Post
by David Jones » Thu Mar 07, 2024 9:47 am
I, like everyone on the forum, am looking forward to the release of PowerCADD10. I too have the problem that Microsoft Office, Adobe Suite, Exchange Mail and some other software no longer work properly on Mojave.
To futureproof myself I have installed Ventura 13.x on an external 8TB OWC boot drive which I can use on both a 2019 iMac and a 2019 MacBookPro, and I have left Mojave on the internal drive on both computers.
I have installed Parallels on the external boot drive and installed Mojave within Ventura. By sharing the external boot drive with Mojave in Parallels, I can access drawings from either operating system. And it works just as fast as Mojave did natively, or at least there is no perceptible difference. Also, I haven’t had a single problem since I set it up in July 2023.
That now means that I have PowerCADD9 with WildTools running within Parallels. I also have the Beta II of PowerCADD10 installed and it runs using the data in the shared folder. I can save a .pc10 file back to .pc9 and open it in PowerCADD9 and use WildTools on it, and then if I wish, reopen it back in PowerCADD10. Remember that PowerCADD10 will have no WildTools when released. What I have done, gives me the best of both worlds.
Australia is a metric country now and A3 landscape is a common drawing sheet size. When I open an A3 size .pc9 drawing in PowerCADD10 it creates a separate file with the same name with the .PC10 tag and it works fine. When I select the Print menu it seems ok, but when it prints out, it seems to make an ultra wide left and ultra wide top margin and the bottom spills on to a second sheet, the the right hand strip spills onto 2 more sheets making a 4 sheet output. I suspect that some work needs to be done to correct the problem, so the drawing will fit on one A3 sheet. If the problem is corrected, I will be more tempted to do more work in PowerCADD10 because it will print out correctly. At the moment I have to save it back to PowerCADD9 to print it, so the temptation is to use PowerCADD9 with WildTools in Mojave in Parallels by itself, rather than using PowerCADD10 and testing it, which is what Todd Stanley and David Kropp need us to do!
I am quite impressed with PowerCADD10, realising that it still has some tools not working yet.
My 2019 Intel Macs support Sonoma 14.x and I would like to think that Apple will still allow MacOS 15 to boot the 2019 Intel Macs because they have only recently completed the MacPro transition to Silicon, and the 2019 MacPro owners deserve at least one more upgrade of system software. By the time MacOS15 is released, hopefully some native WildTools for PowerCADD10 will become available.
Remember that when Parallels is installed on an Apple Silicon Mac, you can’t install Mojave on it because there is no Intel chipset available and there is little possibility of an Intel chipset emulation ever becoming available. Of course this means no possibility of running PowerCADD9 plus WildTools on an Apple Silicon Mac. Therefore if you can acquire a 2019 Intel Mac, that will give you the best and fastest solution, at least until some WildTools are available for PowerCADD10.
So if your drawing process relies on WildTools I recommend you do not rush in and buy Apple Silicon Macs for a while!