MAC OSX for Engineering

Hi etresoft,

First of all - this is not a pipeline to Apple. You are talking with other Mac users here. This is not a developer forum, either.

Second, if you do not find Mac OS X to your liking, then that is your professional opinion. If Windows has all the programs for you and is optimized for you, then why not get a PC? It is completely your choice, and it has always been. It was your choice to get a Mac, not a PC, and if you regret that decision I'm afraid we can't help you.

Ettesoft and marchthefirst just do not try to give definitions of what is here and what is not. You are helping nobody. Its better not to talk some times when you have no idea about the subject.

The main point is that Civil/Structural engineers feel that left forgotten by Apple. If you are not neither of that do not take part in the conversation at all. Some people are trying to use the community to find answers concerning real life problems and you guys are spamming giving answers with dead end.

Kindly try to be helpful we don't need any more philosophies.

Hi marchthefirst,

I think your reply was misdirected.

It is not Apple's responsibility to provide software for specific industries. I suggest you contact the developers that make your PC software and ask for a Mac version.

pushing people who ask embarassing questions out of the temple, and then throwing rocks at them ( sometimes a rock even hits one of your own, marchthefirst 🙂 ) are eternal "solutions"...We're all too testy !

"This community" is a community of people who use Apple products. You aren't doing that." writes eresoft. In fact NickZaf was trying to use an Apple product, and his comments do have a place here. We MUST tolerate some "testiness" from each other ( the comments of a "satellite" engineers on civil engineers was way out of whack: when a bridge falls , a lot of questions are asked...)

NickZaf,

How many Civil/Engineering Utilities are developed by Microsoft? It is not Apple's fault that Developers of Structural Engineering Programs do not want to port their codes to OS X. A clear example is ANSYS, this code was developed originally in UNIX and ported to Windows. With very little efford it can be ported to OS X as UNIX/Linux/OS X use the same c/c++ compiler. But for some reason they refuse to do it.

It is like companing to Google because they do not have FaceTime. They develop the OS, its in the hands of other to develop applications and unfortunally the OS X market is very limited in the structural engineering community so it is not attractive for developers to port their code to OS X.

These are my 2 cents..

clodo9 wrote:

NickZaf was trying to use an Apple product, and his comments do have a place here. We MUST tolerate some "testiness" from each other ( the comments of a "satellite" engineers on civil engineers was way out of whack: when a bridge falls , a lot of questions are asked...)

No, he was digging up a thread that was started over two years ago for the sole purpose of starting a rant and denigrating the Mac because Windows software doesn't run on it. That is some shaky logic for someone who claims to be an engineer. Civil engineers must be licensed, and their work, more so than many other engineering domains, is safety-critical. When a bridge falls down, questions are only the start. It could very well lead to loss of license, fines, and maybe even criminal charges for negligent and improper use of the tools of the trade.

http://www.architosh.com/ - an online guide to numerous Mac CAD and Engineering resources.

http://www.corel.com/corel/product/index.jsp?pid=prod5190096- CorelCAD for Mac is now at 2014.

http://usa.autodesk.com/products/mac-compatible-products- AutoCAD is not their only solution.

http://sourceforge.net/ - open source solutions

Some alternatives I've learned about that still make Mac products:

http://www.sketchup.com/products/sketchup-pro

http://www.engsw.com/ - PowerCADD author

http://www.turbocad.com/

http://www.ashlar.com/products/cad-and-3d-modeling-operation-system-support.html

http://www.artifice.com/dw.html - has older Mac operating system compatible products

http://www.graphisoft.com/archicad/archicad_17/faq/ versions 15-17 are 64 bit for the Mac

http://www.formz.com/

http://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/cadintosh/

http://www.acdsee.com/en/support

http://www.adx-online.com/realcadd/realcaddus.htm

http://www.ilexsoft.com/highdesign/specs.html

http://www.vectorworks.net/index.php

Don't forget, since 2006, Macs have essentially become PCs, with the ability to natively virtualize any PC operating system:

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-2741

The upside to this is you don't have to repurchase your tool for a different operating system.

The downside is that developers see that, and feel that people have no reason to run native Mac systems to do their work.

Suffice it to say, if your office hasn't researched all the alternatives listed above, complaints about the Mac capability are specious at best.

YOU ROCK!!

etresoft, where has gone the "soft" in etresoft ??😝

hi,

I'm also a structural engineer and recently bought MBP for my working (using CSI products Etabs SAP & SAFE), i would be using it with win7 installed in bootcamp. would you like to give any suggestion before i switch completely to mac regarding data storing and operating.

Thanks.

zubair

I'm a Civil engineer and had similar issues when I moved from Windows to Mac. There is a website (http://skyciv.com) who produce some pretty good engineering software online which works within your browser. I use there structural 3d analysis software on my mac and it works just fine.

Hi
I am a a student of civil engineering, I have the same question, does ETABS works on mac parallel or boot camp???which works smoothly??? Parallel or bootcamp??

plz give a suggestion for this matter, and plz be specific, thnx

If you are looking for a good option to do limit equilibrium slope stability analysis on Mac OSX, check out the newly released MacSlope (macslope.com).