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Open discussion on Macs & graphics cards

Question asked by Ben Foster on Aug 10, 2010
Latest reply on Aug 11, 2010 by Charles Culp

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(Relating to all the OSX Mac, graphics cards and bootcamp blogs)

If "Solidworks" wanted to get a real estimate of the OSX market then surely releasing "windows os" graphics card drivers that were specifically for iMac & Powerbook graphics cards running in bootcamp would do the trick? Even if they were unofficial slightly glitchy beta releases or didn't perform quite as well as the professional cards, people would still download the drivers and try them out.

I'm oblivious to the technical difficulties but as there are only a limited number of graphics cards in use in iMacs and Powerbooks which use intel processors, the ordeal wouldn't be so bad.... would it? It would also reach out further than a petition and it'd be easier than designing an OSX native version of Solidworks.

Ben

27" i7 iMac 4gig ram ATI Radeon HD 4850 OSX 10.6 Bootcamp XP 32bit

Fat chance they'll ever provide support for this though

No one else has this question

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Anna Wood Aug 11, 2010 1:09 AM

SolidWorks does not develop graphics drivers.

ATI, Nvidia, Apple, Dell, HP, etc develop and write the drivers for their hardware. They then give those drivers to the various software platform developers (AutoCAD, ProE, SolidWorks, NX, Catia, etc) to have them certified by the various software platform developers.

The people you need to petition is the hardware vendors that write the drivers.

I am sure SolidWorks has a much better handle then us mere mortals on the OSX market share; and what percentage of that market share are SolidWorks users. SolidWorks has access to way more real world data then we do.

FWIW,

Anna

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Ben Foster @ Anna Wood on Aug 11, 2010 4:56 AM

Thanks for the reply.

I did a little more browsing today and found this http://vektorrum.com/2010/08/10/graebert-launches-ares-commander-2d3d-cad-for-apple-macintosh/

Seems like this was only posted yesterday, so I'll give it a go tonight as they offer native OSX Ares downloads (1 month trials).

According to the same news report, "Autodesk is widely rumoured to be in the final stages of developing a native Mac version of AutoCAD, but is not commenting"

If Solidworks doesn't jump on the bandwagon very soon, they'll miss out.

Ben

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Charles Culp @ Ben Foster on Aug 11, 2010 9:38 AM

Yes, that is old news for us that follow CAD news. SolidWorks is already trying to complete a solution that will work for Macs. There are already many threads on this forum dedicated to their solution. Here is a statement from February on what SolidWorks is up to: http://blogs.solidworks.com/solidworksblog/2010/02/more-on-the-new-technology-shown-at-solidworks-world-2010-1.html

To answer your real question: your video card is not capable of being fully supported by SolidWorks, even if you dual boot with Windows. You would need the nVidia Quadro FX 3800, which is available in the Mac Pro. That video card is supported by both Windows and OSX. Of course, to run SolidWorks, you would have to run boot camp, and boot into Windows.

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Anna Wood Aug 11, 2010 1:09 AM
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SolidWorks does not develop graphics drivers.

ATI, Nvidia, Apple, Dell, HP, etc develop and write the drivers for their hardware. They then give those drivers to the various software platform developers (AutoCAD, ProE, SolidWorks, NX, Catia, etc) to have them certified by the various software platform developers.

The people you need to petition is the hardware vendors that write the drivers.

I am sure SolidWorks has a much better handle then us mere mortals on the OSX market share; and what percentage of that market share are SolidWorks users. SolidWorks has access to way more real world data then we do.

FWIW,

Anna
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- Ben Foster @ Anna Wood on Aug 11, 2010 4:56 AM
  Mark Correct
  Correct Answer
  
  Thanks for the reply.
  
  I did a little more browsing today and found this http://vektorrum.com/2010/08/10/graebert-launches-ares-commander-2d3d-cad-for-apple-macintosh/
  Seems like this was only posted yesterday, so I'll give it a go tonight as they offer native OSX Ares downloads (1 month trials).
  
  According to the same news report, "Autodesk is widely rumoured to be in the final stages of developing a native Mac version of AutoCAD, but is not commenting"
  
  If Solidworks doesn't jump on the bandwagon very soon, they'll miss out.
  
  Ben
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  - Charles Culp @ Ben Foster on Aug 11, 2010 9:38 AM
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    Yes, that is old news for us that follow CAD news. SolidWorks is already trying to complete a solution that will work for Macs. There are already many threads on this forum dedicated to their solution. Here is a statement from February on what SolidWorks is up to: http://blogs.solidworks.com/solidworksblog/2010/02/more-on-the-new-technology-shown-at-solidworks-world-2010-1.html
    
    To answer your real question: your video card is not capable of being fully supported by SolidWorks, even if you dual boot with Windows. You would need the nVidia Quadro FX 3800, which is available in the Mac Pro. That video card is supported by both Windows and OSX. Of course, to run SolidWorks, you would have to run boot camp, and boot into Windows.
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Open discussion on Macs & graphics cards

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