Spaceclaim on Mac

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Permalink Reply by Blake Courter on April 28, 2009 at 8:37am

Hi Martin,

SpaceClaim runs great on Macs using Bootcamp. You might want to double-check that it meets our minimum hardware requirements.

-Blake

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Permalink Reply by martin kopplow on April 29, 2009 at 3:14am

Hi Blake,

that's good news. It is the latest model, so it should be fine with the minimum requirements.

Martin

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Permalink Reply by Adam OHern on April 29, 2009 at 4:20am

I use SC in native Windows XP running on Bootcamp on my iMac, and it works like a charm.

I definitely recommend this over the Parallels/VMWare method, as I think you'll find performance to be a limiting factor on most machines.

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Permalink Reply by Tom F on May 1, 2009 at 5:47am

I have colleagues who also use Mac laptops in preference to PC notebooks (running XP and Vista), mainly because of the better build quality that Apple have, but I should point out that when Windows is running on a Mac, it isn't by any stretch of the imagination, a Mac any more- it's a PC. One purchases a Mac not only because of its design, but most importantly, the Mac's operating system OS X.

I've been running SC on my Macbook Pro (with an ATI X1600 128mb vcard), and SC worked like a dream (bootcamp, XP sp3). However, SC behaves like a dog (ie terrible) in vmWare Fusion, running XP in Mac OS X- and I don't recommend that combination at all.

It will be so much better when SpaceClaim finally port SC to OS X! ;-)

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Permalink Reply by martin kopplow on May 4, 2009 at 1:10am

Yes, that'd be a dream. I'd even buy myself a private copy of SC then, because at home I do not like to have Windows around and use a Mac comptaible CAD soft now. Running SC on a Mac under Windows is a mere workaround, though it is much better than having to set up an extra Windows box.

Martin

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Permalink Reply by Mike on January 7, 2010 at 1:55pm

Hi Tom,

I've been looking into buying a copy of SpaceClaim but I'm a little wary since I only use a Mac and would therefore have to use windows.

I noted from your comments that in your experience SC was great when used in bootcamp but 'like a dog' in Fusion.

I just wondered if, since writing that post, you have had a chance to try SC in with Fusion V3 + Windows V7

I've heard good things about Fusion 3 from some friends who are gamers and they tell me that the graphics frame rates are a lot better now.

If I have to use bootcamp then so be it, but given the choice I would much prefer to run SC in Fusion, but obviously it needs to be a workable solution!

Any feedback you can give me or links to other people who have tried/failed would be really great.

Many thanks.

Mike.

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Permalink Reply by martin kopplow on January 8, 2010 at 2:02am

Hi Mike,

I tried to run SC on an iMac 24" under Bootcamp and Win7 last week and it did not work: There is a graphics driver issue that is nor yet resolved, as the Bootcamp driver for the nVidia card appears not to be available yet. Apple announced it for january, though. I might try again later.

Martin

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Permalink Reply by Mike on January 8, 2010 at 3:05am

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the update, please keep us all informed on how you get on.

I'm really keen to get SC up and running on an iMac

Mike

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Permalink Reply by martin kopplow on January 8, 2010 at 3:10am

It HAS been working on Vista before, though. I guess it can't be that hard to roll a Win7 driver out, then. As it is now, the graphics card is only run as a standard graphics device, cannot be set to the appropriate resolution and had no support for advanced technologies. SC quits with an error message that says it misses something I cannot remember today.

Martin

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Permalink Reply by Tom F on February 17, 2010 at 4:06pm

Hi Mike, sorry it took ages to get back.

SpaceClaim works absolutely great under Windows XP on my Mac, in Bootcamp. But I can't tell you what it is like under Windows 7 because W7 won't work with this older Macbook Pro (ATi X1600). It does work just about okay in virtualisation, but the display is very jerky.

BUT, and this is a biggy, Solidworks will be Mac native sometime this year. You may want to read this;

http://www.deskeng.com/virtual_desktop/?p=1119

That means that SpaceClaim now has no choice, but to port (native, in cocoa) to Mac OSX, otherwise it's gonna get left behind!

Tom

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Permalink Reply by Mike on March 30, 2010 at 5:24am

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to know if anyone has had any more luck running Spaceclaim in a virtualized environment.

Since the last post in this thread there have been a number of advances made with updates to both OS X and VMware Fusion.

Interestingly one of the main features of Fusion V3 is the improvement in DirectX graphics performance, and the ability to use more than one processor core on the virtual machine.

Also the latest update to OS X (10.6.3) has improved graphics performance and an article from Macworld states:

One area that wasn’t covered in Apple’s release notes involves graphics—specifically, improvements to the OS X 3D graphics engine. A representative from VMware, which makes Fusion for the Mac, told me that “VMware is excited about the release of Mac OS X 10.6.3, as the improved graphics drivers greatly improve 3D and interactive performance for VMware Fusion customers.”

In digging around the update files, I do see many changes related to graphics, such as the CoreGraphics framework. There are also new drivers for ATI video cards, though not (as far as I can tell) for Nvidia cards. I would assume the improvements in 3D will extend beyond the land of virtualization, and should be noticeable in most any application that uses 3D graphics—but I haven’t had a chance to test that assumption.

I’m keen to get my hands on Spaceclaim, although I will probably now wait for the 2010 version, but I am very wary about running windows on my iMac and therefore want to be able to run it in a isolated virtualized environment.

Any feedback would be great,

Mike.

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Permalink Reply by martin kopplow on March 30, 2010 at 7:42am

Unfortunately, I didn't have the time to dig any deeper, but will try do once this project is finished. Anyway, as you pointed out, it is always a good idea to keep Windows isolated. I know of people who even run it on a separate piece of hardware ... ;O)

Martin

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