autocad for new mac book 2.16 gig

I heard that Autocad may be coming out with a Macintosh version.

ViaCAD is a terrific Macintosh CAD program cost is $99.

http://www.punchcad.com/products/viacad2d3d.htm

I am an architecture student too and my school wanted me to have AutoCAD but I found what I think is a much better alternative. The company Graphisoft has a program called ArchiCAD, which is excellent, and there is a rendering program that you can get with it call Artlantis. They offer a free student version of either the newest version which is 11 or the previous one, 10, which is the full program, but is just a one year license, that can be renewed each year while she is still in school.

The program is very easy to use and her work can be saved in AutoCAD format if needed.

Also, if she really does need AutoCAD, I have friends at school with me that have Macs and put AutoCAD on them via either Parallels of VM Fusion and it works fine for them.

As an Architect, I use AutoCAD 2008 on my Mac Pro through Boot Camp, it runs with no problems.
I strongly advice against the use o Parallels or similar programs because they are OS emulators and for demanding software like AutoCAD there is a huge speed penalty and in the quality of the video output (I know it first hand, having used Parallels II).
What I would recommend is to go Mac OS 10.5 and run Windows (and AutoCAD) by means of Boot Camp, only limitations are RAM and HD size

I too would recommend using AutoCAD from Bootcamp. With Intel, Macs become PCs too whenever you want! However, I have used it with Parallels, and it does well for minor 2-d projects.

And last I read, Parallels wasn't an emulator, and is much faster than any emulator could possibly be.

such an important distinction to make... yes Parallels runs using virtualization technology, not emulation.

I have seen professional firms use Vectorworks, and seems to be a pretty decent Mac compatible CAD program. However, if she is a student, she likely needs to run AutoCAD for her course of study, and rightfully so, since it is the defacto standard in the AEC industry.

Parallels does have somewhat of a performance hit, enough so that it might be a pain to use a heavy duty program like AutoCAD. She might want to try VMWare, which is much more efficient, and allows the use of both cores of the machine. Bootcamp, in the end, might be the better choice. I recently have upgraded 3 machines to Leopard and have Parallels running on two of them.

Initially, I tried to use Parallels 3.0 with the Bootcamp partition. It worked, but there were some major problems. Next I tried VMWare with the Bootcamp partition, and also had problems. Finally, I reverted back to Parallels just using the virtual disk image, and worked with no problem. I imagine, but did not try it, that using VMWare with just the virtual disk image would also be good. So it seems to me, that your two options are either Bootcamp or VMWare Fusion just using the virtual disk. I like Parellels and it works well for me, just that VMWare seems to be the superior performer. In all cases, MS Vista Business edition was used.

if they are going to do any 3-D or use lightscape / rendering programs, forget virtualization and just use Bootcamp. It is sort of a pain to have to reboot between OS's though and there is a great convenience factor to virtualization.

Message was edited by: tsvisser

Actually, ACAD works quite well with Parallels. I use it daily in the Parallels environment.

Scott:

What flavor of AutoCAD are you using and how robust is the hardware you are using?