Solidworks on Mac OS X?

The day it does port to Mac, is the day I buy my first Mac!

Wouldn't it be nice to have a consistent hardware platform. Or maybe the grass just looks greener.

John Layne

"John Layne" grass just looks greener.

Well, if I knew (for sure) they were working on port, I would commit to Solidworks (windows version for now) . I'm a mechanical engineer, and I want to start doing more 3D mechanical design. So I'm looking for a good platform to standardize on.

I currently don't use a Mac (still on an older P4 XP machine) but would like to make the switch. As with you, the main thing holding me back is the lack of a good MCAD product. All the other software I use has either an OS X version or a good OS X alternative available. The closest in this is area appears to Ashlar-Vellum's Cobalt, but I don't think it does everything products like Solidworks or ProE do. Given how popular Solidworks is (and that they just came out with the eDrawings thing) I thought they might be the most likely one to do a port, and was hoping someone might have some inside info.

One other article I saw speculated that with Apple switching to Intel processors, and with Intel's built in "virtualization" technology, it might be possible to run OS X and XP (or Vista) simultaneously on the same (Mactel) machine. Interesting idea, and although not a good as having a native OS X port, might be a good alternative.

Pat

I have SolidWorks 2005 SP 5 on WinXP Pro SP2 open and running on MacOSX

Yeah it is slow running on Virtual PC 7.0.2, but it is usable for checking, changing, saving eDrawings, doing screen shots and maybe a simple construction, when I don't have my Dell M60 close by.

I would bet that we will be able to dual boot Mac OSX and Windows XP by a year or two from now, based on what the developers using Mac OSX on Intel boxes are saying today.

I find it very useful to just go ahead and run both platforms, so I am never slowed down. If the day comes I can revert to one MacIntel box, so much the better.

SolidWorks is too damn good and productive for a mechanical engineer to not be using it and using it now. You will kick yourself for having waited so long on getting SolidWorks, once you are through the initial learning curve.

Bo

It should be possible to run effectively several OSs at the same time this year. Please refer to where it says that HW virtualization support is shipping later this year. The only thing needed is enough physical memory.

As alo indicated, with hardware virtualization technology you'll be able to run both OS's simultaneous (and natively, no emulation!). No need for dual boot. It will be just like being connected to two PC's through a KVM switch, where at the press of a button you switch from one (say, running MS Office on OS X) to the other (running Solidworks on XP). Pretty sweet! Should work especially well on a dual processor machine. At least that's what the virtualization proponents claim.

If it works as well as expected, it will pretty much eliminate the software dilemma of switching platforms and spur a big migration back to the Mac. That's probably a big reason why Jobs decided to switch to Intel.

Lets hope it works. -Pat

I am convinced it will work.

It is only a matter of how well & how fast.

The devil in these things has always been in the implementation rigor and later in bug fixing.

I will enjoy moving back to just one 'box', when it occurs.

Bo No amount of power, effort or money...can retrieve lost time!

I checked out a different page and Parasolid is on Mac OS-X 10.3 or later. Supported platforms for Parasolid: