Demo Corner: AutoCAD on Mac with VMware Fusion
The last post led to a quick jaunt around YouTube looking for other demos that users had posted of Windows on Mac with VMware Fusion. My little trip around the 'Toob reminded me of this neat AutoCAD demo a user posted a while back.
AutoCAD is another key app like Dragon Naturally Speaking that our users lament not existing on the Mac, and for which they use VMware Fusion to help them run on their great Mac hardware.
Without any further ado, here are those demos of AutoCAD on Mac with VMware Fusion. In the first demo, AutoCAD is running off a Boot Camp partition being managed by VMware Fusion. The likely story is that the user was using Boot Camp to run AutoCAD by rebooting (yuck) before he got VMware Fusion. Bet that was a big relief for him.
In the second demo (about 2:18 in), AutoCAD is running off a regular virtual machine (no physical partition required), which I bet the user really enjoys being able to do great things like suspend his virtual machine, and resume it in a snap, in addition to taking snapshots of his VM.
Either way, both demos are really neat. Look for more like this in the future.
AutoCAD LT 2008 works nicely in a boot camp partition under VMWare Fusion - that is, until you go back and boot directly into your boot camp partition, at which point AutoCAD will deactivate itself and you will have to go and get a new key. AutoCAD has a paranoid-schizophrenic activation system, which is hyper-annoying after you've paid more than $1000 to buy their software.
The only way I can get AutoCAD to run in a VM without deactivating itself on every boot is to ONLY run it in a dedicated VM.
It's a shame when software is deliberatly crippled in such a way that paying users are unable to use it to its fullest potential.
I would advise anyone planning to run AutoCAD in a VM from their bootcamp partition to search the web for the plethora of complaints out there about this issue. There are other things that can cause trigger an AutoCAD deactivation in a VM, such as not ejecting a USB drive before closing AutoCAD. What drives I might attach to my computer are none of AutoDesk's business. Are you listening, AutoDesk?
Posted by: Someone who paid good money for AutoCAD LT | September 02, 2008 at 12:36 PM
I have heard that a lot of people are not happy with the performance of AutoCAD on a Mac using VMware Fusion and Parallels. What would be the best way to run AutoCAD on a Mac? I am a student and can't afford to waste any money on programs that destroy or slow down my work.
Posted by: Treegirl | September 02, 2008 at 08:00 PM