How do I equip and prepare my Mac for Solidworks?

Follow up on my previous queston:
Any suggestions for such a desktop computer that could run SW?

I have heard that there are programs that allow for Macs to run with Windows? Which in turn, I could run Solidworks on Windows. Is there such a program, or am I at a loss?

3 Answers

I installed SW on my macbook pro using Boot Camp and Windows 7. Been working great for years! I work 10-30 hrs. a week in SW. I enjoy being able to use SW anywhere I happen to be.

The best thing you can do to get the best performance possible is to create a bootcamp partition and install Windows on it. This will run Windows like a regular PC. OS X contains Windows drivers for your Mac hardware. Once everything is installed, you will have the choice to boot into Windows or OSX (but not both together).

Another way is to use a virtual machine software like VMWare, Parallels or Virtualbox. This will let you run Windows from within Mac OSX. The nice thing is you don't have to reboot to go from one OS to the other, the drawback is that resources are shared (memory, etc...) so performance are not on par with native operation (which is perfectly normal).

Personally, I use the bootcamp method.

Cost-wise, Bootcamp is included in OS X, so no need to download/purchase anything else (apart from the Windows license naturally). VMWare and Parallels cost around $100-200 while Virtual Box is Open Source...

Virtual Box is always a good option