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Anyone running SolidWorks on a Mac? 15

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cmm

cmm

Mechanical
Jan 11, 2002
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US
Anyone running SW via Boot Camp or Parallels? I notice someone posted this question mid last year. Currently only Mac Pro has a SW-certified graphics card (Quadro FX 4500) as an option, but I'd rather use the cleaner iMac or a Macbook Pro if I could get away with it. The thought of specifying another piecemeal Wintel box at work makes me cringe now that I've experienced Apple. If on SW ran natively on OSX...


Chris Montgomery
Mechanical Engineer
 
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Theophilus,

As for the stupid one-button apple mice, (Yes, they are just stupid. My first Mouse Systems mouse in oh, say, 1984 had two buttons!) that seems to be a strange quirk of Apple. However, I purchased a Bluetooth mouse from Logitech, and lo and behold, it works just fine, with lots of buttons, a scroll wheel, etc . . .. No DRIVERS Required! (Especially the Logitech drivers, which I have had problems with under Windows) It just works. Amazing. Right clicking gets you a context sensitive menu, just like Windows, or you can configure it to do whatever you like. Since the laptop has built in bluetooth, no dongle is required. It's also cool because it has about 25' of range. When doing presentations to a group with a projector, I can just hold my mouse and use the buttons to move foward and backward through a slideshow, when I'm nowhere near my laptop.

I heard an opinion that the one button mouse was actually done purposefully by Apple to keep software developers in line. As long as one button is the standard, then they have to conform to usability guidelines and ensure that any software has all functions available via a menu selection. If a two button mouse were the standard, then lazy developers might only implement given functions with a right mouse click menu pick. Interesting thought. I've certainly seen that happen in the Windows world. Whether it's good or bad is debatable. I personally like my multi button mice, and OS X happily supports that as well.(With no stinkin drivers required!)

Are their some standard benchmarks that I can run? I could compare my desktop at work with my MBP fairly easily.

-Tony Staples
 
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About the "non-button" mouse.. I guess it is fair to call it that but it is really a 4-"button" mouse with 2-D scroll ball. Two "buttons" are actually capacitive sensors that tell whether your intention is to left click or right click depending on which finger is resting on the mouse when you click. A third "button" is activated by pressing down on the scroll ball. The fourth "button" is activated by squeezing the sides of the mouse (typically this is set to tile all open windows). The capacitive sensing concept is rediculously over-engineered, but it works reliably once you get used to lifting your left finger when you want to right click. I don't know if Mighty Mouse can be configured for Solidworks or not. Anyone know?

Chris Montgomery
Mechanical Engineer
 
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Why are wireless mice called mice (mouse)? There isn't any tails!
I have always dislike Apple mice. They feel awkward to me. I probably feel awkward to them too!

Chris
SolidWorks 07 3.0/PDMWorks 07
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 03-13-07)
 
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Theophilus,

Great article! A star for you. Finally, someone wrote exactly what I've been thinking, based on my playing with Vista. I see that my switch to OS X isn't likely to be the only one. By the way, I also dumped MS Office in favor of OpenOffice.org. I still have XP and Office 2003 on my Windows Partition, should I ever need it, but so far, I really haven't!

You have to give Microsoft credit. They created the most "compelling" OS yet, in Vista. It is what compelled me to find a better alternative. The various Linux variants are definitely worth looking at. I have an old Athlon 2200 box at home that runs great with Linux. It runs some Unix scripts checking on my financial investments (emailing my Crackberry with any real time information I need to see), and runs my X10 home automation controller. The main reason I didn't migrate to Linux for my everday system is that it's not as intuitive as OS X. And since *nix and Nextstep are essentially what OS X is built on . . .. So long as Jobs a crew keep providing me with good value, and don't go back to the old Apple days of charging 2X-3X prices for equivalent performance, then I'm happy!

-Tony Staples
 
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Vista just needs some time. Thats all. I think when this guy in the article Jeff posted looks back five years from now, he will view that article as containing some arrogance and stupidity. Forcing people into Vista was a way for them to rapidly bring all of its faults to the forefront, and in the long run, will proably actually be good for people. My old man still runs 98SE and doesn't see whats wrong with it. Sure, its a guerrilla tactic, and their licencing is out of control, but Bill Gates has been quoted as saying 'business is war.'

OS X is cool if you just don't get it-(which is why there is only one button and people paid 3x for sub par hardware and a bubbly OS)...


Meanwhile people are paying 99cents a song for sub quality 128kbs mp4's which will only work on a few machines. Apple is all about trapping you with their apps, data, and hardware so you will never leave. They are worse than Microsoft. They act like they are making it easy for you but they are actually making you rely on them. I've met more mac users who just don't get it. And then sit a user of soley Mac OS X at a Windows or Linux terminal and watch them bumble. I still won't even buy hardware from them even though it can run windows.

Redhat is cool if you are an open source junky. We eval'd some 30K apps that only ran on Linux and installing this stuff and Licence Keys was a nightmare. In a perfect world Linux would rule the world, but if it did it would become as big of a money pig as Microsoft. Money is what drives development, just look at SolidWorks vs your generic open source CAD app.

lets face it. The professional computing world is Windows, and will continue to be windows for a while. If you cant beat em, then you might as well join em. I'll be on Vista in a year and a half or so.

RFUS
 
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Hello, can someone explain in simple terms just what exactly one needs to do in order to run Solidworks on a new Mac? For instance, what extra software peripherals you need etc. Thanks in advace for any help.
 
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G1DESIGN, looks like you're right. Any updates on your findings? The discussion is certainly getting interesting.

rfus, I think you're right, too, about things smoothing out a bit in the near future. But I don't know if we'll ever see Vista smooth out as much as we may expect (hope). I went to Costco the other night and just the UPGRADE for Vista (Supreme or whatever it's called) was almost $300! Whatever. Frankly, I don't need the eye candy, and I don't see what they offer other than eye candy that will make me more productive (except for maybe a higher RAM limit in 64-bit land).

On the other hand, I saw the Apple music scam a mile away (only their format forever? I don't think so!) and I have no plans ever to be adorned with white sub-par "earbuds". Again, whatever.

I think one thing the OS market isn't quite "getting" right now is that people are much better able to inform themselves of the products they may purchase than back in 2001 when XP was introduced. This makes the flaws of the product stand out boldly before anyone ever has to learn the hard way. This means the market is more and more likely to be based on merit than on whatever happens to be the standard. As we get platforms that increasingly play nice with one another (or at least can share documents), merit will increasingly serve in benefiting the end users. And shoddy products will either shape up or disappear. Good riddance. (What ever happened to once-dominant RealPlayer? HA!)



Jeff Mowry
Reason trumps all. And awe transcends reason.
 
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Razberryjones,

All you need are an Intel Based Mac running OS 10.4.8 or higher, Solidworks, A Windows XP SP2 CD, and you must download BootCamp free from Apple, which also creates a driver CD for Windows XP SP2. The Windows XP CD has to be SP2 on the CD, not an earlier release that you would then download updates for. I have no idea why, but it's a requirement from Apple.

You partition your Intel based Mac with BootCamp. I created a 40 GB WIndows Partition, and kept the remaining 120 MB for OS X. You then load Windows XP SP2 onto the new partition. Once this is complete, you can either boot OS X, or Windows XP (Your choice at startup.) When you boot Windows XP, it operates exactly as you would expect any Windows box to act (because it's all the same basic hardware!) You can then run Solidworks under XP.

The next step up is to purchase a third party program called Parallels ($79 list, usually cheaper. I paid $59 at Fry's.) This runs under OS X, and also requires Windows XP to be loaded. Parallels creates a virtual machine under OS X that Windows XP then runs within. Solidworks then runs inside that setup, but with one major limitation: Graphics Hardware Acceleration is limited. I don't recommend it for big monster assemblies, but it works great for everyday parts and drawings, at least for me. However, you have the advantage of being able to fire up Solidworks directly from within OS X. It pops up in what looks like a Windows XP framed window floating over what is otherwise your native OS X desktop. It then gets treated the same as any other OS X application, and can be minimized, re-sized, etc . . .. It's pretty cool.

I have my machine (17" MBP 2.33GHz C2D, 2GB Ram, ATI 1600) setup to do either, and I use it in Parallels mode most of the time.

-Tony Staples
 
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rfus,
You said:
"Vista just needs some time. Thats all. I think when this guy in the article Jeff posted looks back five years from now, he will view that article as containing some arrogance and stupidity. Forcing people into Vista was a way for them to rapidly bring all of its faults to the forefront, and in the long run, will proably actually be good for people."

I respectfully disagree with your point. If they want to bring a new operating system out, fine. Please debug it and make it work properly before you foist it on me. Don't make me pay through the nose for new hardware and software, so I can help finish doing the development work for you. I don’t see how it’s good for me to have my productivity reduced because I’m constantly chasing unresolved issues with the OS.

In the automotive business, it is analogous to GM foisting Corvairs, Oldsmobile Diesels, and Cadillac’s V8-6-4's onto the automotive public before they were completely sorted out. Those did nothing to help GM's reputation, and soured many customers. (I don't mean to pick solely on GM, but since I married into a GM family, and went to GMI, it is what I'm most familiar with. Other OEM's have their own foibles.)


You also said:
"lets face it. The professional computing world is Windows, and will continue to be windows for a while. If you cant beat em, then you might as well join em. I'll be on Vista in a year and a half or so."

That statement made me feel old. <lol> I’m old enough to remember when the professional (at least Technical Engineering and CAD world) computing world used to be primarily Unix, and migrated to PC/Windows, once it’s capabilities improved, because of price performance. I was one of the biggest proponents of doing this back in the late 80's and early 90's when we were paying princely sums for Apollos, Suns, HP U/X, SGI's, and what have you. Well, Unix begat NextStep, and NextStep is essentially what OS X was developed from. I have seen the argument made that OS X is really just NextStep 5 or 6, and it’s fairly plausible. When you look under the hood at OS X, it's Unix (primarily BSD), Mach, and NextStep at it's core. I look at my switch to OS X as just heading back to a more stable foundation in which to do my technical computing, and oh by the way, it’s a more capable media environment as well. It’s just icing on the cake if my wife, who doesn’t have the same desire to tinker with her computer hardware, can effortlessly use the MAC without any drama, or training, for that matter.

And finally:
"OS X is cool if you just don't get it-(which is why there is only one button and people paid 3x for sub par hardware and a bubbly OS)... or if you are this guy."

I’m definitely not that guy! <lol> While I find the current crop of Apple commercials funny, I think they actually do more harm than good. They further reinforce the stereotypes that have existed for too long. OS X seems like a darn good technical computing platform to me. It has all of the advantages of *nix (security, multi-threading, almost bulletproof stability, etc . . .,) an attractive interface, and it’s ported to affordable high performance hardware. I don’t think you have actually priced Apple’s hardware lately. It’s definitely not 2x-3x anymore. Your statement used to be true, but I don’t see it so much so now, especially for Notebooks. It’s anywhere from par, to 20% higher.

The only thing that I would love to see is Apple open it up to more non-Apple hardware. However, I’m wise enough to know that if they do that, it’s bad for their bottom line. Hardware is part of their business, and profit is what funds more development. I’m a die hard capitalist and believe in free markets. If Apple can charge a little more, and be successful, then there must be a reason.

I've used everything from an Altair my Dad and I built from an kit, to an OSI, to DEC's, to IBM PC's running DOS, and on to various X86 based systems running various OS's including every flavor of Windows starting with 3.0 (not 3.1, 3.0!), plus various Unix workstations on Motorola and RISC chips. I even wrote my own real-time controls OS for the 80286 chip back in college, for a major project. I was overclocking 5150 PC’s and 5160 XT’s before overclocking was coined as a term. I'm fairly certain that "I get it" when it comes to computing, and yet I still find OS X to be really cool.



-Tony Staples
 
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Well I have been a Mac person for years then forced to switch to PC's. I spend so much time keeping them running correctly it is frustrating. Probably format twice a year wasting at least a day each time. My certified Dell M70 is getting slower by the day, time to reformat, Solidworks crashed on me 3 times yesterday in simple parts files, no assembly.

So I go price a new M65 loaded to the same specs as the Macbook pro and the Mac is $36 cheaper than the Dell.

If I can dual boot and make my Solidworks and Rhino run I'm there. Vista looks like a nightmare, Dell support has been crappy, bad screen and a bad keyboard on my two last Dells.

If I can plug in the correct mouse, switch to Mac, I think I'm there unless someone can tell me a real reason not to switch back after 10 years of hell. ? They are both PC's after all but Apple makes their own operating system as well as computers so it stands to reason they know how their stuff goes together better than anyone else
 
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I tried this on my wife's iMac today, and it runs pretty well. I was surprised how easy this was to set up. Windows looks strange on a Mac. Thanks tstaples!
 
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Suhr,

Since all of the new Macs come with Bluetooth standard, there is no need to "plug in" your new mouse. I use a Logitech Bluetooth mouse, and it works great.

pdybeck,

I will try to set up an run some benchmarks later this week. I'm swamped at the moment. I'll post some results when I'm done.



-Tony Staples
 
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Tony,

I tried to customize a Mac system even comparable to a system I built last year: 4.2Ghz AMD FX-60 64bit Dual Core, 4GB RAM, 10,000 RPM 300GB SATA, NVidia Quadro FX3450, 24" WUXGA Dell 1900x1200, 16x DVD+RW, 24bit Soundcard, gig wireless card, plus other bells and wistles system I put together with XP Pro 64 and 32 OS and tons of other software (not to mention how much open source stuff there is for windows, not to mention how easy and free it is to create partitions and use Linux or FreeBSD, ).....

Customizing a Mac to something comparable puts it at around 2x what I paid for this system.

As you are well aware, every OS has certain advantages. Windows definately has things that drives developers around here nuts, and I did not mean to imply that you don't get it if you use or develop on OS X, or Unix, as you put it. Apple gets computing. They were using intel chips in house long before they ever sold a piece of hardware with an intel chip. They just seem to be targeting the point and click crowd. Their business model doesn't seem to fit into my professional computing needs. Thier hardware prices don't fit into my budget. Their whole iXXXX line of software for OS X, Safari, lack of open souce software, and inability to buy OS X without buying hardware, etc... just turns me off. I do get sick of fixing my friends Windows systems, so thats not a bad point about your wife.

Sorry to make you feel old. I liked your overclocking story. The 5150 was my first computer. 4.77MHz processor up? I had a couple of the Performa series macs around back in the 90's but I never took to them.

I work for a company that develops software for Windows and Hardware components (i'm on the hardware side). I am already amazed at some of the doors that have been opened by Vista and Direct X 10 (and on the higher end of computing, the ability to throw memory management out the window with the advent of x64). From a productivity standpoint staying on XP is the place for me, but from a development standpoint and looking into the future, Vista has opened a whole new world.

I don't like beta testing stuff I bought, but that doen't mean that I won't do it. Solidworks releases stuff with bugs. Windows does. My company does. What is this holy grail that the Apple development team drinks from that makes them impervious to bugs as they move from Cheetah to Puma to Jaguar to Panther. It must be Steve Jobs.
 
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