Which Mac mini for AutoCAD?

[macphipsi]

Are there any confrimed reviews of AutoCAD on the 2011 mini?

I currently run AutoCAD on my 2010 2.66 dual core i7 MBP. it runs okay, but I foresee alot more AutoCAD work in the coming years.


I am seriously teetering between selling my mbp for a mini+air setup vs. a mp+air set up. Reccomendations?

I currently use my mbp in clamshell with an apple LED Display. I dont really get use out of the portability of my machine which is why I am switching.

 

[MaCAD]

I like the Mac version, but I have a lot of Lisp scripts that I use daily, and they are not supported on the Mac version, so it's kind of a pain to have to switch between versions, I'm sure they will eventually get that worked out.

Thanks for the heads up. I also use Lisp daily, so that means I need to stick with the windows version until they incorporate Lisp into the Mac version.

 

[MaCAD]

Finally

It took awhile but I finally got my Mac mini Server. I order it with (2) 750 GB HDD and I installed 8 GB of after market RAM in the machine. It works great on everything on the OS X side. I installed bootcamp and Autocad 2012 for windows without a problem. I then opened a large 2D CAD file and thats where the problem began. AutoCAD does not support hardware acceleration for the integrated graphics card. I don't know if the AMD on the other Mac mini is supported or not. Autocad works similar to my PC at work but you can see with the curser moving around that the Hardware acceleration is not on. I now need to decide if it is worth upgrading to an iMac. I love the Mac mini so much more than the iMac though.

My main concern is that it works OK now, but what happens in 2 years when we are on AutoCAD 2014 and it can't handle my files any longer. I have read that with the Thuderbolt port that an external GPU is possible but currently there isn't one.

Does any one have any suggestions? I have 7 more days until my 14 day return expires. I'm going to do more testing and research.

 

[Valdemar]

AutoCAD does not support hardware acceleration for the integrated graphics card. I don't know if the AMD on the other Mac mini is supported or not. Autocad works similar to my PC at work but you can see with the curser moving around that the Hardware acceleration is not on. I now need to decide if it is worth upgrading to an iMac.

I'm in a similar situation, but you're a step ahead of me. Have you tried downloading AutoCAD (trial version) for the Mac and trying it there to see if hardware acceleration is supported? The current Mac Mini is supported on the AutoDesk website for running AutoCAD for the Mac.

 

[MaCAD]

I have not tried the Mac version of AutoCAD on the Mac mini yet. I downloaded my 2006 macbook pro and it worked fine but it was lacking too many of the features that I use in the windows version. Some day I would like to switch to Autocad for mac, but I don't see it for at least another 3-4 revisions at the rate they are going. Don't get me wrong, they are doing impressive things with the mac version and autocad ws, it will just take some time until they are as full featured as the windows version.

I actually did some experimenting on my PC here at work. Using the same file as I did on the Mac mini, the PC handled about the same when using the regen command or switching paper space tabs. I then turned off the hardware acceleration and the pc then gave the same performance. Mind you my work PC is a 3.7 quadcore with a 2 GB video card.

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I have a 2010 Mini and bootcamp Windows 7 64 bit and run AutoCAD 64 bit without issue.

Does the 2010 Mini run Autocad with Hardware Acceleration on?

 

[Valdemar]

I have not tried the Mac version of AutoCAD on the Mac mini yet. I downloaded my 2006 macbook pro and it worked fine but it was lacking too many of the features that I use in the windows version.

I don't suppose you've tried Solidworks on your mini?

 

[MaCAD]

I don't suppose you've tried Solidworks on your mini?

Sorry nope. We only use AutoCad for what we do and it is strictly 2D CAD. We don't do anything fancy since our plans are diagrammatic. We just use most of the 2D features and tools to make our work go faster.