VMware Fusion 3.0

[Ben Cohen]

For those of you wondering how ArchiCAD runs under Fusion 3.0, the news is good, very good. I have had patchy performance from Fusion 2.0, some times just selecting a folder can take 20 - 30 secs, often requiring a restart of the virtual machine. But this issue has disappeared

I am running a Macbook Pro @ 2.5 GHz with 4 gig of ram and Snow Leopard.

1. The installation was a breeze, my virtual machine (which was created from my old HP laptop) remained completely intact, and the Mac didnt even need to be restarted. Although windows did once I booted and updated Vmware.

2. Startup seems slightly quicker.

3. ArchiCAD 12 and 13 are both running really well. Fusion now supports OpenGL 2.1 and the 3d window is very responsive. Surprisingly 2d redraw is noticeably faster. Panning and zooming are now instant. The virtual machine with XP is now running ArchiCAD as well as a cheap PC box.

4. VBE is now working under Fusion. Previously VBE would not even start. It will now run, albeit slowly and there seams to be a few material mapping problems. But as this is 3.0 I would expect this to get better.

So all round performance has improved, with Fusion minimizing, pausing and generally running much quicker. At the upgrade price of US $39 its well worth it. 3.0 has made bootcamp redundant - for me at least. Now all I need is for Apple to release a Core i7 laptop!

[Anonymous]

Why do you run AC under Fusion when you could install it as a native Mac app?

I've been using Fusion 3.0 for other things tho and i agree it's fantastic! i particularly like the unity mode.

[Ben Cohen]

I use ArchiCAD on the Mac side 95% of the time but all the users at my work (25+) are on PC, therefore, for final template creation, addon development and library testing I need to run ArchiCAD under the windows environment.
Actually Fusion has been gettting slower since this post, so I am not as happy as I was originally. I have found that I need to restart the virtual machine sometimes as it grinds to a absolute halt.
Still for 5% of the time its acceptable.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Ben,

Have you tried VBE under Fusion to see if the global illumination mode works? (Demo file download if you don't have a license, but I imagine you do.)

Parallels 5.0 has added a number of new features ... but its OpenGL support still does not permit GI navigation in VBE; all other modes work though.

Thanks,
Karl

[Ben Cohen]

Hi Karl

Global illumination works, but it seems to be in grey scale, or most of the colour is washed out. The other modes work fine, cartoon etc. Now we have a Mac VBE its not really that important I guess, but an interesting exercise.
Once these Virtual Machines get a bit better, I can see you could have a load of computers running linux and VMware, all from the same windows license, it must be against the Microsoft EULA - but I think it would work.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Thanks, Ben. Yup, since the Mac version of VBE(g) arrived, I have not needed to run under Parallels, but found it a useful test to see if the Parallels 5 graphics had been improved. At least you see grayscale in Fusion ... you see only sky under Parallels in GI mode ... but everything else works nicely.

(Parallels 5 improved graphics somehow in that Aero now works in a Windows 7 VM, which was not possible with Parallels 4.)

Thanks again,
Karl

[Anonymous]

Good news! Thanks!

[David Larrew]

Hey guys,

Relating to this thread...

I've been looking at both Parallels and VMware Fusion and was wondering which of the two works best for AC and other similar programs. It seems there are so many opinions out there, it's like the Coke/Pepsi debate.

I just want to know what the AC users think...

[Karl Ottenstein]

David wrote:
I've been looking at both Parallels and VMware Fusion and was wondering which of the two works best for AC and other similar programs. It seems there are so many opinions out there, it's like the Coke/Pepsi debate.

Now that Autodesk officially recommends Parallels for running their full product line on Macs, I feel like I should switch to Fusion.

Seriously, you might search to see why Autodesk made this recommendation over Fusion - I have not run into anything (without searching) to suggest why they feel Parallels is superior...

I have no real complaints about Parallels other than the VBEG thing below. It has a nice look-and-feel.

Cheers,
Karl

[Ralph Wessel]

David wrote:
've been looking at both Parallels and VMware Fusion and was wondering which of the two works best for AC and other similar programs. It seems there are so many opinions out there, it's like the Coke/Pepsi debate.
I just want to know what the AC users think...

I think it's simply a case where both products work, and if you've bought one there's no point exploring the other. Consequently, anyone having an opinion on this subject will be able to tell you about one product but not the other. I use Parallels and it works fine for all my requirements. I've never used VMware Fusion, but I hear good things about it. My overall impression is that Parallels tends to advance faster as a product, but VMware Fusion has much better technical support if you run into problems.

I'd be interested to hear from someone who has tried VirtualBox with ArchiCAD. It's free, but doesn't appear to be as far ahead as the commercial products (and I think it's slower). However, Sun seems to be developing it at a terrific pace now.