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CAD/CAM with a Mac

Pali

Aluminum
Joined
Feb 18, 2007
Location
India
I was just curious to know if we can use a Apple Mac to generate a cnc Program and run it on a cnc machine. Can we also use it to transfer programs to n fro from cnc machines. In India the IBM "clones" with MS-Dos/Windows, are used in almost 100% of such applications. MasterCAM, DellCAM etc here work on Windows based PC's.

I'm looking at hooking up my MacBook Pro to transfer programs from my HMC,Turning Center & Grinding Center.

Please advice.

Thanx all in advance.

Pali

India
 
you can use mac/unix programs to punch or load programs to you cnc or edit the g code files but i have not found anything that will run on the mac natively that is a serous mechanical cad/cam (there are a few electronic pcb cad that will)

so that leaves you with using boot camp and running windows on you mac. I don't remember which one i tried (vmware or the other guy) but the emulator didn't have the performance to do a lot of 3d stuff.
 
Just to be clear, Bootcamp allows you to boot into Windows OS directly, which would probably be your best bet, the other options are virtual machines like VMware or Parallels which allow you to run Windows OS within an application running on the Mac OS. A third option similar to the virtual machines is Wine. The virtual machines and Wine probably won't run any CAM program very well. I don't know of any CAM packages that run in Mac OSX natively, but there may be some.
 
MasterCam via Parallels

I run MasterCam on a Mac. It is okay. It is not the primary machine but for those times I need to look at toolpaths, etc. No real heavy lifting done or expected from the Mac.
BTW: 2010 Mac Book Pro 13". MasterCam 5XMU1
Chazsani
 
I have been running Solidworks 2008 on my 4 year old imac under XP, it's not the most stable thing in the world and I can't use the more advanced rendering options, but it works. I also have a copy of AutoCAD 2011 for Mac, but I haven't used it enough to tell you if it is any good.
 
Think I've got the picture upload figured out, this was drawn in SW in XP, then rendered in Maxwell on OSX.
 

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A few are Unix based like ProE and UG but I heard they were (may have already) pulled unix-based support as so little of their customer base actually plays there.

I know a lot of hard-core Mac people and kudos to them but you're better off running a Windows CAD/CAM package on a Windows OS... especially if you want to get any kind of service because the first thing a SolidWorks tech (insert a software manufacturer here) is going to tell you is... "We don't support that OS for use with our product".

Best of luck if you do go that route. We're currently locked into VirtualBox on Mac systems, mainly as a knee-jerk reaction to a virus some years ago and it's like tying one hand behind your back to get everything done...
 
MS Windows on a Mac

An Intel based Mac is an excellent MS Windows machine ( albeit expensive ). De Anza College's SolidWorks and Pro/E lab were ( still are? ) running Mac Pro H/W and Win XP OS.
Chazsani
 
We needed a second workstation to run Solidworks and SurfCAM. We opted for
one of the latest 27 in iMacs. Price was competitive with workstation-class PCs. I
installed boot camp to run Windows 7 natively, but I've found that running
Windows under emulation (Parallels 6) is fast enough for my needs–very
snappy indeed. For a while I was using my what was my primary monitor on
my PC (30 in Dell 3007WFP) as a second monitor on the iMac, but the iMac's
display is so bright and crisp that I gave away the Dell monitor to the new guy.

Of course, I would dump windows in a New York minute if the tools I needed
ran natively on a Mac. The CAM market in particular is small enough that I
doubt there will ever be many choices on the Mac. I still hold a hope for a Mac
version of Solidworks some day.
 
Life long mac user and I finally bit the dust (or dirt) and bought a PC for the shop... :rolleyes5: :D

Kinda grown to like it.
 
Winterfalke,

Are you using BootCamp, VMWare or Parallels?

I am running Bootcamp, it seems to be the most stable with drivers and peripherals. Also, it's free. My biggest limitation seems to be the onboard graphics card (Radion x1600) not being very powerful, and not supported by SW. I am using a second 22" monitor as my primary and my imacs 17" as a secondary, so I push the graphics card pretty hard.
 
Thank you all for your valuable inputs.

Mac doesn't enjoy much SW support in India, unlike US.

So i guess i just shut-up and go ahead with a PC.

Thanx once again all.

Pali
 
I am running Bootcamp, it seems to be the most stable with drivers and peripherals. Also, it's free. My biggest limitation seems to be the onboard graphics card (Radion x1600) not being very powerful, and not supported by SW. I am using a second 22" monitor as my primary and my imacs 17" as a secondary, so I push the graphics card pretty hard.



Here is a method that just plain works: Bootcamp is used with a windows based CAM, it is fast and reliable, faster than Parallels and VM ware, which were discontinued in favor of Bootcamp, it's just plain works.

For the CAD, ViaCAD is used on the Mac and on Windows since the same program is written for both systems. I use ViaCAD for concepts on the imac with a 17" screen, then save the files to a USB drive that is compatible with both Mac and Windows. So the file is saved on the Mac side and opened on the Windows side, in Bootcamp, and use the CAM to write the G-code for the part. If editing is needed, ViaCad is opened in Windows along with the the CAM program and changes can be made without getting out of Bootcamp.

Although I liked VMware, Bootcamp is easier and faster and cost less $$$ using ViaCAD ($200.00) than anything other program that I have tried.

tgoy
 
NX runs "natively" on OS X. I put natively in quotes because it's an X Windows skin over the Unix version of NX. Apparently Ross Perot and Steve Jobs were good friends and Apple is one of the longest standing Unigraphics/NX users out there. They were annoyed that they couldn't engineer their own hardware on their own hardware.

According to my NX sales guy, the OS X version is so junky, even Apple doesn't run it. Instead, they apparently boot their CAD workstations into a customized version of Darwin (the unix core under OS X) on Apple hardware.
 








 
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