Your user interface is something you look at and use all the time—that’s why we’re always working on improving its clarity and crispness. With AutoCAD 2020 for Mac, the dark theme has a modern dark blue interface designed to work with recent icon improvements. I used autocad on a mac around 2014-2015, the UI took some getting used to but was otherwise ok. The biggest issue was that there were a lot of limitations, commands that were straight up missing, weirdly limited plotting options, I forget what else. I normally use AutoCAD architecture on a PC, as well as Sketchup, and am learning to use Revit. Once you download AutoCAD for Mac you'll soon see that it has nothing to envy of the Windows version. It has exactly that same functions and is totally adapted to Apple's system. The great advantage of using the original AutoCAD on Mac is that you'll now have total compatibility with the DWG files generated with any AutoCAD, regardless of the platform on which they were created.
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.
Passfab ios password manager 1 3 2 player games. 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…
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.
Can We Use Autocad In Macbook Air 13.3
By xushanna
Philippines
I love using my macbook but i just found out that Autocad software doesn't run on macbook. I need Cad for my work, now i'm thinking should I buy a windows laptop so I can use Autocad or study another cad software that runs on mac. A lot of people mentioned Archicad which runs on macbook but I don't know how it works, whether it's somewhat similar to Autocad. I hope Autodesk would come up with something for mac, bec. it would be difficult to switch software now.
1 response
@theprogamer (10539)
4 Jul 08
Well Xushanna if you really want CAD on Mac, I found a forum which has the question similar to yours. The people there discuss getting bootcamp or parallels for your Macbook http://architoshforums.forest.net/showthread.php?t=1860 For bootcamp, you can find that at the apple site to see some detail of the features. The program allows the user to run XP on a Mac in case a program requires windows. http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/bootcamp.html For parallels, you can follow this blogspot about how to insall it on Macbook. Be sure to read directions very carefully for both links. http://technoslice.blogspot.com/ Here's a comparison of the two options. In the end it'll be your choice as to which one you'll want to use to run windows and AutoCAD http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2990&article=Apple+Bootcamp+versus+Parallels Other than that, it seemed like the AutoCad, Parallels and Macbook worked better with 2 GBs of RAM
• Philippines
Can We Use Autocad In Macbook Air Features
Thanks for the response, really appreciate it. I'll check some of the sights you've mention.