That's enough of an XP endorsement for me. BootCamp = a more natural SolidWorks experience!Īs for XP verses Vista - all I can add is that my SolidWorks VAR (value-added reseller) runs ALL of their PCs on XP-Pro 64bit, NOT Vista. Do these details make a difference you ask? YES!!!!! Trust the flat spots on my head from slamming it against walls. all work more smoothly AND PROPERLY in BootCamp as opposed to an emulation solution. Trust me, I've thrown a lot of effort, money and research at this topic. The SolidWorks user experience is much more precise and 'crisp' via BootCamp. Note: I'm not at all suggesting emulation is a bad strategy, it just isn't good for use with SolidWorks. If you want SolidWorks to see ALL of your Mac's core processors (in my case - four of them - critical for rendering models via PhotoView360) AND you want to tap the raw power of the video card you paid dearly for - you've GOT to do this scenario via BootCamp - not Parallels, not Fusion, not any other emulation software. (note: There may be newer, improved cards since I bought the 4500 almost 2.5 years ago.) Per Dessault System's recommendations (makers of SolidWorks) the ONLY graphic card which IS Mac-compatible AND 'certified for use with SolidWorks' is the NVIDIA QuadroFX 4500. I still use SolidWorks in Fusion when I've got small, simple parts and quick design jobs, however, if I'm doing top-down assembly or working on some larger, many-parts models and/or I need fully detailed, photo-real rendering (PhotoView360), then it's over to BootCamp I go!īTW - in Fusion (read: emulation), you won't see ANY RealView graphics OR PhotoView360 previews! Insulate', I mean the card isn't recognized by XP - XP sees only a generic video card of SVGA). Insulates the graphics card you'll likely need to run SolidWorks. Moving to VMware's Fusion was great - nothing wrong with it as emulation goes - but Fusion (any emulation) I embarked on this experiment with Parallels v1 - and dropped the whole project until Fusion came out of beta. Run SolidWorks in XP-Pro SP3 via BootCamp. Sure, there are other CAD-CAM modelers made just for the Mac, but NONE of them drive the world-wide manufacturing industry as SolidWorks does. SolidWorks isn't and won't ever be Mac-native. I am a SolidWorks (2007-2009) user and an avid Mac advocate (since 1986). This post is offered as purely informational - in the chance that anyone is seeking information on this *specifically rare topic*: running SolidWorks on a Mac.

Solidworks mac