Autocad for Mac

[Cellery]

I'll start off by saying I'm a soon to be college student studying Architectural Technology and am looking for a laptop for school next year, I'm currently looking at Macbook Pros and was wondering if anyone who had one and uses autocad could help with my choice, I'm looking at the 13 inch Macbook Pro with i5, and was wondering do I need to upgrade and get the 15' with the other graphics card/i7 or is autocad not that graphics intensive I could get away with the 13 inch with the i5?

 

I have a while to decide so I'm in no means in any hurry to get one, I'm going to assume it'd mostly be used with Revvit, not 100% sure though, anything helps!

 

Thanks

[f700es]

Why a mac? You do know that AutoCAD Arch and Revit will not run on OSX? Yes AutoCAD and Revit are graphic intensive applications and require more than the Intel HD3000 video solution that the 13" MacBook Pro ($1,199) comes with. To use that laptop with Acad Arch and Revit you will need to either run Windows 7 in bootcamp or in a VM (virtual machine). That means on tops of buying the Mac you will need to buy a copy of Windows 7 and VM Fusion (if you go the VM route). To get a dedicated graphics solution in a MB Pro you need to spend $1,799 and get the 15" model. I just have to ask why a mac?

 

Comparable PC model:

Dell 15z - starts at $999

Core i5-2450M

nVidia GF GT 525M 1GB video

8GB DDR3

8x DVD-RW

750GB HDD

It looks like an Apple with all aluminum body as well

[ReMark]

Most colleges that teach architecture will have a predefined setup they want the students to use so everyone is working off the same platform. You would not want to find that the majority of your classmates and your instructor are using a PC-based computer while you are using a Mac. That could make life difficult for you since AutoCAD for Mac is different from that used on a PC.