Solidworks & MacBook Pro ???

[vertical horizons]

Does anyone use Solidworks on a MacBook Pro?

 

If so, what are the specs on your Mac?

Is there a certain MBP graphics card to look for?

Any MBP graphics cards to avoid?

 

It the Mac can handle SW, I was planning on getting as much RAM as possible & a good sized HD, then using BOOT CAMP, I'd install Windows, then SW onto it.

 

For me, I think that the 13" screen would be too small, but the 15" or 17" would be the right size.

 

I'm sure that the Quad-core setups would handle the load better than the Duo-core setups. But, would the Quad-core machines be adequate?

 

 

Opinions?

[stevsmith]

I previously had SW installed on my MacBook Pro using Boot-camp.

The issue I had was with the retina screen. This made the icons tiny and barely distinguishable. I know SW recently redesigned the UI due to high resolution monitors to allow the icons to be scalable.

 

 

It would be best to ask this query on the SW forums.

[welldriller]

to get to the solidworks & draftsight forums the url is http://www.swym.3ds.com

 

But do not expect to get a quick answer -- you stand a better chance since you paid for you program.

[shift1313]

Solidworks uses Open GL and none of the Macs support that. Macs don't offer workstation graphics cards in laptops like other types. You can get around the OS X issue with bootcamp or parallels but the Graphics is the big issue.

 

What is your reason for trying to do this?

 

As far as ram and processors. Most things in Solidworks will benefit from the fastest single core you can get. Other things like simulation can multithread .I run 6 physical cores and 6 virtual cores for rendering and sim but when modeling just having a fast core is where its at. With a mac you will have degraded visulization and no support for things like RealView. I have no idea how real Graphics solutions like Curvature analysis, rendering etc would work out.

[vertical horizons]

Would an external graphics card help the Mac with the OpenGL?

I've always liked the Mac. If I can get SW to work effectively on one, then that's the way I want to go.

If it's not feasible, then I'll look into windows based laptops.

 

I suppose I should look into whether the Mac has a discrete graphics card or an integrated graphics card.

 

Also, why 1 fast single core?

If 1 fast single core works for you, why not use a fast dual-core, or even a fast quad core?

[shift1313]

I am not a mac guy so i dont know there.

 

Certain functions in Solidworks make use of multi-core processing to split the calculations up. FEA, flow sim, thermal all benefit from 4-6 cores as fast as you can get. More cores typically drop performance as the frequency is key. Rendering is one of those tasks that use multi cores systems well. Even though its usually claimed it doesn't help i have seen jumps in Render performance by turning on Hyper threading giving me virtual cores. To the point where i saw 5min render with 6 physical cores and a 4min render with 6 physical and 6 virtual.

 

Other than sim and render, almost all of the normal stuff you do in Solidworks are single-threaded. So modeling, assembly creation, mates/motion, kinematics and all that stuff will only use one core. More so that first core is typically shared with other stuff so if you run email, web browser, stream music etc you are robbing SW.

 

So in general, if you don't render, don't do simulations there is no reason to buy a ton of cores as they won't get used. If you do a lot of simulations you can see some benefit to get 4 or 6 core machine with a fast processor speed. If you render, this is one area where as many cores as you can get help regardless of speed. The reason for this is because a render can effectively be calculated over multiple cores. Because the raytracing calculates light in small areas those areas can be sent to different cores. With Simulation only so much of the calculations can be done individually because things like stress and how they travel through the mesh need to rely on other calculations and need to happen in order.

[f700es]

Why pay more for a Mac book over a PC, then even more for the external graphics card and then pay for a copy of Windows 10?

 

$2,400 is the least expensive MBP (core i7, 16gb 256 ssd) with a (2gb) dedicated graphics card (2880x1800) and it's an ATI.

$1,200 gets you a PC laptop with core i7, 16gb, 512 ssd and 4gb GTX 1050ti with 15.6 3840x2160 display

[shift1313]

you can also go through us and finance the laptop and solidworks.

 

http://www.mysolidbox.com

 

We do a custom setup OS to run Solidworks at its best. I am going to be running a laptop for the next few months seeing how it compares to my desktop for Solidworks, Fusion, Inventor and mastercam. Ill be runing an i7-7820HQ quad core 2.9ghz with 3.9ghz turbo boost and a quadro p4000 graphics card. 32gb of 2400mhz ram and a 512mb SSD. You can take a look on our site at the creative, engineer and pro series and each shows you their performance in various programs(little gauge icon). One thing you have to remember also is that the graphics card GPU ram thats listed eats up that much of your physical ram. For example if you have a quadro card with 4gb ram and a system with 12gb ram you effectively have 8gb usable. We usually suggest you get at least 12gb ram but its one of those things that you get as much as you can afford/will fit usually.

[vertical horizons]

But, if the graphics card is a dedicated/discrete graphics card, it should have its own memory attached to it. That way, it doesn't have to pull any memory from the pc. Instead, it just uses its own. In your case, your 12gb of memory would be untouched by the graphics card.

[vertical horizons]

What is the make & model of that I7?

Or, is it one that you are building at your company?

[stevsmith]

I'm a big fan of MacBooks. I had one for years and it never ran into any problems apart from running my CAD software.

I ended up ditching a mac upgrade for an I7 Dell XPS15 laptop instead. It does everything I need it to do but I still miss the simplicity and togetherness the MacBook has for non-cad stuff.

[shift1313]

But, if the graphics card is a dedicated/discrete graphics card, it should have its own memory attached to it. That way, it doesn't have to pull any memory from the pc. Instead, it just uses its own. In your case, your 12gb of memory would be untouched by the graphics card.

 

pretty sure it maps to your ram since the pc can't directly access the GPU ram. Could be wrong but this has been my experience and what others have confirmed as well. Not an issue if you load up on RAM but when running the bare minimum for some programs that little bit the GPU needs to map to can stop programs from running well.

[ILoveMadoka]

I once worked for an engineering company using Autodesk Land Desktop 3D and they bought the senior designer the most high end Dell that was available with all the bells and whistles.

It pissed them off when LDD ran faster on his macbook pro !!

 

Heh..heh...

[f700es]

Huh, I'd like to see the spec's of both machine to make any kind of comparison. I do know that LDD does NOT run on OSX so still had to buy windows on top of a more expensive laptop. If they bought a laptop with a quadro card then I am not surprised. One does not need a quadro card to run AutoCAD based products.

[ILoveMadoka]

LDD running in windows goes without saying... :-|

Neither of us work there anymore so the tech specs will forever be a mystery.

 

The mac with whatever win emulator he was running at the time still outperformed the

high end Dell Precision with whatever super-dooper video card they bought him.

It was a laptop and laptops have "minimal options" for video cards (maybe 3?) as I'm sure you know..

At the time you could not get a higher end, bigger, better, faster Dell than they bought.

 

This company was filled with mac haters so the outcome was quite surprising...

It was brought up pretty regularly...

 

The guy in question tried to get all the cad guys macs and they wouldn't do it even after seeing the results for themselves..

 

haters gonna hate...

 

 

The story was this:

They wanted to get max performance and max performance costs more.

So they got approval to buy this nuclear powered pc for my friend.

He had a macbook at home and got to thinking that his mac seemed faster

so he brought his personal mac in one day for some side by side testing.

The mac outperformed. There is a whole engineering dept that saw it first hand.

 

I'm not a civil guy so I don't know the jargon of all the contour, water blah blah blah.

He was the senior designer so he knew what he was doing.

He ran it through the gamut.

He pissed management off every way but Sunday when he showed them.

 

We still laugh about it...

[ILoveMadoka]

No idea how the chips would fall today with all high end graphic intensive laptops out there...

 

It was simply a point in time...

[f700es]

So Windows on the Mac was in "emulation" and not using native hardware????? Ummmmmmm I'm calling "shenanigans".

What tests were done to compare performance? Hate doesn't have anything to do with it. More like "been there, done that"

[shift1313]

One of the big problems will all of this is that some systems just get more time in development than others. It could be a bad gcard driver or just some piece of hardware that wasn't "approved". Some CAD programs want to see really fast processor, others want tons of ram etc. My laptop does great with solidworks, Fusion, mastercam(thats all ive tested so far), but a laptop will never be ideal.

 

Some things that really affect the comparison come down to what was running on the windows machine. If IT has a ton of stuff that has to run, if the user had Outlook open, a browser, streaming music etc. That all comes off the first core on the machine which is also trying to run Solidworks. I am not a "details" guy when it comes to this stuff. I gave up trying to keep up with the tech after building my last computer many years ago. I just use them, but i do know that Solidworks, across the board, requires different things at different times. And just a few years in tech difference can make a big deal.

[f700es]

While very true there is still one constant.........emulation will never be faster than native hardware.

[ILoveMadoka]

I was in I.T. at the time and set the machine up.

The Eng Dept ordered it so all I did was install the apps.

Back then you didn't need tons of security software.

I think we were running Norton or McAfee AV and nothing else.

I would always remove all the BS that Dell had pre-installed.

 

The mac belonged to my friend and I don't know if he

was running Parallels/Boot Camp/VM Ware.

(I can see the armies gathering.)

I couldn't care less if ANY of you believe it. :-|

I was there, I believe my friend.

I don't know LDD or what features are more intensive than others.

So I don't know which functions/procedures or what he used as a benchmark...

 

In reality...

What kind of idiot would want to work on a slower system in a production environment?

 

If I had access to some nuclear supercomputer, I'd be damned if I'd work on anything else...

I just know if you went by his desk, he did his design work (LDD) on the mac.

 

If you want to hate anyone, hate him.

 

I guess to all of you, I saw Bigfoot or a Unicorn or a UFO.

I don't make the news, I just report it.

 

It's starting to look like a Microsoft commercial filled with Mac-haters and if I had HD Video showcasing

the performance benchmarks, someone would say the video was fake.

 

If you drive a Camaro then drive a Mustang and the Mustang is faster,

you don't go back to the Camaro and see "why."

You stick with what gets you to your destination the fastest.

Edited August 29, 2017 by ILoveMadoka