This CAD program in particular is the most well-known CAD software in the Apple Mac arena. Many of the past CAD programs for the Mac have started out as simple and quite primitive 2D drafting tools like MiniCAD that later changed its name to Vectorworks. The choices of software in this market are now much greater than have ever been in the past.

Manufacturers of many CAD software products have recognised the size and growth of the Mac market for their CAD software and have responded by developing CAD for Mac software either from the ground up or as a spin-off of their Windows based programs, and, it is now possible to run Windows effectively on the Mac at the same time as running the Mac OS (Operating System) thus opening up the ability to use existing Windows based CAD software on the Mac machine. Two things have occurred quite recently in favour of taking Mac machines seriously for CAD usage. In recent times the MAC computer and the PC are more similar than ever, even to the point of using the same Intel brand processors, and with the huge uptake of the Apple Mac computer in industry, more and more people have been asking for a serious CAD for Mac computers. They are also totally inaccurate and therefore cannot be relied upon when measuring or scaling. Bitmaps on the other hand simply end up with bigger dots when scaled up and jagged edges as the dots become more visible to the naked eye. Vectors can also be scaled up of down without compromising the appearance of the drawing or model. The advantage of Vectors over Bitmaps is that vectors accurately describe the world in 3D with dimensional precision. An arc is described as four points, one in the centre, two at either end and another at some point on the circumference.

A straight line for instance is described to the machine as two end points and a definition in between those two points. Vectors are a way of describing the world as a series of linear entities with points in 3D space. CAD software on the other hand was mostly comprised of vector based information and the processors used in PC’s were particularly adept at handling vectors. Bitmaps are a series of dots that make up a photograph or two dimensional image, they contain data such as hue color and saturation etc. The processors used in Mac machines were designed around handling large files that comprised mainly of bitmap image data. Traditionally CAD has been very strong in the Unix and Windows PC world, whilst Apple Mac computers have been relegated to handling the more graphical world of desk-top publishing and photo imaging. We touch on the pros and cons or choosing a Mac for CAD usage and list the current CAD for Mac software available on the market. In this article we explore CAD software designed for the Apple Mac computer and its native operating systems as well as look at CAD for Mac that is not running MAC OS.

Mini cad for mac