Solidworks or any CAD Program on Virtual PC on Mac

Skills software and technology
1

Hi:

wondering if anyone had any experience running any CAD programs on Virtual PC. I am considering buying a new PC but I wanted to know if anyone had any experience running PC CAD programs on VPC.

Lemme know…

2

For anyone else who is interested:

I’m very doubtful that VPC will be able to handle SolidWorks.

  1. It requires a minimum of 512MB of RAM and recommends 2GB…VPC
    will only allow a maximum of 512MB and will actually slow down with
    that much allocated. I can only imagine the performance factor with
    SolidWorks.
  2. VPC emulates a graphics card that doesn’t support 3D graphics.
    Anything that you design would have to be very, very simple with no 3D,
    so it would be problematic at best for you to get any satisfactory
    results.

However, having stated all of this, Microsoft does offer you the
opportunity to purchase the product, install your software and, if it
does not work or you are not satisfied, return the product to Microsoft
for a full refund. So, you have nothing to lose except a bit of time if
you wanted to try it.

3

You might want to browse through this section. Topic comes up quite a bit. I don’t use VPC, but quite a few people have commented on it in here.

4

I used it on os9, ran rhino fine, sw2000 also. Slowed down with sw as soon as you tried to do surfaces, not sure if it was because of the surface ability in 2000 or vpc. The rhino site says it won’t work on the new vpc for osx. No clue about any vpc ability on osx. I’m assuming not too many are using 9 anymore. They don’t even sell that one anymore I believe. I’d say it’s only worth trying if you’re on a REALLY tight budget and just need it to learn on. Wouldn’t try it for time sensitive work or really complicated stuff. Build a pc for 600 and get a kvm switcher. costs twice as much as vpc but will work 10x better as long as you have space for another tower.

5

Just buy a PC, you will be much happier. VPC is unstable enough just running basic programs, nevermind something like SW.

6

I’ve pretty much decided to just get a PC so anyone have any recommendations for cards or processors, etc. if I build my own?

7

Most pros use both pc and mac.

Used to be pc mac and unix