“Autodesk no longer tries to sync its Windows and Mac releases of its venerable AutoCAD computer-aided design software,” Anthony Frausto-Robledo writes for Architosh. “The company is more interested in syncing its Mac version development with the Apple’s OS X release cycle development.”
“Apple typically introduces OS X releases at WWDC around the June time frame and shipping version of the the Mac OS at around the fall,” Frausto-Robledo writes. “Hence, the Mac version of AutoCAD is now being timed for the fall, if history is our guide.”
“Last December we spoke to Micah Dickerson, Product Manager for Autodesk AutoCAD for Mac product line about AutoCAD for Mac 2015,” Frausto-Robledo writes. “What we learned is that last year’s release was a massive step forward or AutoCAD on the Mac and a really big step forward for feature parity and interoperability with AutoCAD for Windows.”
Read more in the full article here.
SolidWorks is much more suited for the Mac world…
Yes, there are a lot of us who would like to see Solidworks come to the Mac.
Me too. Meanwhile Windows in Boot Camp + SolidWorks is terrific.
I no longer care whether they move SolidWorks to the Mac OS.
SolidWorks was created by UNIX programmers who created a previous 3D CAD program. The big issue for the “switch” to Mac is not SolidWorks. It is the hundreds of 3rd party addons. Getting those developers to port to Mac is a bitch.
Autodesk Inventor for Mac anyone?
“Autodesk no longer tries to sync its Windows and Mac releases of its venerable AutoCAD computer-aided design software…”
No longer? Autodesk NEVER really did try to do this and feature parity has never been 100%. (In my personal opinion, it’s actually worse than the Intuit and QuickBooks.) Hell, the very first version of AutoCAD for Mac back in the System 7 days was merely the previous text based (non GUI based) version of AutoCAD for DOS put inside a window on the Mac’s screen. And it wasn’t that great a port either.
If you use CAD on a Mac and don’t need to have the most compatibility with AutoCAD for Windows possible (AutoCAD for Mac and Windows are not 100% compatible — sorry to break that to you) then there are several better CAD programs available that still support the generic DXF formats that AutoCAD does.
Does any professional actually still use AutoCAD? That is so ancient, like flash.
We use AutoCAD for Civil engineering on a SBS network. It works great. I am a long term Mac user (1982) but AutoCAD is the best option we have, for now. Arcview is the same. Not yet an equivalent on the OS-X side.
My company uses AutoCAD, mostly on Windows. Having the Mac version available means that I and our other Mac users don’t have to run the Windows version in Parallels, and can take advantage of the multitouch gestures that the Mac version supports. And I’ve never had an issue with compatibility sharing drawings with our Windows users.
For you SolidWork’s fans… try ‘Onshape’ >>> Onshape is a ‘solids’ (3D) based design tool… It is more advanced than SolidWorks (actually a spin-off of SolidWorks… platform agnostic… and completely amazing. Orthographic (2D) drawing extraction coming soon.
Anybody remember or knew of FlexiCad? I am not a mechanical or architectural designer but CAD interfaces are troublesome to me. I found FlexiCad’s interface strange but intuitive at the same time. It was one of my favorite tools at the time.