AutoCAD Mechanical on M1 Mac

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Level 1

4 points

AutoCAD Mechanical on M1 Mac

Hi,

I'm an engineering student, and I'm about to buy a machine to help my studies, and to do CAD on. My choice for this purpose is the M1 Macbook Air.

We use AutoCAD at the lecture, and mainly the "Mechanical" extension of this software, which is not available for Mac OS. AutoCAD vanilla is though,

Is there anyone who has tried running such demanding softwares on a virtual machine with the Macbook Air M1? My concern is that if I can make the virtual machine and the software work, I will have performance issues, which I don't want to experience if I buy a Macbook with M1. To be precise I would only use it if I'm not at home, where I have my powerful Windows PC, so the Macbook should only take that few hours a week of using CAD on the virtual machine when I'm at university, it wouldn't be my main working device.

Is this solution usable?

To be honest I would be really happy if this could work, because a Macbook has been one of my dreams for a while, and all my other devices are Apple.

Thank you for the answers.

MacBook Air

Posted on Nov 12, 2022 9:00 AM

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Answer 1

brbo

Level 7

34,840 points

Nov 13, 2022 5:23 PM in response to felix_machan

Hi felix_machan

Welcome to the Apple Community.

Thank you for your question to the Community, and for explaining your issue so well.

Am no expert in this area, and as no experts have, as yet, replied, am sending links to relevant info:

Discussion thread: Is autocad working on MacBook Pro with M1… - Apple Community

AutoCAD for Mac 2023 online review:

https://machow2.com/autocad-review/

Discussion thread (non-Apple) on similar issue to yours

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/autocad-for-mac-forum/autocad-lt-2022-for-apple-mac-models-with-m-series-chip/td-p/10912720

All the best :-)

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Answer 2

Nov 13, 2022 5:58 PM in response to felix_machan

There is no production version of Windows that will run in a virtual machine on the M(x) Macs except for a version available to members of the Microsoft Insider Program. There is no way I would use such a setup in an Engineering program. Get a computer that is 100% compatible with your course of study, with other students for team projects, and with your professors for assignments.

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AutoCAD Mechanical on M1 Mac

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