Civil 3D for Mac

[Anonymous]

Will one be created?  Thoughts?

[BrianHailey]

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."

[Sinc]

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...

[neilyj666]

I tend to agree with Sinc on this one

[peterfunkautodesk · Accepted solution]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[AllenJessup]

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

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately I need civil 3D. As soon as you know when it's available let me know.

[AllenJessup]

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

Allen

[Anonymous]

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.

[Sinc]

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]

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.

[Anonymous]

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.

[jmayo-EE]

"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. 🙂

[rkmcswain]

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@Anonymous 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.

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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?

[jmayo-EE]

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.

[Anonymous]

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

[AllenJessup · Accepted solution]

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

[Anonymous]

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

[Sinc]

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@Anonymous 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.

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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.