Community
Civil 3D Forum
Welcome to Autodesk’s Civil 3D Forums. Share your knowledge, ask questions, and explore popular AutoCAD Civil 3D topics.
cancel
Showing results for 
Show  only  | Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Civil 3D for Mac

61 REPLIES 61
SOLVED
Reply
Message 1 of 62
scott
36963 Views, 61 Replies

Civil 3D for Mac

Will one be created?  Thoughts?

61 REPLIES 61
Message 2 of 62
BrianHailey
in reply to: scott

If there is enough demand for one, I would guess that there will be one.

 

Again, the mantra holds true here, "Those that know won't say. Those that say, don't know."

Brian J. Hailey, P.E.



GEI Consultants
My Civil 3D Blog

Message 3 of 62
Sinc
in reply to: scott

Considering the level of effort involved, I kind of hope there won't be one.  I'd rather see that effort devoted to fixing the issues with the software we already have.

 

I'd also be surprised if there's much of a demand.  People in our industry tend to be very cost-concious, and to get a computer of equivalent power, you have to pay quite a bit more for a Mac.  So I suspect most people in our industry would not be interested in significantly higher costs, just to run software that should work just as well (if not better) on a PC.  Especially since people in our industry generally don't have any Macs, and most would have to buy all new hardware, as well as retrain staff in how to use a different OS...

Sinc
Message 4 of 62
neilyj666
in reply to: scott

I tend to agree with Sinc on this one

neilyj (No connection with Autodesk other than using the products in the real world)
Did you find this post helpful? Feel free to Like this post.
Did your question get successfully answered? Then click on the ACCEPT SOLUTION button.

EESignature


AEC Collection 2024 UKIE (mainly Civil 3D UKIE and IW)
Win 11 Pro x64, 1Tb Primary SSD, 1Tb Secondary SSD
64Gb RAM Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-11855M CPU @ 3.2GHz
NVIDIA RTX A5000 16Gb, Dual 27" Monitor, Dell Inspiron 7760
Message 5 of 62
peterfunkautodesk
in reply to: scott

While we can't/won't talk about what we are doing, we sometimes talk about what we're not doing. Case and point: Civil 3D running on the Mac version of AutoCAD is not in our current product plans. We have Autodesk employees that run Civil 3D on the Mac, but they are running it in either a virtual machine or have their Mac running Windows 7x64.

 

Cheers,

 

Peter Funk

Autodesk, Inc.

 



Peter Funk
Autodesk, Inc.

Message 6 of 62

Don't know if you will read this but I'd buy 8 versions tomorrow if you had them. The comments about cost just don't stack up when you are comparing a $3000-$4000 machine and a $10000 piece of software. We run a 30 machine net work with both macs and pcs and the pcs give me 5 times the grief, hugely outweighing the cost of the machine. Get with the times here. At the current rate what apple have done in 5 years will put them miles ahead of the rest in the next 10 years if they aren't there already.
Message 7 of 62
AllenJessup
in reply to: Aldanmark01

Get out you checkbook! http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=15421056&siteID=123112

 

I posted too quickly. I don't see any links for Civil 3D. Only AutoCAD. I don't know if a Mac version is planned for 2012.

 

Allen



Allen Jessup
Engineering Specialist / CAD Manager

Message 8 of 62
Aldanmark01
in reply to: AllenJessup

Unfortunately I need civil 3D. As soon as you know when it's available let me know.
Message 9 of 62
AllenJessup
in reply to: Aldanmark01

C3D 2012 should be out in a couple of weeks. But I haven't seen anything about a Mac version.

 

Allen



Allen Jessup
Engineering Specialist / CAD Manager

Message 10 of 62
Aldanmark01
in reply to: AllenJessup

Got pc versions of 2011. If there's any one from autocad interested I'm happy to be one of your first mac customers for civil 3D 2012 or 2013.
Message 11 of 62
Sinc
in reply to: Aldanmark01

Not sure how much clearer Peter can be when he says "Civil 3D running on the Mac version of AutoCAD is not in our current product plans"...

Sinc
Message 12 of 62
Sinc
in reply to: Aldanmark01

I would strongly disagree with your assessment.

 

It takes approximately $3500 to get a Mac running C3D, when an equivalent PC could be had for $1500.  Most people would consider that significant, even though the software costs more.  And the software is more like $7500, not $10000.

 

I'm surprised that you'd be having 5x the trouble with Win 7 computers vs. Macs.  I don't even think I ever found XP computers to be 5x the trouble, and Win 7 is far superior to XP.  It's true that Macs are superior in a large number of ways, but that's not new, or any reflection of current times.  That's ALWAYS been true.  I personally think the only reason Macs are such a small percentage of the market is the cost of their hardware, which is pretty much the exact opposite of your opinion that hardware cost doesn't matter.

Sinc
Message 13 of 62
Aldanmark01
in reply to: Sinc

Not trying to argue or justfy anything here. At $200 an hour with 8 designers a network issue costs me so much that I want/need/prefer the reliability I get from my mac stuff. I'm sure there are other out there the same. Stand alone with a few crashes might be fine. I'm talking a commercial design business where given the option I'd take it tomorrow. Appreciate Peter said they are not looking at it. I'm just saying open your eyes, there has to be more people like me around. Minority, possibly but the numbers are and will grow, and I'd say rapidly.
Message 14 of 62
jmayo-EE
in reply to: Aldanmark01

"Minority, possibly but the numbers are and will grow, and I'd say rapidly"

 

Hasn't Apple been telling us that since 1980?

 

Just kidding. 🙂

John Mayo, PE, CFM, CME
Message 15 of 62
rkmcswain
in reply to: Aldanmark01

 


@Aldanmark01 wrote:
Appreciate Peter said they are not looking at it. I'm just saying open your eyes, there has to be more people like me around. Minority, possibly but the numbers are and will grow, and I'd say rapidly.

I'm far from an expert on the matter, but as Peter mentioned, I have seen more than one C3D expert (AU instructors, etc) running C3D on a Mac using a VM. I doubt they would be using this configuration if there was a significant performance hit. Just wondering if you have considered this?

 

R.K. McSwain     | CADpanacea | on twitter
Message 16 of 62
jmayo-EE
in reply to: rkmcswain

I watched a good friend of yours run C3D, Vault Client and Vault on the same Mac at AU. I could never justify the cost in my gig but it was impressive.

John Mayo, PE, CFM, CME
Message 17 of 62
RickGraham
in reply to: jmayo-EE

Guess I should chime in on this one.

 

As Peter Funk stated, there are no plans for Civil 3D at this time. So, that tells me there is NO development of any kind going on in in the quest for Civil 3D for Mac.

 

I will admit it that that I am a Mac dude. It was real fun being in on the AutoCAD for Mac project from Alpha through beta and seeing what it has, and continues to evolve to. Remembering that A4M is a TOTAL rewrite. The same would be partially true for a Civil 3D for Mac project.

 

I run Civil 3D 2012 on my 2.4 GHz 6GB RAM Macbook Pro and it hums along nicely. To get the optimum out of it, I run it in the bootcamp mode with Windows 7x64. I have run it via the Parallels/VM modes, but if you really want performance and speed, run it in bootcamp mode.

 

For those naysayer's - I'm not trying to start a "holy" war. I'm just saying what I have observed. My Macbook Pro with Windows 7x64 runs Civil 3D better than my Dell Optimus dual core 2.8GHz 6GB RAM machine. Why? Because I believe that the Macbook has superior components. Its integrated TWO video cards as well as the all aluminum unibody make it the perfect heatsync for the hot processors. It works for me. Period.

 

I, for one will welcome Civil 3D for Mac with open arms if/when it is a reality. But until then, I'll continue to run my little Autodesk world on my Macbook Pro.

 

YMMV

 

Rick

Message 18 of 62
AllenJessup
in reply to: RickGraham

I think you hit an important point. Superior components. One of the difficulties of building a PC is having all the components match well. With a Mac the only components that go in to it are components made for the Mac.

About 4 years ago I bought a Sager Laptop [portable workstation] with XP pro 32 bit on it an 4 GB RAM I've been running C3D 2009 on it with almost no problems. It also has an aluminum case. It's set up for Nvidia dual SLI cards but I haven't invested in a second one yet.

It's run better than any other computer I've ever had and I'm convinced that it's because of the way it was built. It uses the best components that are matched to run well with each other.

Hopefully I'll upgrade it to Win 7 64 bit soon and add some RAM. Then I'll put 2011 or 2012 on it.

So if computers are built well they run well. It's just a lot more difficult to find PCs that are built so carefully.

Allen



Allen Jessup
Engineering Specialist / CAD Manager

Message 19 of 62
laszloszabo
in reply to: RickGraham

Hi Rick!

 

I'd like to ask an advice, I have a MacBook Pro 13inch 2.4GHz (Intel Core 2 Duo, 4Gb RAM, 250Gb HDD, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics), I run Civil 3D 2010 on it in bootcamp mode with Windows 7x64 (the Civil 3D is 32 bit). I think the program runs slow. What do you think my mac's capacity is enough for running C3D 2010? (Actually I'm a new mac user, maybe I haven't installed anything correctly.)

 

 I thank you in advance for your reply.

 

Since,

Laszlo

Message 20 of 62
Sinc
in reply to: RickGraham


@RickGraham wrote:

 

As Peter Funk stated, there are no plans for Civil 3D at this time. So, that tells me there is NO development of any kind going on in in the quest for Civil 3D for Mac.


 



The main problem is that Autodesk has been moving more and more to a .NET platform for so many things, and .NET is not supported on Mac.  I've heard rumors of people trying to get .NET ported to Mac, but Microsoft's development is SO messy that I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

Once upon a time, Apple had EOF/WebObjects working on Windows, but the incredible amount of work required to "tame" Microsoft's work made it financially unfeasable.

Sinc

Can't find what you're looking for? Ask the community or share your knowledge.

Post to forums  

Rail Community


Autodesk Design & Make Report