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AutoCAD on Parallels

Jun 20, 2006, 12:49 PM
#1  

chell
Junior Member


Join: Jun 2006
Posts: 2
AutoCAD on Parallels
Are there any AutoCAD users out there that have tried parallels. Does it run well with such graphic intense programs??
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Jun 20, 2006, 12:59 PM
#2  

kaidomac
Member


Join: Jun 2006
Posts: 48
I'm not an AutoCAD user, but I've tried Rhino3D, an industrial design program (think lightweight CAD). It runs pretty well. The interface is a bit laggy (due to the emulated graphics card, I'd imagine), but it is definately both functional and useable.
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Jun 21, 2006, 12:11 AM
#3  

jwins
Junior Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 1
I currently have AutoCAD 2007 installed and running under Parallels. The performance is acceptable but effects that depend on 3D hardware acceleration are emulated in software or absent. If your work is primarily 2D, you should not experience any degredation in performance as long as you have adequate RAM assigned to the VM. I also have Autodesk Revit Building installed and performance is acceptable on the models I have tested.
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Jun 21, 2006, 11:57 AM
#4  

chell
Junior Member


Join: Jun 2006
Posts: 2
I have yet to buy my new Mac......should I buy extra RAM in order to run the program smoothly?
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Jun 21, 2006, 02:42 PM
#5  

rangr
Junior Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 27
I've been running Autocad 2002 since the first beta. There was a problem with certain commands (Scale, for example) but it was taken care of in beta 6 (THANK YOU PARALLELS FOR LISTENING AND SOLVING!). I'm using it everyday, with no problems at all.

The one and only difference is that things like zooming in and out are not as smooth as with boot camp or on a PC with a good graphics card. It's purely a visual difference, the speed of use is not affected... am hoping that Parallels is able to drive the Video card natively with future version to take care of this (and allow OpenGL reliant apps to run at full speed) but that's a different topic.
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Jul 18, 2007, 07:37 PM
#6  

phlip
Junior Member


Join: Jun 2007
Posts: 1
I'm using AGi32, a lighting design program that was running fine until I upgraded(??) to v3.0 and now i find it won't render. Had great 3D graphics with old version, now nothing.
Just downloaded latest build..seems to have sort of fixed video issue...

I also am trying to connect an HP Designjet 500 plotter with Jetdirect 2400. I currently have two other printers working fine using Bonjour. Does anyone know of a driver to plug in that will allow me to use proper page setup? Printer not responding at all.
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Jul 24, 2007, 05:20 AM
#7  

Piet
Junior Member


Join: Jul 2007
Posts: 1
Irratic mouse in AutoCad 2007
I also have the problem of the irratic mouse in Autocad. I'm using a macbook pro, parallels 4560 and autocad 2007. I have tried the following advice from this forum: reducing the hardware acceleration to one setting short of max - this made the problem worse. I have also tried disabling the mouse sync in parallels tools - this also made the problem worse. I downloaded steermouse3.6 - didn't help.

Please help.
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Jun 21, 2006, 06:28 PM
#8  

Sheppy
Senior Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 145
Quote:
Originally Posted by chell
I have yet to buy my new Mac......should I buy extra RAM in order to run the program smoothly?
Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: Heck yes.

Explanative answer: Macs tend to come with only enough memory for very basic use. I generally recommend to everyone that they get as much memory as they can. These days, I pretty much won't touch a machine with less than 768 MB in it, and I prefer 1 GB.

Both my iMac and my MacBook Pro are fully loaded with 2 GB.

__________________
Eric Shepherd
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Dec 23, 2006, 08:05 PM
#9  

psyfil
Junior Member


Join: Dec 2006
Posts: 20
Quote:
Originally Posted by chell
I have yet to buy my new Mac......should I buy extra RAM in order to run the program smoothly?
Yes--essentially each operating system will see half your RAM--so if you want Windows and OSX to have a gig each, I'd say 2 gig is the minimum.

PJK
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Aug 24, 2006, 12:49 AM
#10  

andreibosco
Junior Member


Join: Aug 2006
Posts: 1
Quote:
Originally Posted by jwins
I currently have AutoCAD 2007 installed and running under Parallels. The performance is acceptable but effects that depend on 3D hardware acceleration are emulated in software or absent. If your work is primarily 2D, you should not experience any degredation in performance as long as you have adequate RAM assigned to the VM. I also have Autodesk Revit Building installed and performance is acceptable on the models I have tested.
What mac do you have? I'm thinking about buying a macbook and run autocad and revit on parallels.
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Aug 24, 2006, 01:23 AM
#11  

amcintyre
Junior Member


Join: Aug 2006
Posts: 8
acad
I have run autocad 2006 and sketchup pro though parallels desktop, and while 3d processing is a little slow for both, 2d work and file handling are great (better than running them natively on my Dell at work, which is not a bad system)

FYI, I have a 2.16 ghz MBP with 1gb of ram and a 100 gb hard drive, which seems to be enough for the medium sized files i work with. If you are working with really, really, huge files (greater than about 10 megs), or with extensive 3d rendering, I would upgrade to 2 gb and / or use boot camp instead.

At any rate, i would recommend buying memory in a single so dimm so you can upgrade easily if you wish.
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Aug 27, 2006, 10:48 AM
#12  

bomberaia
Junior Member


Join: Aug 2006
Posts: 21
JWINS:
I'm interested how Revit is running. Do you have the new beta update of Parrallels? How much ram do you have allocated? thanks.
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Sep 24, 2006, 09:06 PM
#13  

magrite
Junior Member


Join: Sep 2006
Posts: 13
Quote:
Originally Posted by andreibosco
What mac do you have? I'm thinking about buying a macbook and run autocad and revit on parallels.
You should check out the "no boot disk" thread. We are now up to four pages, and it seems to be primarily new macbook pro users. I dove in last week, hoping to be able to do my work on one computer while traveling. HA. Now a week sitting at airports and in hotels trying to get Windows XP to install. I have my Autodesk set of disks with me in my bag....
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Sep 29, 2006, 01:46 PM
#14  

gnue
Junior Member


Join: Sep 2006
Posts: 3
i use parallels build 1898. when i m using autocad 2007 my esc button doesnt work. how can i fix it does anyone know?
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Aug 28, 2006, 02:22 PM
#15  

bomberaia
Junior Member


Join: Aug 2006
Posts: 21
No one uses Revit?
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Sep 6, 2006, 12:31 PM
#16  

knath
Junior Member


Join: Sep 2006
Posts: 1
Another question...
One of my coworkers just recently installed Parallels and XP on a Macbook Pro in order to use Autocad 2006, but there are always two cursors on the Autocad screen (both the Autocad crosshairs and the Windows pointer)--anyone have any idea why this is happening or how to fix it? Maybe because of the Mac wireless mouse?
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Sep 9, 2006, 10:02 AM
#17  

dblanch369
Junior Member


Join: Apr 2006
Posts: 5
Autocad mouse pointer issue
Quote:
Originally Posted by knath
One of my coworkers just recently installed Parallels and XP on a Macbook Pro in order to use Autocad 2006, but there are always two cursors on the Autocad screen (both the Autocad crosshairs and the Windows pointer)--anyone have any idea why this is happening or how to fix it? Maybe because of the Mac wireless mouse?
Actually, if you uninstall Parallels tools, and then reinstall them again, be sure to de-select the 'mouse sync', and you'll find that the cursor in Autocad is normal again. I have not heard of if and when Parallels will be fixing this bug, but they are aware of it. This affects many different versions of Autocad, even the LT versions from what I hear.

The downside, of course, is that you have to use the ctrl-alt key combo to leave the guest OS and use the mouse in OSX
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Sep 23, 2006, 10:53 PM
#18  

billearl
Member


Join: Sep 2006
Posts: 32
AutoCAD on High acceleration setting
With the latest Parallels build 1910, all of my Windows apps (AutoCAD, MS Office, Google Earth, etc.) run fine with acceleration set to Normal. With acceleration set to High, all still run fine (and faster) except for AutoCAD 2004, which always immediately results in a crash requiring rebooting of Windows. The dialog that appears suggests changing acceleration back to Normal if the problem persists.

Will this problem be addressed by Parallels, or is it something I can fix? Thanks.

(Mac Pro, 3GB, Windows XP Pro)
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Dec 23, 2006, 01:16 AM
#19  

Anarchytec
Junior Member


Join: Dec 2006
Posts: 5
Using Revit
Quote:
Originally Posted by bomberaia
No one uses Revit?
Heya Bomber. :) PhilR here. Yep - using Revit extensively. Mac Book Pro w/ 2gb ram. One gig is allocated to Parallels. Speed is quite sufficent at lesser resolutions than full screen mode (which is not so much of an issue on 17" screen. Looking forward to MBP with possible 4gb ram.

One ongoing annoyance: the temporary dimension are **very tiny**. A new user probably wouldn't even see them. An experienced user would find having to carefully select them annoying. But maybe less annoying than having to reboot into Boot Camp.

I only reboot for large/demanding datasets. So reboot for >100mb files (WTC).

I'd suggest you set up a Boot Camp partition and then access it from Parallels. This will allow you the option of Booting into XP alone if you need a dedicated OS.

Something very interesting (and appreciated): rendering in Revit (via Parallels) means that you don't lock up your OS when you push the render button. You can actually drag/hide/minimize the Revit window in real-time while rendering. So once I start a render - I hide the view and work in OS X as if nothing is happening. OS X continues to work. I don't run full screen - so hiding Revit during rendering is trivial.

Also - running latest beta build with no issues. Coherence is nice feature. Revit icon sits in OS X dock now. :)

So overall - not as fast as XP alone. But quite sufficent. If the temp dimensions were resolved I could do training via Parallels. Actually submitted this issue to Parallels but have not heard back (yet).

Attached image is of 80mb project. Trying to rotate the whole project with everything open is pokey but still acceptable. Expect to Open/Close worksets selectively and create shortcuts for Hide/Isolate/Reset helps. Basically the stuff you do to work smart anyway. Otherwise - opening/creating new views is fine. Rendering 1800x2000 image took <3 minutes.

Maybe a thread in the AUGI forum for Revit<>OSX/MacIntel Hardware would be helpful as well.

And looking forward to MBP's with 4gb ram...so I can allocate more memory to Revit.

All the best -

Phil
Attached Images
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Oct 17, 2006, 06:56 PM
#20  

irelandshope
Junior Member


Join: Oct 2006
Posts: 14
3D Autocad working great
I wrote a thread about my experience with 3D Autocad in Parallels and its working great.
See the thread its called "3D AutoCad & Architectural Desktop 2006 Works Perfectly"
Check it out.
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