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    parallels and mechanical desktop(autocad)

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by ogando_jose, Nov 3, 2006.

  1. ogando_jose

    ogando_jose Notebook Consultant

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    Hi guys. I got a macbook(2ghz,512ram, 60 gigs) and I need to use this windows software called mechanical desktop. it is a 3D app part of Autodesk(Autocad) and I was wondering how good would it run with parallels instead of using bootcamp.

    Thanks a lot
     
  2. Pitabred

    Pitabred Linux geek con rat flail!

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    Not very good. Parallels won't allow Windows to access the graphics card very well, if I remember right. You should stick with bootcamp. You MAY be able to find an OSX/X11 version of Wine and run it with that directly in OSX, but that will be complicated and hard to achieve, and require a lot of research on your part.
     
  3. Wooky

    Wooky Notebook Evangelist

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    If it uses 3D acceleration, it won't run. GPUs can't be virtualized; there is some work both from Parallels and VMWare trying to provide access to 3D hardware during virtualization, but it will probably lock down the GPU to the VM. Not too bad if it works allright. There are some beta versions of VMWare that do this already. Indeed it may run under wine/Cedega as Pitabred says, but I concur that if you do professional work with it you should stay with bootcamp for the time being.