- Nov 12, 2009 Apple Bootcamp is still faster performance overall because it is running Windows natively, but you also must boot to Windows on your Mac with Bootcamp. The sweet spot with Parallels Desktop is that I can run AutoCAD 2010 and other Windows applications on my Macbook Pro and still use my Finder or other Mac applications at the same time.
- Jul 26, 2017 MacBook Air (13 in, Early 2014), 1.4 GHz Intel Core i5 4G RAM 1600 MHz DDR3 Intel HD Graphics 5000 1536 MB Few softwares are installed such as Autocad, Sketchup, Photoshop, Illustrator, and some minor applications.
Lenovo Ideapad L340 17 Inch Laptop For AutoCAD. Topping this list with Lenovo Ideapad L340, it. Mar 21, 2020 If you like MacBook and looking for buying for AutoCAD work then this Apple MacBook Pro is the best option for you. If we talk about the display of then this new MacBook Pro has got 16 inches of LED-backlit Retina display with 3072 x 1920 pixels of resolution. System requirements for AutoCAD for Mac 2020; Operating System: Apple® macOS® Catalina v10.15 (requires Update 2020.1) Apple® macOS® Mojave v10.14; Apple® macOS® High Sierra v10.13; Model: Apple Mac Pro® 4,1 or later; MacBook Pro® 5,1 or later; iMac® 8.1 or later; Mac mini® 3.1 or later; MacBook Air® 2.1 or later; MacBook® 5.1.
The 15' MacBook Pro is the one you want. The graphics cards on the 13' MBP and MacBook Air will struggle with AutoCAD.
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I'm currently using the 15' MBP with Windows 7 (BootCamp) and running AutoCAD 2012. This is a far better option than running AutoCAD for Mac as I, like you, have a requirement for 3rd party plug-ins.
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In addition to the plug-in requirements I also have the need for AutoCAD software that actually works! The AutoCAD for Mac is a half baked idea and really needs a lot of development. I tried to use it for a while but switch to the BootCamp solution as soon as I discovered that AutoCAD for Mac has no function to export to DWF.
But back to the point. 15' MacBook Pro minimum for smooth effortless performance.
I had a brief similar discussion a few months back that you may find interesting. Mixing software, free download pc.
Let me know how you get on
Bryan
Aug 3, 2011 4:39 PM
I know that that the title to this post seems a bit strange coming from someone that does AutoCAD development. The last version of AutoCAD that I am aware of that ran on an Apple was Release 12. However, that is not the nature of this post…
What I wanted to write about is something that I have been doing for some time now and thought that it may be of interest to others that do AutoCAD programming. What i would like to discuss is using a Virtual Machine for testing AutoCAD custom applications in different possible configurations.
To start with I have used Microsoft Virtual PC, VMWare and Parallels on Windows XP systems for testing, but have also expanded this testing to using VMWare Fusion, Parallels and Apple BootCamp on Mac OSX…
Since Apple has changed to Intel processors things have changed with the ability to use an Apple system as your primary or at least as a secondary system for use with AutoCAD and other Windows Applications. My personal testing has been with four different Apple machines which are a Mac Mini, MacBook, MacBook Pro and my current system a MacBook Air.
On my PC systems I am currently using Microsoft Virtual PC for Virtual Machines to test AutoCAD applications and configurations. The primary reason for this is that it is a free download from Microsoft and for doing application testing I seldom need the added features that VMWare offers.
On to the Apple Mac OSX environment…
First it is not really applicable to discuss Apple BootCamp as a Virtual Machine, it truly is just a dual boot and the Apple BootCamp install emulates the system Bios and adds windows drivers for the Apple Hardware. BootCamp runs AutoCAD and/or Inventor in a very native mode and for most situations you would not know the difference from running in BootCamp vs. a regular PC. An interesting feature that both VMWare Fusion and Parallels have added to their applications is the ability to use the BootCamp partition as a bootable Virtual Machine drive. What this means is that if you are doing heavy work and need all of the system hardware performance, you would boot directly into BootCamp partition and work with full memory and graphic card capabilities, but if you are in Mac OSX and just need to fire up AutoCAD to view a drawing or do some simple testing, you could start VMWare Fusion or Parallels and have access to that installed version of your Applications…
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I do not have hard test data for the following comments, but all are from hands on running Virtual Machines on PC's and Apple Mac OSX systems. The first thing that I notice is that under MacOSX Virtual Machines seem to be more stable in that I have fewer lockups and or crashes. Other than VMWare Fusion being able to utilize both cores of a Core 2 system most hardware features translate similar for both Parallels and VMWare Fusion.
VMWare Fusion… a copy of this will typically cost around $79, the system allows you to apply both cores and has a ‘Beta' version built in for handling 3D graphics which creates a VM that has a 128mb virtual graphics adaptor (typically VM graphics adaptors are 8-16mb). This worked well for versions of AutoCAD through Rel2008, but installing Rel2009 the graphics did not play well with the new WPF menus in Rel 2009. Take care when creating your VM for Hard drive size, because it is very dificult to increase a hard drive size.
Parallels…typical pricing and performance as VMWARE Fusion, the 3D graphics settings in this allows up to a 64mb virtual graphics adaptor. This does seem to function overall well with Rel 2009 WPF menus. The performance is about the same from hands on testing, the feeling is that there is an occaisional hesitation in Parallels that I do not notice in VMWare Fusion with same memory configurations (1 mb ram for VM), but increasing memory seems to correct this hesitation.
In Summary if running these on a Macbook, you want all the processor available and as much memory as possible. Back to the machine in the title of this post which is a MacBook Air, the one I currently am using is the base system which is 1.6mhz Core 2 duo, 2 gb ram and 80gig drive. It does run both successful and usually reserve 1.2 mb for ram…
One last comment that I do when creating Virtual Machines is to install the version of windows (typically XP needs about 4-5 gb and Vista 6-8gb) and then keep an additional 4-6 gb for installing applications, I then go through windows and remove everything possible that will not be required for testing (e.g. games, printers and fax drivers etc) which usually allows me to gain about a gig back. This gives me a good base system that I can the create a copy from for installing AutoCAD and/or other applications.
