solidworks on a macOh, the trials of being a Mac user in the CAD world. There’s just no justice for your simple and elegant character personified in a simple and elegant computer. Who is out there to understand you? SolidSmack has your back and we want to show you how easy it it is to get SolidWorks runnin’ on your Mac.

To show this, I turn to a friend that use SolidWorks with a Mac on a consistent basis. Ben Eadie, from SolidMentor, shares this step-by-step and has a few tips.

Step-by-Step SolidWorks on a Mac

  1. Install Bootcamp on your Mac (this comes as a standard install on a new mac).
  2. Reboot and install Windows (Vista or Windows 7 recommended).
  3. Install SolidWorks and Microsoft Office.
  4. Voila!

Additional Tips from Ben

  • If you want to have RealView you may have to do a Softmod on your video card. This is as simple as installing a driver.
  • Mac Book Pro and lesser models will work, but RealView and performance will be lacking like any lesser computer.
  • Generally, Vista or Windows 7 will run better on a Mac.

Other Virtualization/Emulation options?

You can also install Windows via Parallels, Vmware, or other emulators, but you may see lower graphics card performance. There are more details for Parallels and VM, like using the Bootcamp partition as a virtual machine so you can boot natively or as a virtual machine. The drawback to this is you have to re-register SolidWorks each time you change the way you boot, i.e. boot into Bootcamp and then later boot into Parallels. When you start SolidWorks you will have to re-register… Don’t worry, Ben says he has done this hundreds of times and it is only 2 extra mouse clicks.

Have a question about using SolidWorks on a Mac? Hit the comments!

Author

Josh is founder and editor at SolidSmack.com, founder at Aimsift Inc., and co-founder of EvD Media. He is involved in engineering, design, visualization, the technology making it happen, and the content developed around it. He is a SolidWorks Certified Professional and excels at falling awkwardly.