running NX 8 on new Macbook Pro

[drewr]

thread561-236024
Hi
Ive just ordered the new macbook pro and have decided to convert from a PC to a mac. The main reason is I'm always on the road and I'm sick of carrying my huge Dell Precision M6500 workstation around with its power adapter that is nearly as big and heavy as the laptop itself.
When I see the size and spec of the new macbook I am really hoping NX8 will run smoothly on it?
I work as a designer and design engineer in the consumer electronics industry and open large assembly files with many components.
I am hoping someone can give me some advice on what operating system to run NX8 on? Mac side or windows side?
Is NX 8 even available on a mac yet?
Is it a good decision trying to run NX8 on windows on a macbook pro?

I have four weeks till its delivered and I hope I have made a good decision.....

Anyone with experience running nx on a mac it would be great if you could share with me your experience.

Cheers

Drew

 

[NeilMGW]

I'm running NX 8 on a year old 17" macbook pro (8GB ram, i7 quad and SSD hard drive) using bootcamp and Windows 7 64bit pro. Like you I'm a road warrior (well airplanes mainly) and I have to say the performance has been flawless so far. I also have an LG 21.5 LED monitor that is very light and very thin that I had a padded bag made for and it accompanies me on the longer trips.

I spend nearly all my time in either modelling/shapestudio/assemblies or manufacturing so can't comment on simulation or team centre, plus I've only been using NX for a year but I have to say that I'm more than happy - both with the software and the laptop.

 

[JohnRBaker]

Is NX 8 even available on a mac yet?

Yes it is...

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Industry Sector
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

 

[drewr]

Excellent News!!! Thanks Niel and John. Now I guess the next decision is how to run my license and from what side. Windows or Mac?
If NX 8 is on the Mac side will it run as fast as the windows side or faster? Are all the features the same and all the icons look the same?
I have a locked node license so I guess I need to choose? Do you know if there is a trial version for the Mac side or maybe this is something I need to ask my software distributer for?

Thanks again for your help!!!

 

[blauwwater]

Hi Drewr,

I run the same config as NeilMGW only without the SSD now for two year and MBP is stunning. I was hoping to run NX under OSX also, but Siemens told me after ordering hardware that only the basic version is available under OSX.
I need to do my rendering in highres and use the NX render module. Therefore I'm stuck with W764pro running under bootcamp. but still hoping for the day to come to turn the only windows app I run NX finnaly into OSX. But have my doubts, if that day will come

Cheers

Juul

 

[looslib]

Juul,
You are restricted not because of NX directly, but by the 3rd party vendors that NX interfaces with for the rendering and such. Siemens needs to put pressure on their software suppliers to provide native OSX code.



"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[asadi2013]

Guys, i was wondering any noticeable differences between NX 8 Mac version and windows version? Is it ok to run NX 8 using a macbook that comes with consumer graphics card?

 

[MichaelPrichard]

I've been using NX 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 on my various Macs since Apple came out with the Intel Macbook Pro. I've generally stuck to just running the Windows version inside of a Parallels virtual machine since they've had OpenGL direct pass-through the longest. It was quite impressive 6 years ago just because it worked, but now I find it seamless and far prefer to do all the rest of my work on the Mac side. I've recently tried the Mac native version starting with 7.5 and now with 8.0 and have thus far been annoyed by the shortcomings:

- older style UI running inside of an X window (using X11 app)
- X/Motif fonts/dialogs/controls/buttons are really primitive looking when compared to the modern anti-aliased versions on the latest Mac/Windows.
- no unified toolbar (yet)
- Since Lion came out, it's become unusable. Lots of graphics problems and crashes. The latest version is more stable, but there's still a significant OpenGL problem in the interaction between X, Motif and/or OS X 10.7. I haven't tried installing it yet on my Macbook Pro Retina with 10.8, so perhaps it will magically start working.

From what I've heard, most of these problems should be fixed with 8.5. I'm assuming that the Linux folks are also stuck in X Windows as well, although they've probably got better support for that. For now, I just keep running the PC version inside of Parallels which works very well. While I haven't timed it directly, if "feels" like I'm getting 85%-95% the native performance of running it under Bootcamp and Windows 7 directly.

 

[frankbe]

Since Lion came out, it's become unusable.

I can only concur. I gave up using NX for Mac OS Lion for now. I wouldn't put your hopes too high for 8.5 + Lion

2x NX8.0.1.5 Mach Design
1x Solid Edge ST2

 

[MichaelPrichard]

Just adding an update from my experience with the newly released 8.5 version on my Macbook Pro Retina. Install was easy and seems to be getting better. Thought I've been using a node-locked license since 10.7 due to license server incompatibilities, these appear to have been fixed, at least with my 10.8.2 OS X version. A couple of oddities; hostname now has to include the Mac-standard ".local" portion to work properly.

Biggest disappointment is the same OpenGL (or Motif, or X11) graphics updating problem which causes this weird jitter and dramatically slower updates than the Windows version (on the same machine in emulation!!). I'm hoping I've just got some screwy system configuration, but this has been the same problem on 2 totally different configurations: 2010 MacBook Pro running 10.5-10.7, and 2012 MacBook Retina running 10.7-10.8. Both use NVIDIA graphics chips but very different versions.

If anyone has any experience running the Mac version of NX on 10.7 or 10.8 with any success, I'd love to hear it.

 

[frankbe]

Have you tried Xquartz instead of X11?

2x NX8.0.2.2 Mach Design
NX Beta Tester
1x Solid Edge ST2

 

[Toost]

Don't know if this is of relevance to you at all since i run Windows but, I have seen on the latest generation of Quadro cards, specifically the quadro 1000M ( a notebook card) in Win7 NX is extremely sensitive to the graphics driver. Using the wrong driver there is a number of anomalities and possibly crashes.


Regards,
Tomas

 

[frankbe]

Here's a little follow up:
On my end 2009 Macbook Pro I installed in this sequence:
- Mac OS 10.8.2 Mountain Lion
- XQuartz 2.7.4
- OpenMotif 2.1.32
- NX8.5

NX still runs with severe graphical problems. Only the work area in NX gives trouble; the menus are not affected as it seems. It makes NX on the MBP it a NO-GO for me.
Anybody else having problems with NX on a Macbook Pro?


2x NX8.0.2.2 Mach Design
NX Beta Tester
1x Solid Edge ST2