The preview version is not limited to the Mac rather the free Windows download lasts an additional 3 months. This is an interesting marketing move, and will probably make some big waves among mac users due to the scarcity of decent professional CAD packages there. The reviews are pretty good, but if you read the fine print you'll see that the package expires on Jan 1st, 2013. In every case restarting Alibre has gotten rid of the problem, so this is a pretty minor annoyance.Īnother interesting development in regard to CAD on the mac is that Autodesk has now launched a new CAD package, called the Inventor Fusion 'Technology Preview' version, which is a free download from the fusion website or Apple's App store. I don't remember ever seeing this under Parallels. Every once in a while, I get some bizarre graphics issues, and one of these makes it impossible to see what I'm doing well enough to keep working. Here's another update on running Alibre on Mac OS:Īs an update to my earlier comment: I'd now say Alibre works 'adequately' under VMware fusion, downgraded from 'very well'. Running the 32 bit XP also helps by not requiring as much RAM as Windows 7 would. My older MacBook supposedly supports only 4GB, but I found that I could reliably extend this to 6GB, which helps. All Macbook Pros have built-in support for an external monitor, allowing a small portable a lot more screen space whenever that's plugged in.Īnyone investing in new hardware to do something like this might be better off getting something that can be extended to 8GB of Ram, as there's a fair amount of RAM eaten up by all this overhead.

This also works well with the 'Spaces' option built in to OSX 10.6, which got upgraded/extended in 10.7. Just select the 'Use all displays in full screen' option. Some folks may also be interested to hear that Parallels supports multiple monitors, which is important because Alibre does also. I'm running Alibre Design 2012 on an early 2008 model Macbook Pro, with OSX 10.6.8 on the Mac side, Windows XP (32 bit) on the PC side, and Parallels tying them neatly together without re-partitioning or re-booting. My video is fast enough that I don't sense any slowdown, and appears to be rock solid steady. This is to clarify why Parallels wasn't working when Ralf3 tested it, but is working fine for jclements and now myself: The latest version, Parallels Destop 7, has now explicitly added support for DirectX 9.0c, which Alibre requires.

Windows 7 on macbook pro 2011 parallels