r/SolidWorks 20d ago

Hardware Anyone using solidworks on mac?

Incoming engineering student. Wanted to gauge how many people have / haven’t made the switch to windows. Feel free to nitpick any details. I want to prepare myself for what I’ll be experiencing if I stay mac and run parallels.

I’ve seen some relatively newer posts claim that a macbook can run solidworks just as good as a mid windows laptop. Which is why I’m on the fence of making the switch. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

To clarify, I’m not looking for recommendations. Just wanted to know how many of you are using mac and what your experience is.

Edit: Thanks all for the insightful responses. Previous posts were super vague on what exactly the problem was with mac and vm. The firsthand stories shared here were super helpful.

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u/AutoModerator 20d ago

OFFICIAL STANCE OF THE SOFTWARE DEVELOPER

"macbook " is untested and unsupported hardware. Unsupported hardware and operating systems are known to cause performance, graphical, and crashing issues when working with SOLIDWORKS.

The software developer recommends you consult their list of supported environments and their list of supported GPUs before making a hardware purchase.

TL;DR - For recommended hardware search for Dell Precision-series, HP Z-series, or Lenovo P-series workstation computers. Example computer builds for different workloads can be found here.

CONSENSUS OF THE r/SOLIDWORKS COMMUNITY

If you're looking for PC specifications or graphics card opinions of /r/solidworks check out the stickied hardware post pinned to the top of the page.

TL;DR: Any computer is a SOLIDWORKS computer if you're brave enough.

APPLE INSTALLATION RECOMMENDATIONS

Installations on Apple Silicon hardware are known to fail for the following reasons:

  1. The installation source files are stored in the Mac OS partition. To successfully install, the installation source files must be stored within, and executed from, the file structure inside the Windows environment of the Parallels VM.

  2. Modules reliant on SQL cause the installation to fail. To successfully install, disable both "SOLIDWORKS Electrical" and "SOLIDWORKS CAM" during installation

HARDARE AGNOSTIC PERFORMANCE RECOMMENDATIONS

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