In surely what will be greeted with delight by Mac advocates in the mechanical CAD world, Architosh reader Tom Fenn, of the United Kingdom, writes in that SolidWorks Corporation has a version of their namesake leading mCAD product in the works for Apple’s innovative Mac OS X operating system. This reader report, which has yet to be verified, follows on the logical progress of many key engineering and 3D applications making the move to support the Mac on the native platform level.
“I just had a SolidWorks rep (I am in the United Kingdom) on the phone to me this afternoon,” wrote Tom Fenn, ” who told me that SolidWorks for Mac OS X will be announced at the next international SolidWorks conference in Barcelona.”
Yet Tom is not the first to report this news. Inside of the ArsTechnicaforums a poster by the name MitchM wrote: “I just got off the phone with my SolidWorks Rep. And she told me that they have a native [Mac] OS X version of SolidWorks in the development queue.” Thethread has some pretty happy responders.
“With this and Rhino 5 coming to OS X, I might be able to drop Windows entirely from my firm,” writes totm. “That would make [me] so very happy.”
Solidworks, UGS NX 5 and Rhino
Last year at COFES time, in spring, Architosh broke news of a conversation with Robert McNeel, CEO, of McNeel and Associates, the makers of the ever popular 3D modeling application Rhinoceros (often just referred to as Rhino). Rhino for Mac OS X is well underway with beta versions being downloaded and tested in the thousands.Architosh has a beta version running in its studio.
With UGS’ NX 5 for Mac OS X announcement (you can read the storyhere in a full interview article) SolidWorks for Mac OS X would make a logical progression in terms of the tools out there. It should be noted that the company has a version for UNIX before it ported it over to Windows. So developing for UNIX is nothing new to the folks at SolidWorks. Secondly, the company makes a product for Mac OS X now called eDrawings.
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