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Architosh Staff ([email protected])

19 Oct 2001

Reader Q: Recommended system to bridge Autocad gap too expensive, what else?

In response to a recent story about bridging the Autocad gap on the Mac, a reader wrote in with a very good follow-up question:

Hello,

In your answer to a reader's question, (What CAD best can bridge the Autocad gap), you suggest running Autocad inside Virtual PC as a way of eliminating the learning curve associated with running Autocad in a PC environment at work and a second CAD program on a Mac at home. As a full- time graduate student in religious studies who does drafting on a freelance basis, however, the hardware you recommend in the "best scenario" (800 MHz DP, 512 Mb RAM, Nvidia GeForce 3) is simply beyond my means. I am wondering whether you or your readers can tell me whether a 500 MHz iBook (Dual USB) with 384 Mb RAM is a viable platform on which to run VirtualPC 4 and Autocad LT?

Thank you for your assistance. -- Felix Sung

Is the iBook suitable for Virtual PC and Autocad?

Felix raises a very good point to an already good question. It seems there are a lot of Autocad users out there, in various places doing various things, and many of them love the Mac. The question becomes (and this is really Apple's problem too) how do you address these issues with a Mac solution?

True, the recommended solution to Alice in the last story, is expensive. In fact, it comes to just pennies shy of $4000, not counting the cost of VirtualPC and a monitor. Wow! That's a lot just to work with Autocad on the Mac.

If you absolutely have to work with Autocad (you can't work with a true Mac CAD program) then that still is the recommended best-performance scenario because it provides you the most power, especially under Mac OS X.

A More Affordable Mobile Solution

Felix asks if an iBook would be a suitable substitute. This is not recommended for the Autocad solution because of screen size. CAD programs require lots of palettes and button boxes. Autocad in particular is quite heavy this way. A better solution would be get a basic Titanium PowerBook G4, add more RAM (at least 512 total).

The newest models would be excellent because they offer the faster Mobile Radeon graphics accelerator. We use a TiBook for CAD and 3D, especially for presentations, and it works very well because of the screen size. Having the G4 is also good because VirtualPC for Mac OS X will utilize some AltiVec performance enhancements.

You can get into a Fast category TiBook for just $2100US. All you need is 256 MB additional RAM and the VirtualPC product and you would be set with a "mobile Autocad solution" on a Mac.