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    Solidworks on a Macbook Pro

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by Deathcon_5, Apr 11, 2011.

  1. Deathcon_5

    Deathcon_5 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Has anyone used Solidworks on a MacBook Pro? Especially the 2011 models. I'm trying to determine whether a Mac would be adequate for my Engineering studies at college. I've used Solidworks on some pretty sucky hardware and I don't want to be stuck with that for 4 years.
     
    Deathcon_5, Apr 11, 2011
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  2. directeuphorium

    directeuphorium Notebook Evangelist

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    their website says only edrawings will work with osx. They recommend a Windows OS. And list windows as one of the system requirements.

    Just because you can install windows on a mac, doesn't mean it'll work as well as a dedicated windows system.
     
    directeuphorium, Apr 12, 2011
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  3. dkwhite

    dkwhite Notebook Deity

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    Don't see why not if you dual boot. Problem is, they have a definite list of cards they will support. Which means, if there is a problem, they will blame it on the gpu and get out of supporting the product.
     
    dkwhite, Apr 12, 2011
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  4. Deathcon_5

    Deathcon_5 Notebook Enthusiast

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    Yea, the other option I'm considering is a ThinkPad W520 which has a supported card, but I'd much rather go with the mac. I read on their forums that the 3000 is pretty much unsuable, but no one has mentioned either the AMD 6490 or 6750. Anyone try SolidWorks on those?
     
    Deathcon_5, Apr 12, 2011
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  5. dkwhite

    dkwhite Notebook Deity

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    the 6750 should be fine for what you are doing, i mean honestly, unless you want to spend 3k on a gaming rig to really handle Solidworks, the MBP should do you just fine.

    I'll tell you what. I have an MBP for the first time, and 2 things I really like about it, the battery life, and the form factor. It's slim and light. That really means alot when you are always on the go.

    I'm still on the fence about OS X. Some things Windows just does better.
     
    dkwhite, Apr 12, 2011
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  6. Naix

    Naix Notebook Consultant

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    Im running solid works on parallels desktop 6 and its pretty slow. I have 2010 MBP 13" with 4 gigs of ram. I think if I increase ram it will be faster. Also I also think running on bootcamp will be faster as well since I get to use the 4 gbs of ram. I only have 1.5 gbs for my virtual machine windows 7 x64.... I dont want to use bootcamp b/c driver issues.

    Overall its fine. I can still use solid works to do all of my hw with my MBP.
     
    Naix, Apr 13, 2011
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