Solidworks On A Macbook Pro Options

[stewartlittle]

Hi all, I have read through many many threads, and can't seem to find any specifics on my topic, but if this is a double post, i appoligize now. I am looking to move to a macbook pro for my main computer for adobe as well as solidworks. I was curious if anyone here has experience using a mac for this, i am guessing through bootcamp. But any suggestions or opinions would be appreciated.

[stewartlittle]

anyone? anyone?

[design-engine]

I have seen Pro/ENGINEER on a MAC but I doubt anyone serious uses a mac to make parts....

[Ferdie]

Both Rhino3D and Autodesk StudioTools have been successfully tried on a Mac with OS X and XP via Bootcamp. Just as a personal opinion, Apple provides the drivers for both Vista and XP to run on their systems. These seem to be sufficient enough, especially if one considers the driver configurations on some mainboard and graficcards nowadays. Have you consulted the appropriate webforums for Apple and SW yet?

My nearest Apple dealership offered me to try out my personal hardware on their iMac with Bootcamp installed and contact one of their customers using CAD on a MacPro. Great customer service, haven´t made the jump yet but seriously consider either a MacBookPro or iMac in near future, the later for personal use at home.

Good luck with your decision and keep us updated!

[zxys]

There are people that use it with bootcamp and a virtual environment.
Go for it!

Here is a blog on it...
http://www.solidsmack.com/mac-addict-alert...mac/2008-05-21/

Basically,..
SolidWorks is going to work better with bootcamp,.. that is, you get the full 3D graphics support.
But if you prefer or need to be operating in OS X,.. there are some really good virtual software machines out there...

My personal favorite is VirtualBox (now owned by Sun) The others are good as well..

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/VBox_vs_Others
http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/virtualbox-ru...r-free-sort-of/

I've used SolidWorks with VirtualBox on top of PCLinuxOS,... it runs very good (not great) so,.. when 3D support gets better there.. SW or other 3D apps should be at a near native performance level.


..

[stewartlittle]

I should point out, I dont "need" to use a mac, i just think that osx is sweet, its so stable, and if i can run solidworks at native speeds through bootcamp, it seems like a viable option, as well, if i run a virtual desktop, i can transfer files easy, between the different os's.

[Kleinibert]

Hi!

My Boss forces me to work with a Mac Pro and Solid Works via Bootcamp. I´m working now in this constellation for 8 months and it happens to me, that the Mac quite often crashes (yes- it does!) and on the other side: for that money my boss could have bought an even faster PC!

Greetings earthlings!

Kleinibert

[powers]

I'd recommend dropping the $80 for parallels if you are going to go for it.

[kilian]

on my mbp solidworks runs pretty well via bootcamp...crashes rarely... i would not use parallels, the performance is annoying!
big models are impossible to handle...i tried, but switched to bootcamp after some days.

[Nephtis]

I tried it and it works very well. I have a MacBook Pro with 2,16 ghz and 2gb. I use bootcamp and partitioned a windows drive of 15gb for windows xp. I partitioned it as a fat32 format and that allows you to view the partition in osx. If you use ntfs, you won't be able to. The only down-side is that you can't make, read files larger than 4gb in windows under fat.

I personally find solidworks to be very stable and effective. As a designer I like the aesthetics of a macbook pro better and I use programs like sketchbook, painter and adobe on the osx side and solidworks, maxwell on the xp side.

Don't go for a virtual option, it is very slow and crashes more. Also, you'll miss all the drivers bootcamp provides. Those are really essential in running Solidworks well.

[albjerre]

I have used Solidworks 2007 and later 2008 in Windows Vista for 1 1/2 year now on a Macbook Pro with 2,33 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB ram and an ATI x1600 256MB graphics card. I use Boot Camp.

Since Apple updated the Boot Camp graphics drivers half a year ago or so, Solidworks has been running perfectly. Before the update there were some problems with the OpenGL drivers.

Four of my friends are running Solidworks 2008 in Windows XP on a newer Macbook Pro model with a NVIDIA graphics card. It runs even better than on my computer.

Btw., you can softmod your NVIDIA graphics card driver, so it performs like a professional QUADRO card with full OpenGL support in Solidworks. Read more here:
Softmod for Vista
Softmod for XP

So in my opinion, there is no problems in using a Macbook Pro for Solidworks. The only annoying thing is that you have to install two operating systems, which takes up a lot of space on your hard drive.

[Eminar Design Co...]

I have just moved over to using a mac and at first i used Parallels, and this was the biggest mistake I have ever done, the actual system can't run smooth enough using the VM and it clearly struggles. I used photoshop on XP within Parallels and it was so slow, even opening a new document took time, so you can imagine what applying a filter was like.

I now use Boot Camp and it is clearly the better option, using Boot Camp means that XP has all the dedicated processing power etc for the task, and you also get all of the drivers so that you can use the isight camera and all of the apple features on the xp side.

I run Solidworks 08 on XP through Boot Camp and I can't fault it, it hasn't crashed, it isn't slow, and best of all I can still use Leopard and XP on one single unit!!

[sachin]

This might be a relevant question, but how much space do you guys reserve for Windows? I'm at around 8-10 gigs and I'm struggling for space!

[kaiza]

Sachin, is this a Windows partition on a Macbook Pro? Or just for the Windows OS (I assume XP)?

The initial install of XP uses about 2gb and after a while that grows and grows. I gave XP 6gb on my old computer (now my brothers) and it's reached capacity. This is WITHOUT Program Files on the same partition. I would guess that 10gb for XP would be enough, but then you need space for programs and files, etc. too.

[tbroen]

This might be a relevant question, but how much space do you guys reserve for Windows? I'm at around 8-10 gigs and I'm struggling for space!

I kind of understand you're struggling! I've reserved 55 GB for windows and 100 GB for OSX - and I'm still struggling!
But remember to get the program MacDrive. Then you can read and write to your mac-partition from within windows (which you normally can not do)
Then you can set your windows documents folder to be on the mac-partition (by changing the shortcuts)

/tbroen

edit: and by the way. I run SW without any problems. You can even modify your graphics card through software which upgrades your card to a Quadro. Then RealView works as well!