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MBP for AutoCAD?

wPod

wPod

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 19, 2003
1,654
0
Denver, CO
I have gotten an offer to do some engineering consulting work in the near future, a couple weeks to a month from now. Part of the offer is the company will buy me a computer to work on, then ill get to keep the computer as part of my payement. The project I will be working on is all in AutoCAD (the company will also provide me a copy of AutoCAD while I am working on the project for them). Being a huge mac fan, I would love to get a MBP to run AutoCAD in Boot Camp or Parallels. So, my question is, does anyone have experience running AutoCAD on an MBP, or any other intel based mac? My other option is to go with a windows laptop, then sell it once the project is done. The only problem is I want to be able to do future smaller projects with the computer so it wouldnt be the best for me to sell it. So i hope the MBP will work!!!
 
I cant give a yes or no answer, but I dont see why it wouldnt.

Im an engineering student wanting a mac to run the entire autodesk suite (cad, 3dmax, inventor, ect.)

The graphics card in the MBP is great enough to run autodesk architectual desktop (verified to me by a member here), so I dont see why autodesk autoCAD wouldnt run. the MBP has all the right specs to run it plus the seperate graphics card.

use boot camp, NOT parallels as far as I know
Hope this helps
 
I am also waiting to hear from more people about using a Mac with more architecture-related programs like Autocad
 
Bballguy997 said:
The graphics card in the MBP is great enough to run autodesk architectual desktop (verified to me by a member here), so I dont see why autodesk autoCAD wouldnt run. the MBP has all the right specs to run it plus the seperate graphics card.

use boot camp, NOT parallels as far as I know
Hope this helps
Click to expand...


yeah, the tech specs of the MBP are certainly good for autoCAD. my guess would be that parallels would not work because it doesnt do well with the graphics card. but boot camp is supposed to run windows completely nativly so it seems like autocad should work. i wish i could just try it myself!!!
 
If you use bootcamp there should not be a problem in the least as it'll be just like using it on a windows laptop with the same specs.
 
dukebound85 said:
Well ProE works on my macbook so no worries for you
Click to expand...

hmmm, ProE. . . my favorite. Id rather use ProE. but, if the MBP will run ProE, then certainly AutoCAD will work. I think i might dl the 30 day trial version on my mac mini. its only the core solo, but if it works on the mini, then it would certainly do well on the MBP.
 
wPod said:
hmmm, ProE. . . my favorite. Id rather use ProE. but, if the MBP will run ProE, then certainly AutoCAD will work. I think i might dl the 30 day trial version on my mac mini. its only the core solo, but if it works on the mini, then it would certainly do well on the MBP.
Click to expand...

Runs on my macbook havent tried the macbook pro but it's guaranteed it will if a macbook can. All the more reason to be optimistic
 
I need to be able to run autocad and form z and sketch up. I have heard mixed reviews. Will the Macbook run these programs? If so what are the specs of your macbook? The problem is that I don't want to spend the money on the MBP. Has anyone done any 3-D rendering with the Macbook? THANKS.
 
macdaddy121 said:
I need to be able to run autocad and form z and sketch up. I have heard mixed reviews. Will the Macbook run these programs? If so what are the specs of your macbook? The problem is that I don't want to spend the money on the MBP. Has anyone done any 3-D rendering with the Macbook? THANKS.
Click to expand...

mine is a blackbook with 512ram and an 80 gig hd
 
as a minor update, if anyone is keeping up. I installed AutoCAD 2007 succesfully on my mac mini and have been using it with no problems. Thats pretty good considering my mac mini is a core solo, though I did upgrade to 1.25 GB of ram, so that helps. But the project I was working on got cut down a bit (they aren't paying as much as they said, so im not doing as much work >:-| ) so it looks like I wont get a MBP to try it out on.
 
i use proe on my MBP (2.0ghz, 1.5gb ram, 256mb vram) through bootcamp. you can't open huge assemblies before the thing just hangs or gets stuck for a long time. also, if you are doing a lot of real time rendering things get laggy. and just a heads up, i don't know why CTRL doesn't work on ProE. when i want to select the whole chain of lines by clicking while pressing CTRL it just doesnt work (or pressing CTRL to select multiple surfaces). if you plan to do big stuff, don't get a MBP. as much as i love it, its not sufficient. even my dual xeon 4gb ram IBM workstation couldnt handle my assemblies, hence, my company got us dual dual-core amd sun workstations with 8gb of ram. get a macpro! :D
 
ironic23 said:
i use proe on my MBP (2.0ghz, 1.5gb ram, 256mb vram) through bootcamp. you can't open huge assemblies before the thing just hangs or gets stuck for a long time. also, if you are doing a lot of real time rendering things get laggy. and just a heads up, i don't know why CTRL doesn't work on ProE. when i want to select the whole chain of lines by clicking while pressing CTRL it just doesnt work (or pressing CTRL to select multiple surfaces). if you plan to do big stuff, don't get a MBP. as much as i love it, its not sufficient. even my dual xeon 4gb ram IBM workstation couldnt handle my assemblies, hence, my company got us dual dual-core amd sun workstations with 8gb of ram. get a macpro! :D
Click to expand...

thats odd with the ctrl thing. though i never use the control key (on the keyboard) i have a button on my mouse programed to be the control key, and i like it a lot :)

heh, i never thought about the fact that a 2.16 GHz MBP is the same price as a MacPro! (assuming you already have a monitor and such for the MacPro) heh, now i wonder how well the MacPro would do compared to a similarly speced PC workstation running windows apps (yes, i hate to think that, but as an engineering running these apps that only work under windows i cant help it, at least i want the apple hardware, even if i dont get the beautiful Apple OS!)
 
AutoCAD Issue

I read on a a different mac forum that someone had an issue w/ AutoCAD under BootCamp. Apparentaly, Windows under BootCamp wouldn't let them run a "copy" of AutoCAD {you know, a burnt version of AutoCAD, not the true thousand dollar disc } b/c of an issue w/ the motherboard. Out of curiosity, I was wondering, of the people using AutoCAD w/ BootCamp, if they use a real version or a copy of AutoCAD?
 
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