#PARALLELS FOR MAC SOLIDWORKS MAC OS#
#PARALLELS FOR MAC SOLIDWORKS INSTALL#
#PARALLELS FOR MAC SOLIDWORKS DRIVERS#
#PARALLELS FOR MAC SOLIDWORKS DRIVER#

The difference with our solution is that we can make SOLIDWORKS behave as well as a normal windows PC. Of course, this isnвЂ™t necessarily a new solution вЂ“ Parallels has been around for some time, and installing Windows on a Mac for as long. IвЂ™m happy to report that RealView works perfectly on a properly specced Mac Book Pro! The difference in performance was huge, and it allowed me to select and navigate the software much, much faster.В One limitation that frustrated me early on was the lack of RealView Graphics (Accurate reflections and appearances), so I set about solving this problem too. With a bit of effort, and some registry modifications, I was able to untick the OpenGL box, allowing us to use the graphics card to a much higher potential. In our opinion, SOLIDWORKS is unusable at this point, as selecting geometry and navigating the software is too slow to be productive.

#PARALLELS FOR MAC SOLIDWORKS INSTALL#

When you first install SOLIDWORKS, this button is ticked and greyed out, so we canвЂ™t turn it off. The difficult bit is making the вЂњUse Software OpenGLвЂќ button inside SOLIDWORKS become accessible.

It is always a good rule of thumb to assign half the available RAM to the Windows OS, so in my set up, I assigned 4GB of RAM. You can specify how much of the machineвЂ™s resource to give to the Windows OS вЂ“ which is where a high spec Mac will stand you in better stead. ItвЂ™s pretty easy to get Windows installed, as Parallels guides you through that process very nicely. So, I installed the latest version of Parallels and a fresh copy of Windows 10 into the virtual environment and then set about making SOLIDWORKS work! You will note that this machine has Intel Iris Graphics (specific to the Mac) and not a certified graphics card for SOLIDWORKS. I have a mid 2014 MacBook Pro, which IвЂ™ve been using as a test bed. WeвЂ™ve installed and configured this on plenty of Apple Mac computers now and I have to say the response from the end users has been amazing. Innova Systems Technical Director, Ed Hawkins, explains

#PARALLELS FOR MAC SOLIDWORKS DRIVERS#

The virtual or generic drivers donвЂ™t offer the level of performance needed to run SOLIDWORKS correctly.

#PARALLELS FOR MAC SOLIDWORKS DRIVER#

This is due to most Macs not having certified graphics cards for SOLIDWORKS and Parallels using a virtual graphics card driver or the default Windows driver. There were also historic problems with not being able to use the graphics card properly which would result in exceptionally slow performance when selecting things. The reason for not recommending this is that you are sharing the resource of the machine with two operating systems, thus not necessarily having the required resource to run a demanding program like SOLIDWORKS.

#PARALLELS FOR MAC SOLIDWORKS MAC OS#

The alternative solution that we used to steer people away from is Parallels, a virtual machine software that allows you to run another OS inside the Mac OS (inside a window). This allows the full use of the hardware (RAM and graphics card) you have in your Apple Mac for Windows. The issue here is that if you need to access the Apple Mac Operating System (OS), you would need to shut down windows and boot up the Apple Mac OS, because they cannot be running simultaneously. We used to recommend the Bootcamp route, which involves installation of Bootcamp and then Microsoft Windows on the partition Bootcamp creates.

The simple answer is that SOLIDWORKS do not develop an Apple Mac version of the software, so we canвЂ™t install SOLIDWORKS natively. This is a fairly long-standing issue we come up against on the Innova Systems technical support desk, and also while talking to prospective customers about SOLIDWORKS.

Parallels for mac solidworks