What's new
What's new

MacBook Pro for solidworks and cam

Mike RzMachine

Cast Iron
Joined
Feb 4, 2007
Location
Utah
I need to get another laptop for cad and cam work and wanted to hear from anyone who runs solidworks and a cam package on a MacBook Pro i7 booted in windows.

My current computer is an Hp elitebook 8560w which has been solid. This will new computer doesn't need to be drastically faster, I'm doing more part work and smaller assemblies and ramping up with a cam package. I'd like this to be more portable than my current computer.

I was considering a newer Hp but have been impressed with the hardware quality and smaller size of my wife's MacBook Air and started looking at MacBook Pro models.

It looks like USB to serial for dnc is going to be needed for both the Hp and Mac.

I also have no need for solidworks real view.

Any experience would be helpful.

Thanks,
Mike
 
I need to get another laptop for cad and cam work and wanted to hear from anyone who runs solidworks and a cam package on a MacBook Pro i7 booted in windows.

My current computer is an Hp elitebook 8560w which has been solid. This will new computer doesn't need to be drastically faster, I'm doing more part work and smaller assemblies and ramping up with a cam package. I'd like this to be more portable than my current computer.

I was considering a newer Hp but have been impressed with the hardware quality and smaller size of my wife's MacBook Air and started looking at MacBook Pro models.

It looks like USB to serial for dnc is going to be needed for both the Hp and Mac.

I also have no need for solidworks real view.

Any experience would be helpful.

Thanks,
Mike

if you are looking for i7 you are limited to the 15" MBP. you can easily dual boot, and also can run a VM in VM Ware or others. The hardware is better than most windows laptops but not truly exceptional. If you are looking for a strictly windows machine you can do slightly better for the same money, if you want a mac then you are in luck, it is a very nice machine. make sure you get at least a 1 TBytes drive.

dee
;-D
 
I've run SolidWorks and Gibbscam under Windows 10 using Bootcamp on a Macbook Pro without any problems. I would not suggest trying it in a virtual machine, though. I used to do that and it works but is too slow for my taste. As was suggested above, you need a big disk so the MBP is going to be pricey.
 
How can anybody even consider trying to do real work on a stinking laptop ? Garbage keyboard, shitty little screen, unstable foundation, where you gonna park the spaceball ? it's junk. I wouldn't even consider anything less than a 24" screen and a keyboard that you can actually type on. Plus the spaceball is highly recommended.

Sure, you can make stuff on a 13" South Bend but if making round parts is your work, something a little more capable would be good. Same with computers.
 
Not wanting to jump too far into a debate on desktop vs. laptop (for the record, I do most of my work on a desktop with a big screen) I'll argue it depends as much on your input devices as anything else. For the OP - when I use my MBP I have a SpaceMouse on one side, and a small 2 button wireless "windows style" mouse on the other side. Same setup as my desktop so use the keyboard about the same in both cases and avoids the trackpad which is a PITA. Aside from the screen size works about the same for fingers and brain in both setups.

For the above poster - I've found Windows 10 under Bootcamp to be rock solid and plenty of processing power (at a big cost) for CAD/CAM on the latest MBP's. Much more instability in all the OS/SW versions being pushed at you than the underlying platform.
 
How can anybody even consider trying to do real work on a stinking laptop ? Garbage keyboard, shitty little screen, unstable foundation, where you gonna park the spaceball ? it's junk. I wouldn't even consider anything less than a 24" screen and a keyboard that you can actually type on. Plus the spaceball is highly recommended.

Sure, you can make stuff on a 13" South Bend but if making round parts is your work, something a little more capable would be good. Same with computers.

Wow. It really does depend on your CAD work process, room for computers, need for mobility, and other rationalized needs. Modern laptops are capable machines to run SW. I do it. When I need to be mobile, it works. When I'm at the shop, I hook it up to a bigger display with more resolution, Space Mouse on the side, and lots of disk storage for files. Works like a champ. I've run it under VMWare and that, I found, was not a good idea - too, too slow. Direct boot is the way to go.
 
Wow. It really does depend on your CAD work process, room for computers, need for mobility, and other rationalized needs. Modern laptops are capable machines to run SW. I do it. When I need to be mobile, it works. When I'm at the shop, I hook it up to a bigger display with more resolution, Space Mouse on the side, and lots of disk storage for files. Works like a champ. I've run it under VMWare and that, I found, was not a good idea - too, too slow. Direct boot is the way to go.

I work from a laptop, but wherever practical (office/home office) it's plugged into a large display +standalone keyboard/mouse + spacemouse.. maintaining significantly less infrastructure (licenses, updates, synchronizing files, etc) is worth sacrificing some power.

Not MBP, though, it was on the list of contenders.
 
I'm a professional designer and run SW on a workstation (Dell) laptop, its necessary when you are traveling to a customers site and need to bring your computer for presentations/CAD demos. I will say when working from my office I hook the laptop up to a 27" dual screen setup.

You will pay about the same for a MBP as you would for a high end workstation laptop, with graphics cards designed to run CAD and CAE software and the cooling systems to go with them. the MBP have great build quality and are able to run solidworks in bootcamp just fine, but you will be pushing the upper end of its capabilities if you ever start running larger assemblies with high detail parts. Honestly its pretty impressive how little system requirements solidworks actually requires to just run a few parts, I was running it on integrated graphics when I was in school, long as I had enough ram it worked well enough.
 
I've had very good experience running solidworks on dell precision and hp elitebooks including assemblies with thousands of parts. They slow down with large assemblies as expected but when compared to desktop work stations, it wasn't a world of difference. Good practice with keeping part models clean and efficient made more of a difference than buying new hardware. I also have an opportunity to test run solidworks on a macbook air to find out the limitations, but i'm probably going to find a new old stock dell precision to get a reasonable deal.

Thanks for the responses.
Mike
 
if you are looking for i7 you are limited to the 15" MBP.

I don't know where you got that idea, I'm writing this on a 2015 i7 Retina MBP that is definitely a 13" and not a 15" machine. On the 13" the i7 was a more expensive option but not all 15" MBP's are fitted with i7's either.

Screen Shot 2017-12-05 at 8.44.29 AM.jpg

With that said I use Solidworks, Siemens TIA portal and a host of other PC software on a Windows 7 VM using VMWare fusion, also have a LinuxCNC VM for when I want to test gcode that I'll end up sending to my mill.

IMHO I wouldn't buy a brand new MBP, Apple really stepped on their dicks when they got rid of magsafe and the SD card slot, there isn't a new/better standard for camera storage to replace SD and USB-C is fine for charging phones because a phone doesn't weight enough to rip the port off the logic board when someone trips over the charge cord.
 
I don't know where you got that idea, I'm writing this on a 2015 i7 Retina MBP that is definitely a 13" and not a 15" machine. On the 13" the i7 was a more expensive option but not all 15" MBP's are fitted with i7's either.

View attachment 214590

With that said I use Solidworks, Siemens TIA portal and a host of other PC software on a Windows 7 VM using VMWare fusion, also have a LinuxCNC VM for when I want to test gcode that I'll end up sending to my mill.

IMHO I wouldn't buy a brand new MBP, Apple really stepped on their dicks when they got rid of magsafe and the SD card slot, there isn't a new/better standard for camera storage to replace SD and USB-C is fine for charging phones because a phone doesn't weight enough to rip the port off the logic board when someone trips over the charge cord.

Because on all the new ones you can't get an true I7 (get the dual core) unless you go 15"............ Source Apple.com
 
Late to the party here but I use a 2013 Macbook Pro loaded with Windows 7 for my shop computer. Run SolidWorks 2017 and CAM without issues.
 








 
Back
Top