOBILITY, you are a student and believe me there will be times that every lb in the back pack will be an increasing heavy burden. Well my comments are based on my experience, I hope you will find the best for you. By the way, I recently bought the 2011 13" i7 with 8gb and it rocks

 

[DRGN89]

I actually had the 2011 13" Macbook Pro and ran some sample AutoCAD files from the AutoCad site and it was very slow and sometimes even crashed. Sold the 13" and upgraded to the 15" and now it runs perfectly fine.

 

[mfa333]

I haven't tried it on your particular machine, but I have MATLAB 2010a on mine, and it works just fine. Though it feels like it is a bit slower than it's windows counter part when calculation algorithms. Nothing measured, just a feeling of slowness. I had to do a small calculation using the Gauss-Seidel method for my math class, it took 6000 iterations or so, and it takes the computer roughly 10-15 seconds to crunch the numbers, the same program run in windows takes about 5-10 seconds. The rest of the UI is the exact same.

One thing that I haven't gotten to work is the comment shortcut, which is supposed to be cmd-\, it just doesn't work for some reason, I might be doing something wrong but I don't think so.

So, the MATLAB works fine on OSX and just abit slower compared to windows?

By the way, can you do a benchmark for me? type 'bench' and give me the result. For both OSX matlab and bootcamp windows matlab on the same machine. Thanks.

 

[Treeman574]

I am an engineering student currently using both AutoCAD 2011 and Matlab 2010a. I wanted to keep this laptop for many years to come, so I bought the bullet and got the base 15" 2011 model. So far I have had no problems with large 2D and 3D autocad files and matlab is reasonably fast for our current work. I use both these programs on mac, no need to run a windows bootcamp or parallel.

For the large files and programs ram was becoming an issue, so I upgraded to 8gb. (Really simple to do yourself, don't pay for apple's overpriced ram upgrades.)

The portability of the laptop is great. You wouldn't notice the difference between carrying a 13" or a 15" mbp.

For what you need I would imagine the 13" would be alright. But for me the 15" has no problems whatsoever.

edit: matlab benchmarks
(Running matlab benchmarks for the 32bit 2010a version, the machine was slower than all windows and linux versions (32bit and 64bit), minus the 2.4ghz benchmarks. It was faster than the all the other mac benchmarks, including the 64bit 2.66ghz xeon mac stats.)