What are my options with Rhino and MadCam on a Mac.
I have MadCam 4.3 and Rhino 4.0. The upgrade path for both is very reasonable to go to the highest version on a Windows box, but is NOT when going to a Mac. Going to Mac means buying new software basically.
Does anyone have another idea? I really hate to just trash the software and the computer it’s running on. I paid like $1,800.00 for both pieces of software, and another $500 for the PC.
The upgrade paths for both are $495 for Rhino 4.0 to Rhino 5.0, and $295 for MadCam 4.3 to 5.0. If I go MAC versions of both I’m looking at $2000, compared to $800 for the upgrades. I am half temped to see if I can sell the PC, MadCam 4.3, and Rhino 4.0 to someone and let them decide to upgrade or not. Then I would just go out and get Rhino 5.0 for the Mac and MadCam 5.0 for the Mac.
Don’t think so… You are looking at a difference of $200 between getting a Windows V5 upgrade ($495) and buying a new V5 Mac ($695). So the main problem appears to be MadCam. Does MadCam actually run on Mac? I wasn’t aware of that… If so, great (that’s good news to me), you might contact them directly and see what they have to say about a “crossgrade” - they’re pretty cool.
If you can come to grips with your dislike of Windows, you have the Bootcamp, Parallels and VM options available to run madCam. I have found Parallels allows me to run my CNC control software very nicely, and Rhino as well as everything else I had tried: Word, Excel, Visual Studio and a lot of other less mainstream stuff. I would be very surprised if madCam would’t run in a virtual environment, but if for some reason it won’t, Bootcamp is supposed to make the Mac look just like PC hardware. Since you already own licensed Windows software, there would be no additional cost with Bootcamp and just the cost of the virtualizing software (under $100) if that’s your choice. I chose a virtual environment because it doesn’t require a reboot to change back and forth. In fact, with Parallels you can have it running simultaneously with OS X and switch back and forth at will like it was just another Mac app on the desktop. VM probably does too, but I haven’t used it so I’m not sure.
I don’t understand this fascination with Mac. What am I missing? Because how I see it is that I buy a Mac because I don’t like traditional PCs running Windows, but then I have to take extra steps to make my new Mac run the Windows I hate because at the end of the day, I need to get work done and the Mac alone can’t do it.
If all one had to run was Windows-only I’d have to agree with you wholeheartedly. On the other hand, there’s stuff that runs only on Mac and there’s no practical way to run it on a PC. If you need to run both and want the highest performance your budget will allow rather than two machines at half the price each, then a Mac is a pretty good choice.
I bought my MacBook Pro Retina in 2012 because at that time it was a great high performance lightweight machine with low power consumption and a high resolution screen. There weren’t any PC notebooks like it at the exact time I needed a new one and I was curious after several decades of using Windows on Dell hardware I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about. Now I can use either OS with equal facility for whatever it’s best at. For me, now, I regard each as about equal in strengths and weaknesses but i’ve lost any religious fervor I might have had about either. Don’t know much about Linux, though, except that there’s a lot of people who use it for some pretty neat things.
If all one had to run was Windows-only I’d have to agree with you wholeheartedly. On the other hand, there’s stuff that runs only on Mac and there’s no practical way to run it on a PC. If you need to run both and want the highest performance your budget will allow rather than two machines at half the price each, then a Mac is a pretty good choice.