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VPC advice sought.

F

floakster

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 7, 2003
6
0
Hi folks,

Well, I'm presently in the windows world but would dearly love to switch to a mac as I remember fondly using my old mac classic.

I need to be able to run AutoCAD under VPC however and I was wondering if anyone has experience of using applications like this. Are there any major performace issues? Can you use windows and osx at the same time? Are there any real alternatives to VPC as I would like to move away from microsoft products altogether.

Please feel free to mention any other matters that I havent thought of.

Thanks!
 
Yes, you are able to use VPC and OS X at the same time. VPC is simply an application you run in OS X. Unfortunately, there are no alternatives to it that run well. As far as AutoCad, it depends. If you're going to be doing simple wire-frame stuff, it could be bareable. Honestly though, I'd just buy a cheap PC for a few hundred bucks, and use that for engineering programs. They'll run far smoother than VPC would, even if you had a dual G5. Buy the Mac, and pick up a cheap PC for work.
 
Well, I don't think VPC on a G5 is going to be all that slow - we'll see when Version 7 ships. If your Autocad version runs on Win98 - use that, it is a faster OS on VPC.

I use VPC on my 17" Powerbook (G4 1Ghz 512MB RAM) and have Win98 and XP Pro installed. When working in extremely large files/programs it is sluggish - as in, my mouse is a little slower to respond - but it works fine.

If you get a Gig of RAM or more, you'll be fine. Most people that complain of speed issues are running under 1ghz or have 512MB of RAM or less. Dual 2Ghz w/ 2GB RAM? You could allocate 1.75GB of RAM to the Windows OS. You will always see a little slow down compared to a native environment, but it isn't really THAT bad.
 
I'm using AutoCad (actually Architectural Desktop) via VPC right now, and let me tell you it sucks. It's good for stopgap stuff, changing drawings in the field, viewing and making adjustments at home and stuff like that. But I'm eagerly waiting for my Wintel box to arrive (hopefully today!) so I can stop trying to do production drawings this way. If you are thinking you can get away from Wintel and still use AutoCad, sadly it won't happen. Also VPC does not support dual monitor spanning, which makes it difficult for me with a 15" laptop screen.:(

Having said that, VPC is great for most other PC only doodads that I need to run sometimes. And once v.7 ships all this may be null and void. But for now I would suggest buying a cheapo PC just for AutoCad (if you make a living that way, if you are a student go for VPC, that's what I did.) And go sign the petition to ask Autodesk to port their stuff to OSX!

You can PM me if you need more specific examples, or any other help I can give you.
 
I believe the program is not from the same manufacturers as autocad, but you can however open autocad files that where created on windows and also it saves its own files in autocad. My brother uses it under os 9 and it's called MacCad.
 
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