Anyone running SolidWorks on a Mac? 15

Someone posted something like this last week. They were met with the (appropriate) comments to the effect of "why would you even want to do that" and "why, do you have extra money you don't know what to do with" and that sort of ilk:
thread559-180551

Personally, I can't get enough of that zero-button mouse. What a productivity magnet!



Jeff Mowry
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

it was me that asked

however since being derided by the community at large and in the interests of going boldly

yes i did buy a mac pro

yes i run boot camp rather than parralels

so i have osx and windows xp which works on the same hardware the only gripe now is i hear rumours of a octo core mac rather than quad core

and yes solidworks simply flies

ps i had the bonus of my partner being a graphic designer

so even if i came up short she could in theory just use the thing

now we argue over who gets to use it before this i used to slate her crappy i book not anymore

OK, can you describe, exactly, what hardware you bought, and what software you run?

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

any of the intel based macs ( ihave a macbook pro 17" 2.33ghz 2gb ram)

it has an ati card but that doesnt present any problem

bootcamp (downloaded free)

parralels runs in parralell to osx the problem is that it doesnt have complete rule of the roost when it is being used
you can toggle between osx and windows rather than rebooting to your preferred OS

boot camp needs you to boot into your windows or osx the advantage being the OS gets all the hardware all the tim not shared as in parralels

this is my preferred way

i can run any software in windows native mode

currently windows xp sp2
office 2003
sw 2007
nero
wildfire 3.0
acrobat 3d

i havent had a problem with anything and it seems stable
just like windows on my old dell

G1DESIGN said:

... since being derided by the community at large ...

Click to expand...

I don't believe three replies constitutes "the community at large". The first reply to your thread was not derisive in any way and actually stated they would find out more details. My reply was intended as a tongue-in-cheek jibe (perhaps I should have used a smiley) and suggested that Parallels may be better than Boot Camp. (I apologise if my post offended you). The third reply, although another jibe, was accompanied by a smiley to show that it was not meant as "derisive".

What type of mouse or input devices do you use with the Mac?
Do you find it limiting in any way?

G1DESIGN,

Just wondering how complex your set of parts and assemblies are that you are working with. Are you working with dozens of files at a time, hundreds, thousands...? I could see working with dozens of parts that are somewhat more simple, but I would be skeptical with hundreds or thousands of parts that are more complex in nature with the setup you describe. I would be interested in seeing some benchmarks. Right now I could buy a $400 laptop (windows box of course) and it would run SolidWorks fine for simple things and just learning. Just curious to hear how much you are pushing your mac and just how well it "flies".

Pete

cbl

i tend not to take offence by comments made by yourself
and in general find your posts informative

the medium of type more often than not does not provide much of an incite into the lightheartedness a comment has has been made

such was the case when i mentioned the derision (dry sense of humour mine)

i tend to find cad guys have thick skin

Yikes--I guess that does come across a bit harsh--getting grumpy in my old age. ..

If you've got a graphic designer around, this is probably the way to go, if you can set it up successfully. (Same with industrial designers, depending what they use--the Adobe stuff seems originally intended for Macs anyway.)

I think Pete's question of finding a benchmark to test against is a great idea. I'm always concerned about productivity/dollar, so I've not seen the Mac avenue as being even a close contender--but maybe that's changing. One of the biggest shortfalls has been the limited selection of software, but on a Windows platform (which I hope is at LEAST as stable as its native format--I can certainly deride Windows, too) perhaps that issue disappears and you end up with a much more versatile machine?

Maybe in the future we'll all just learn to get along--and the penguin will use a 12-button mouse with an Intel machine?



Jeff Mowry
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

I would like to try a MAC Pro for my engineering applications but they're not cost affective compared to a WinTell box.

Once upon a time (way before me) our entire engineering departement were on MACs running ACAD & Vellum. This was driven by the VP of Engineering and still a few diehards to this day. This might have made sense back in the early 90s when one had to run UNIX based machines to be able run high-powered MCAD like Pro/E, CATIA, UG, IDEAS & FEA. I remember the first version of Pro/E & Pro/Jr that were piped for WinNT....it was the cats meow because we no longer had to shell out $40K for a SGI or HP unix workstation. So we have a handful narrow minded diehard MAC users that insist on everthing MAC....it's comical to here them talk about there MACs. They feel the need to defend their machines.....don't know where that comes from

Heckler
Sr. Mechanical Engineer
SWx 2007 SP 2.0 & Pro/E 2001
XP Pro SP2.0 P4 3.6 GHz, 1GB RAM
NVIDIA Quadro FX 1400
o
_`\(,_
(_)/ (_)

(In reference to David Beckham) "He can't kick with his left foot, he can't tackle, he can't head the ball and he doesn't score many goals. Apart from that, he's all right." -- George Best

G1Design, thanks for the Boot Camp recommendation. About graphics.. You say the ATI card in your Macbook Pro doesn't present a problem, but the Solidworks web page lists this card as having a "limited number of accelerated windows". I've tried running Solidworks on an Nvidia GeForce that had this limitation, and the performance (even with simple assemblies) was inferior to my Nvidia QuadroFX even though they were comparably priced and had the same video RAM. I'm not very knowledgeable about computer hardware, but it seems that graphics cards designed specifically for 3D CAD really are the best ones to use. So my question is, what is the graphical performance like on your MacBook Pro? Is it inferior to your Mac Pro even with simple assemblies? My main reason for wanting a MacBook Pro or iMac rather than Mac Pro is portability from office to conference room.

Chris Montgomery
Mechanical Engineer

guys its early days yet with this so ill keep posting my findings

ati cards have really always been off(way off) my picklist

the problem with the graphics isnt major for me at any rate
i can have 15to20 parts openedin their own window and itrunsno problem if i tile then thisis when things get funky

I hink people need to realise that now that "Mactels" exist, it's not Mac vs. PC anymore but rather OS-X vs. Windows.

Inside a mac, you have the same things as in a PC: hard drive, processor, graphics card, RAM, etc.

I think people realize that "Mactels" exist. I am just skeptical of how a "Mactel" would run SolidWorks better for a better price then a windoze box. I want to use the best tool for the money to do my work. I am skeptical that a Mactel fits the bill. I am sure they are nice, just not cost effective for some serious several hundred part SolidWorks assemblies. I hope they improve, as this only serves to bring more competition to the marketplace whch always results in better cheaper products for us.

Pete

A BMW might be the "ultimate driving machine", but I don't know why that gets all the big press and prestige. You pay the ultimate driving price. So what? An $80K Japanese car would be rather ultimate as well (and probably less expensive to maintain).

I relate this because Macs are marketed to a niche, somewhat similar to how BMWs are marketed. But this fails to address the bang/buck question--which is the only question I'm interested in answering when buying a work-horse sort of machine. Performance and reliability are rolled up in the bang/buck consideration. I think the marketing tactics skew what's important in this whole topic--and since we do not seem to have any performance benchmarks, this seems to come down to speculation on what's a "nice" machine for SolidWorks.

In reviewing the benchmarks that ARE available, I've found Xi Computers (PC) to be quite the value. I wonder how Macs would compare.



Jeff Mowry
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

Aside from the packaging (admittedly a secondary concern), yes it really does come down to the OS. One factor that is frequently overlooked, especially with laptops, is hardware/software integration. For example, everyone I know with a Windows laptop is in the habit of folding the screen down only partially when they are away, so that they don't trigger any power management features which might cause problems. I've found that power management on my Macbook Pro works flawlessly, probably because Apple controls the integration of hardware and power management software. Software, device drivers and firmware are kept current automatically. Everything works like it's supposed to. Microsoft will never match Apple's level of refinement because Microsoft doesn't make the computers their OS runs on. Of course it is more expensive to have one company make your computer and OS and be accountable for both. With Windows machines, no one is accountable for hardware/software integration. I'm glad Microsoft is around to keep Apple working hard, but if there was an OS-X native version of Solidworks I would never use Windows again. I suppose that is a pipe dream though, so now I'm looking at a Dell M90. Anyone have one?


Chris Montgomery
Mechanical Engineer

To address several of the comments here. I run Solidworks on a MacBook Pro. It works great under Windows XP SP2, running under Boot Camp. It works equally well running under Parallels (my preferred mode of usage as it lets me keep the OS X desktop open, but I don't give it as many resouces or memory.) No, my Macbook Pro doesn't have a high end Quadro card, (It's an ATI 1600) but it seems to work just fine, at least for the types of parts and assemblies I do. My most complicated assembly might contain 100 parts total, many contained within sub assemblies. It handles this with ease, and so far, no funny video glitches. I have no idea how it would handle monster assemblies.

Now for some background. I am not a Mac evangelist or zealot, like so many of the Mac community are. I am a longtime PC user who only recently made the switch to Mac OS X. I only began to consider doing that after Apple switched to the "Mactel" platform. This seriously reduced the cost of their hardware, while providing a major performance boost. The other thing that happened was thet Intel added virtual machine instructions to the CPU's, making it super easy to create a virtual Windows (or other OS's) environment under OS X.

Cost) Old CW: Macs cost more then PC's. This really isn't the case anymore based on my recent shopping experience. That being said, it certainly used to be! 2X-3X the cost of a PC was the main reason I never considered Apple's stuff before. When I went shopping for a new laptop/desktop replacement machine a few months ago, I did the cost comparison between Dell, Gateway, Toshiba, Sony, and Apple machines. The Apple was the CHEAPEST with a common configuration. (17", 2.33 GHz C2D, 2 GB Ram, 160 GB Hard Disk, etc . . .) Now, one of the drawbacks is that Apple generally doesn't make lower end hardware that you would want, but their upper end stuff is very competitive on price. The best way to keep the cost in line is to stay far away from the Apple owned stores (except to go and play, of course), and buy from an independent dealer. I paid $2500 for a $2799 list configuration. BTW, Dell wanted $2850 for the same basic configuration, and the others either didn't have what I wanted, or cost even more.

OS) Mac OS X is just an amazingly intuitive interface/OS. After playing with Vista Ultimate on a brand new machine at work, I couldn't clean it off fast enough. I'm back running XP Pro for stability at work. My time with Vista just didn't impress me. It felt like XP, but with some semi-pretty smoke and mirrors additions (primarily Aero) that didn't really improve the way it works, at least in my opinion. Plus, it is a major resource hog. What happened to all of the cool new features that were SUPPOSED to be in Vista? We seemed to get the additional overhead, but none of the really cool new features (Aero being the exception.) Vista also didn't seem to want to get along with my brand new HP printer while running on a brand new HP box. So much for all new hardware working properly under Vista.

Mac OS X however, really turns out to be super easy to migrate to. Everything just seems to work the way I think a computer should work. I was amazed at how polished and intuitive this OS is. I've never even looked at online help.

Thanks to Parallels, Windows XP is always sitting there ready to run any software that can't run under OS X. I have an older Windows piece of software that I use for interfacing to some electronics, and it has no OS X option. It's pretty cool to see it running in what looks like an XP window floating on your OS X desktop.

As an old tech geek, it's fun to play with the *nix system that is the underpinnings for OS X. There are elements of BSD Unix, Linux, NEXTStep, and others, that are incorporated into OS X. If you like to write Unix scripts to automate stuff, OS X is the way to go.

I guess I switched to Macs, for the same reason I drive BMW's (I had to sneak that in, Theophilus) I finally realized that the price of entry (i.e. bang for the buck) isn't the entire cost of ownership. My time is valuable to me, and I need stuff that actually works, which maximizes my efficiency, making me more productive, and that I derive true enjoyment from using. My BMW's just work, are fantastic to drive, and if I have any problems, the dealer bends over backwards to resolve it. Ignoring their marketing, they really do have a great product. I could drive a Toyota, and it would be reliable, and get me there, but gosh what a boring appliance.

GoWithTheFlow is correct. It really has turned into a debate over OS X vs. Windows. Windows has turned into a boring (to me anyway) to use tool that is at least stable in XP guise. OS X on the MAC has made me more productive, plus it's fun. My next project is to tweak my work box (HP) into what's called a "Hackintosh". I want OS X at work too! I would love to see Solidworks port over to OS X. Since it's essentially Unix at it's core, this should actually be a rather easy thing to do. I'm sure it will only happen if OS X increases it's market share beyond the 5% it currently has.

Sorry for the diatribe, but since I recently made the switch, I felt like it would be good to share the experience.





-Tony Staples

Thanks, Tony. I'd give you a couple of stars for that post, but it seems I can only afford one right now.

I now feel as though I've had a bit of an education as to where the Mac stuff is. I've started another thread somewhere that takes a healthy jab at the Windows OS--I've not seen a more amazing piece of slacking for a company with Microsoft's apparent resources than their newest OS. The Titanic is beginning to sink, and they had the world in the palm of their hand--what an amazing waste!

For what it's worth, I factor more than price of entry into bang/buck. It's the entire experience. If I have to fight my OS to get a color print, that's me taking a hit on behalf of my system--I HATE that. I'm an independent contractor, so I must take personal responsibility for anything that costs my little LLC time or money (same basic thing). So if I'm working all night because my computer is giving me grief (or SolidWorks or ANIMATOR [ug!]), I look for any available way to solve the problem and get my bang/buck quotient where I want it.

So, Microsoft is failing again, and the competition isn't just Linux. Looks like we may have an interesting future.

I hereby take back all slights I've issued against Macs--to be henceforth reissued at any time if deemed worthy of reapplication--with the exception of the stupid non-button mouse and its derivatives.

I'd love to see more info on this and what sort of performance can be had with SolidWorks and a Mac platform--hardware or software.



Jeff Mowry
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.

Tony,

Thanks for the post. Would there be any way you could do a benchmark for us? I would be interested in seeing that.

Pete