SU Pro 2013: Mac... or Windows + BootCamp (or Parallels)?

db11

Hoping to finally be able to spring for SU Pro sometime this fall and I have a few questions:

For those users that have experience with SU Pro 2013 on both platforms, which is preferred and why?
For Mac users running SU for Windows under BootCamp or Parallels, what has your experience been?

How well does SU 2013 [Windows] run under BootCamp?
Is Parallels a better/worse option?
Is there a big hit in performance running under a the Parallels virtual machine?
Is BootCamp the better option for that reason?

Would you recommend simply staying Mac all-round, or is it worth it to manage the windows version on a mac? (I'm not about to switch to a windows machine, but I am considering running SU [Windows] for broader plug-in compatibility and better materials management.)
Do I need a separate license for Windows and Mac versions if they are both installed on the same machine?

Thanks for your input.

[ThomThom: hoping you see this, since I understand you've recently added a Mac to your arsenal for testing purposes. I would be especially interested to hear your take to date]

Dave R

I have SketchUp Pro on both my PC and my MacBook Pro. Mostly I prefer SketchUp on the PC although that's strictly for cosmetic reasons. I prefer having the toolbars docked around the edges of the drawing space instead of floating over it. I also like the Materials window on the PC better.

I've not run SU with Parallels or BootCamp so I can't say.

As to licensing, you'd need to talk with the SketchUp Customer Service folks and get the straight answer.

db11

Thanks for the reply Dave.

Have the toolbars been improved at all in SU 2013 on the mac? I find the inconsistency of toolbar behavior annoying, and alternate between cursing SU and OSX — since I'm never sure on any given issue which is to blame.

I also detest materials management generally in SU — thank ~~God~~ ThomThom/TIG/Fredo6 et al.. for plugins — though I understand that it's worse on the mac (due to SU using native tools). As I mentioned, this is one of the things that has me considering the windows version.

Do you notice any difference in stability (bug splats, freezes etc) and/or performance (open/save times, plugin run times, etc) from one platform to the other?

Thanks again for the info.

Dave R

There hasn't been any changes to the Mac toolbars with SU2013. I find because of the floating toolbars, I just don't keep very many of them out on the Mac and have to turn them on as I need them. The toolbar thing on the PC with SU2013 is great. No more scrambled toolbars as in SU8 and before. I also made a couple of custom toolbars for the native tools I use to save some real estate.

I don't really have any problems with materials management on the PC even with the native tool. I like my method for creating wood grain materials but I generally do all of that work on the PC and copy the libraries over to the Mac.

As for stability I don't notice any difference between the two platforms. They are both extremely stable for me and no extended save times or anything.

db11

Thanks very much Dave. Very helpful info...

I'm planning on upgrading my Mac this fall, as well as upgrading to SU Pro 2013 (haven't upgraded from SU8 yet due to the changes in licensing from Free to Make, as I do occasionally use SU output professionally).

As part of my Mac upgrade I am going to install Windows, either with BootCamp or Parallels — primarily for Excel (another program whose Mac version lags / sucks more than the windows one). Since SU is my second most-used program, and I'll have an available Windows environment, I wanted to consider whether running SU Pro in Windows would be the better option.

If it involves buying a separate license for each version, then it will be a lot tougher choice... not sure if I would buy a Windows-only Pro license to run on my new mac: seems almost sacrilegious!

ArCAD-UK

I detest Win8 and I think MS are loosing the plot; I'm about to jump to Apple so the Q's in the OP are also of interest to me.

@db11: If you are keeping windows "primarily" for Excel, do you know MS Office is available for the MAC?

From what I've seen of Pages & Numbers I think they could cover my needs quite readily so I'm also considering dumping Office.

db11

@arcad-uk said:

@db11: If you are keeping windows "primarily" for Excel, do you know MS Office is available for the MAC?

Yes - have been on various versions of Office Mac since OS7.

Pages is great. Numbers is nice too, but still missing too many functions for my purposes - plus I have a lot of macros / VBA scripts that require Excel for full compatibility. I've tried replacing MS Office with Libre Office... and while it's mostly compatible, there's still a few problems with some workbooks / functions /scripts.

I'm resigned to sticking with Excel, at least for now. Excel Mac 2011 lags even Excel 2010: my versions — 2004 Mac; 2003 PC — are seriously long-in-the-tooth, so will probably jump straight to Excel 2013. While I hate to give MS my money, Excel is still their one must-have for me.

I've heard lots of nasty feedback about Windows 8, but will wait till 8.1 before deciding on that or Windows 7 to install under BootCamp. (I'm currently running Windows 2003 on a vintage Fujitsu Lifebook... a 750MHz Pentium3!)

slbaumgartner

@db11 said:

Hoping to finally be able to spring for SU Pro sometime this fall and I have a few questions:

For those users that have experience with SU Pro 2013 on both platforms, which is preferred and why?

For Mac users running SU for Windows under BootCamp or Parallels, what has your experience been?

How well does SU 2013 [Windows] run under BootCamp?

Is Parallels a better/worse option?

Is there a big hit in performance running under a the Parallels virtual machine?

Is BootCamp the better option for that reason?

Would you recommend simply staying Mac all-round, or is it worth it to manage the windows version on a mac? (I'm not about to switch to a windows machine, but I am considering running SU [Windows] for broader plug-in compatibility and better materials management.)

Do I need a separate license for Windows and Mac versions if they are both installed on the same machine?

Thanks for your input.

[ThomThom: hoping you see this, since I understand you've recently added a Mac to your arsenal for testing purposes. I would be especially interested to hear your take to date]

I have a MBP Retina with Windows 7 running under Parallels. I run either SU 8 Free or 2013 Make, but I don't think the differences with Pro affect my comments. On the whole, they are both serviceable - with slight reservations.

In a nutshell, neither version copes completely well with the Retina display. In native Mac mode, the inference engine points are so small they can be hard to see. The interface for textures and materials is more confusing than on Windows. Plus I agree with Dave R that I prefer the Windows dockable toolbars and other auxiliary windows vs the Mac ones that chronically either pop over things or slide off the side of the screen. Under Windows/Parallels, there are occasional glitches when one or another item tries to run in pixels instead of screen points and is either tiny (certain dialogs) or places things half as far out as the cursor would suggest (e.g. customizing the toolbar). Since both have issues, your choice ends up being based on which kind of glitches bother you the most.

Steve

db11

Thanks for the feedback Steve - exactly the kind of info I'm interested in.

@slbaumgartner said:

I have a MBP Retina with Windows 7 running under Parallels.

Close to the setup that I'll likely end up with. Waiting for the Haswell version of the MacBook Pro 13" Retina and assuming that it has a decent graphics setup (i.e. Iris 5100), I'll spring for it — also looking forward to the vastly improved dual monitor support in Mavericks.

@slbaumgartner said:

Since both have issues, your choice ends up being based on which kind of glitches bother you the most.

Seems from what you've said that my best bet is to test both Mac and PC versions of Make and see which glitches on what platform end up bugging me more before deciding which pro license to spring for...

Since most of my modeling will be done at my desk — hooked up to a couple of Dell monitors (U2412M) — the Retina Display issues you describe may not end up being that significant in my case.

Plus, I have to imagine that most of those bugs will get squashed with time — especially since pixel density is becoming a PC issue also, (with the current adoption of high-density displays in ultrabooks)

Thanks again.

sketch3d.de

Q5: SUP licences are either for Windows or OSX regardless of running on the same system, i.e. you have to decide which platform to buy.

Q2: running an OpenGL based modeler as SU in a virtualized OS by using e.g. Parallels DT may lead to slow responsiveness with screen transformations (zooming, rotating, moving etc.) as well as show artefacts for the screen output.

hth,
Norbert

db11

@sketch3d.de said:

Q5: SUP licences are either for Windows or OSX regardless of running on the same system, i.e. you have to decide which platform to buy.

Thanks Norbert, for your feedback and the licensing clarification... I was afraid that was the case.

The other consideration for running a Windows version under Parallels vs. the native Mac version is that I want to learn rendering once I have my new machine (plan is to start with Kyrkethea and move to Thea when and if I figure it all out). I would imagine that there would be an additional performance hit rendering within a virtual machine - not to mention the higher likelihood of additional glitches.

Will probably end up buying the Mac version - seems less risky overall, even if there are some Windows version advantages that I'll miss out on. Still plan to test both free versions before making the final call.

Thanks again.

notareal

I would not recommend a virtual machine for rendering, if the boot camp is a option go with that, for example you might have hard time to get CUDA work in VM. Anyhow for Thea or Kerkythea the boot camp is not needed as there are mac versions for both.

db11

@notareal said:

Anyhow for Thea or Kerkythea the boot camp is not needed as there are mac versions for both.

Good point. Even if I did my drawing in Windows (whether Parallels VM or BootCamp), I can still render natively in OSX. The two decisions (of drawing vs rendering environments) share no necessary dependency — at least with KT / Thea as the choice of renderer.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Dave R

I'll be interested to hear what you think about using SketchUp on the two platforms.

notareal

Personally I would avoid VM if program uses OpenGL too, I seen odd behaviour with that. So be it CUDA or OpenGL, stay away of VM. There are good uses for VM, but mainly on server side, testing and so... but for workstation, you really need to know what you are doing if you want to use VM.

db11

@dave r said:

I'll be interested to hear what you think about using SketchUp on the two platforms.

I'll definitely report back once I'm set up —though it could be a couple of months still (since the latest rumors suggest a late October launch for Mavericks and it seems likely that the hardware and OS upgrades will be synced.).

@notareal said:

Personally I would avoid VM if program uses OpenGL too, I seen odd behaviour with that. So be it CUDA or OpenGL, stay away of VM. There are good uses for VM, but mainly on server side, testing and so... but for workstation, you really need to know what you are doing if you want to use VM.

I appreciate your advise, especially given your expertise. One of the things that I'll apparently have to pay attention to is the Open GL / CUDA rift relative to the combination of graphics card/render platform (as if there wasn't enough complexity to deal with in rendering already!).

Once I get closer to actually springing for the new computer / SU Pro / render platform I may have some more questions, but for now I really appreciate all the well-informed feedback. Awesome place here!

caronte01

I use windows at the office, and osx at home. I like sketchup better on windows, the material editor is a lot better, and I can have antialiasing on, which can also be done on the mac, via a ruby command, but it is buggy. On windows it works great with my nvidia video card. If those two things were addressed on the mac, I would jump to osx.

One thing the mac does, that windows does not is multiple document windows, on windows you have to launch a separate instance per file. You get used to doing this, but I prefer single app, multiple windows. Also, osx can export png's with transparent background.

The people that develop twilight render helped me with a license for windows, and a learning license for my mac, for the same price.

Layout works great on both platforms, but I prefer to use it on osx, and this is just my opinion, but for example, the colors palette that works terribly on sketchup as a material selector/editor, works great with layout. Also, the mac version supports importing pdf files (also in sketchup if I remember correctly), windows does not. I also like the font selector on the mac more.

I would also advice against running sketchup virtualized. I use autocad, for some 2d stuff, that program seems to work ok virtualized, but sketchup would not run well, esp, open gl.

One thing I wish would improve on osx is more related to hardware, better entry level machines. Apple has moved away from discrete graphics for all entry level hardware, and only offers it on 15" macbooks, and some imacs, but not on their line of macbook air, or mac minis, or even on their 13" retina macbook. Intel graphics are imo inferior to even entry level nvidia cards, esp. for sketchup work.

notareal

@caronte01 said:

...Apple has moved away from discrete graphics for all entry level hardware, and only offers it on 15" macbooks, and some imacs, but not on their line of macbook air, or mac minis, or even on their 13" retina macbook. Intel graphics are imo inferior to even entry level nvidia cards, esp. for sketchup work.

It's shame indeed... Honestly, if machine needs to be good with CUDA, maybe macbook pro is not the ideal choice as they GPU's have fairly limited RAM (512MB to 1GB). Not sure what's with next Mac Pro, looks like it will have state-of-the-art AMD FirePro GPU cards, so no CUDA there too (from published images it looks like one simple cannot swaps those to nvidia cards).