Running virtual OS on top of another OS

[cadcam]

I am bringing this up as allot of people have asked about running Macs for example and Mastercam. I have two Macs one a Mac Book Pro with Bootcamp and a Mac pro desk top that was running VMWare but now moved to boot camp.

 

This is usually done using for example VMware in or on a Mac os or running Bootcamp that does not run on top of another OS as a virtual environment.

 

The question below was asked in an off topic of Windows 7 questions, I have included my response to my findings.

 

Hope you find this useful.

 

Quote: (How do you think running mastercam in a virtual OS on top of another OS will affect the benchmarks? )

 

Actually do not do it. I just moved my Mac pro over to Bootcamp from VMware.

 

As I tested it, Mastercam was running slower and graphics is hit hard as how it works is the VMware was handling it from the Mac side and not fully using the power of the video card on the windows side. My IT guy said that I was full of bull until I made him sit in front of two Mac pros one running VMware and Mastercam with XP64 bit and Space pilot and another Running the same thing in bootcamp.Oh and both had Quadro FX 5600 with 1.5 gig of video ram and 8 gigs of system ram. I used a 149 Meg MC file that had fixtures and paths for a Horizontal project I finished and walked the IT guy thru a few processes so he could see the difference. The results were as followed. He could see a day and night response and lack of system reactions to crunch time in tool paths. Did the same thing with SW 2009 showed same issues in both software's. I was trying to say to the IT guys I am not sure about this Mac system running VMware in the first place when I started with this company as I had come from beings a tech support guy from a Mastercam Dealer. They said try it and I did and finally started testing and found the issues addressed above and below.

 

Some other finding when running the VMware allot of button options that you are use to in Windows will not functions correctly as they are seen as Mac options as for me this drove me crazy and trying to program in Mastercam, Well let’s say I just about cussed daily as I would fight key commands.

 

Now with the bootcamp setup I have split the drive so I can boot to Mac if I want or to Windows so I can play in both worlds if I like.

I hope that some of this was informative for all thinking of the Mac world and Mastercam.

For me I now enjoy the Mac Pro with Mastercam and runs well.

Here are the basics of the Mac Pro I am running:

Mac Pro

2x Quad core 3.2 Xeon

8gigs of system ram

Dual Rapture 1500 rpm drives

Quadro Fx 5600 1.5 Video Ram

Bootcamp with Windows XP 64 bit OS

Windows Logitech keyboard

Logitech MX resolution mouse

Two Mac 30” monitors

[Jeff Kemper]

Thanks Jay.

 

For any nubies, (or not), can you post detailed info

on how to go about installing MCAMX, and Solidworks if ya know, on a Mac?

 

Oh, and which OS are you using on the Mac?

 

Thanks!

 

Jeff

[The_Evil_Machinist]

quote:

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For any nubies, (or not), can you post detailed info

on how to go about installing MCAMX, and Solidworks if ya know, on a Mac?

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I'll get this one.

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If you want to work inside the mac os, you need to install virtual machines. VMware is prolly the best virtual machine client. Now if you're running mac osx server (like me) you can take advantage of xgrid. So you're virtual machine has to have a x64 bit version of windows. With that you can take advantage of distributed cluster computing. If you're not running xgrid or dont want to fork over money for VMware, you can just use bootcamp and install a 32 or 64 bit version of windows on your mac. In VMware and bootcamp, installation procedures are the same because technically you're still in windows. The advantage of virtual machines is that with a little scripting, you can throw those processes onto the cluster system. Virtual machines know no limits in power. you can up the ram as much as your host computer can handle and your cpu is dependent on however many you have in your host computer. I have my system in a virtual machine running on my mac pro hooked up to a osx server xgrid system. So the cpu is dependent on however many node computers I have hooked up but ram is still limited on the host computer. For a everyday mac mastercam user, I'd recommend bootcamp. But I do alot of programming and I wanted to see how fast I could get the files burned out. My benchmark record is 20.812 seconds and it was done in virtual machine. But I am still having video issues. but I dont really care on how pretty the model is. so long story short, use bootcamp and get a regular windows keyboard. It's much easier than spending alot of time scripting and getting the virtual machine to work properly. And stay away from xgrid! its cool to say you have a multi node cluster but it is a hassle. Stability is a word that is not in my dictionary.

[Jeff Kemper]

Thanks Dr. Evil

 

To much info! but GOOD info.

 

I think I'll go bootcamp to start. I hear I need to create a partition for bootcamp, si?

 

Also have Snow Leopard, not installed. Install it?

[The_Evil_Machinist]

quote:

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I think I'll go bootcamp to start. I hear I need to create a partition for bootcamp, si?

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Go to utilities, then go to boot camp manager. You can set up your bootcamp partition there. just use the slider to adjust however much space you want on it. If you choose to 32Gb or less It will format it as FAT32 which will read and write faster than the standard NTFS. Then insert your disk, and click reboot! That easy!

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quote:

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Thanks Dr. Evil

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That's Dr Professor Evil to you good sir.

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