Several blog postings and rumblings on the Net have surfaced over the past two weeks that seem to indicate that Autodesk may have plans for developing a Mac native version of AutoCAD for Apple’s growing platform. This news shouldn’t be all that surprising (or taken too seriously) as the design software company has been making significant overtures towards the Mac platform since Macworld 2009 in San Francisco. At that time the company told Architosh there were strong demands for all of its major software products on the Mac platform and that the company was working on addressing those needs.
Autodesk AutoCAD 2011 Mac Beta
Over at Outside the Box, a blog on AutoCAD and ObjectARX, Owen Wengerd has discussed the evidence of a native Mac port in the works by examining some of the latest ObjectARX 2011 SDK (software development kit) header files. This type of nosing around and discovering “code comments” to learn about what may be coming down the pike is what Apple fans often do to figure out the future of the Mac, iPhone or iPad OS.
Blurry screen image of possible Autodesk AutoCAD 2011 Mac Beta.
Evidence of a Mac port comes in the form both comments and changes made to the files so that they can work with the GCC compiler and the Mac OS X libraries. Some of the code looks as follows:
#if defined(_WINDEF_) || defined(_ADESK_MAC_)
/* AutoCAD graphics window handle */
HWND adsw_acadMainWnd();
#ifndef adsw_hwndAcad
#define adsw_hwndAcad adsw_acadMainWnd()
#endif
And in another file (acedinpt.h) there’s more telling evidence of the Mac:
#ifndef _ADESK_MAC_
#ifndef ACAD_PORT
#ifdef ACAD_API
#define ACAD_PORT _declspec(dllexport)
#else
#define ACAD_PORT
#endif
#endif
#else
// On OS X, we will export all symbols by default and will use GCC
// attributes to exclude symbols we don’t want to export.
// In this case, we do want to export the AcEdInputPoint symbol
#define ACAD_PORT
#endif // _ADESK_MAC_
Wengerd writes that it is clear that “Autodesk has successfully built a limited executable of AutoCAD for OS X” in both 32 and 64-bit forms. It is not clear to us how he can determine the bit-ness of these possible early builds unless he has a copy of the beta itself. He writes that changes do “break binary compatibility for ObjectARX applications” and thus “no full-blown Mac port” can be near.
There are several source of this information on the Net, including Wengerd’s blog here, a summary at Hardmac.com and the screen capture from this site, which published a “no” article to Autodesk developing a native Mac port.
Thanks to reader David Chaney for pointing this all out to us.
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I found your entry interesting do I’ve added a Trackback to it on my weblog :)…
We’ve gotten some communications from Autodesk regarding release dates and MSRP for AutoCAD for Mac. The only data available is that it will release this fall and the MSRP will be the same as the PC version – around $3995. Autodesk WILL, however, allow current PC users to switch over to the mac version for a nominal fee. It will be interesting to see what percentage of users do decide to switch, as AutoCAD’s exclusivity has been a thorn in many users’ sides since the last version in 1992 (R12).
Great news!!! especially to those engineers. AutoCAD to Apple Mac really made me excited really made me excited, I believe that for millions of design, engineering industry professionals, this would be a perfect combination!!!
Hmm, this made me one more reason love my iPad! It has almost completely replaced my personal computer. For the things I do… Is is perfect! Much nicer than any CPU I have ever owned. For work, all my other computers would do a lot of things I would never use it for, and do it painfully in the process (slow, buggy, etc.). When you get down to what you do most on you personal computer… the iPad does almost all of the things an average user needs, and with a much much nicer U/I. Easy of use, fast, and efficient. The other computer manufacturers could learn a thing or two from this, but even if they do… they will probably screw-up the one they come out with by adding all the crap back in again. For entertainment, now with one of the top features of iPad — movie watching, Im totally sucked in enjoying kinds of videos and movies with iPad, though some times need in the help of iPad video converter from iFunia for lack of flash support. Ugggggg!!!!
[…] rumor resurge de nuevo como la espuma al encontrarse indicios de la versión para Mac en el Kit de Desarrollo (SDK) de ObjectARX. No hay noticias […]
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