A lot of AutoCAD users seem to have taken notice of the big news of Apple’s recent MacBook Pro computers with their M1-based chips. The Apple M1 Pro and M1 Max have stirred up a storm of interest on the Internet and folks are asking if the world’s most well-known CAD system can run natively on the new M1 series chips. In this article we delve into answers and issues.
AutoCAD on M1 Mac
AutoCAD is native on the Mac but only for Intel X86 at the moment. That will likely change in the near future but we have no timeline. Autodesk stated in its online forums that the company was working on it. That was back in November of 2020—a year ago! So what is new on this issue?
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The system requirements page for AutoCAD 2021 on Mac states that M series chips are supported through translation via the Rosetta 2 mode. That is not the same as native M1 chip support which means Rosetta 2 will deliver some degree of a performance hit. And that is not the only issue at play now.
Apple’s new MacBook Pro comes in 14-in. and 16-in. models, and are powered by either the M1 Pro or M1 Max SoC (chip), offering industry-leading performance per watt across both CPU, GPU and machine learning functions.
A recent post here on the latest page on their forums shows that AutoCAD 2021 is not yet supported on macOS Monterrey, the very latest macOS operating system shipping on Apple’s latest computers—especially its brand new MacBook Pros.
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