Sorry in advance for the long winded explanation and question
I am a Mac user and MeshCam (to be called MC for the rest of this) V6 is not compatible with modern Mac OS as it crashes on every tool path creation. I was told by them to try V7 (beta) but while I found V6 fairly easy to follow (intuitive GUI and buttons) V7 is a mess and things are named differently so there is no direct correlation between the 2. I was able to find may videos online for V6 that got me up and running fairly quickly but again it crashes every time I hit create a tool path. No instructions anywhere for V7 yet and no videos (that surprised me). And it just seems like a lot of stuff is missing (or hidden) in V7. Mind you one of the reasons I purchased my Nomad over others was this great 3D program it came with for free that was suppose to work on my machine.
So I asked the folks at Meshcam about this and I gave a very specific scenario I was trying to create for a project and I got an email asking for the STL file and they offered to “work up a quick little video for you” and I thought that’s great, at least it’s a start but several emails and weeks later nothing… No reply back to any of my other emails, no video no instructions… No help at all. They could have at least said “its been busy but we are working on it” sort of thing. I mean they made it sound like it would be to me in a few days or so.
So while I hate to do it I might consider buying a small laptop just to run MC V6 if I can find out what will run it properly. Will a Chromebook work? or a Surface?? or what?
I have used Windows in the past a little I just really prefer the Mac OS.
I’m afraid Chrome won’t work, since it’s only available compiled for Mac OS X/Windows. I run it occasionally on a Samsung Galaxy Book 12, and a current Surface should work well — I’d avoid the Go, since it’s a low-end machine often noted as under-performing.
Hi, I was in the same position as you, my (admittedly old) MacBook pro would crash on most tool path generations. I upgraded from 8gb to 16 gbs of 1333 MHz DDR3 memory and that improved things as long as the stls weren’t too complex. I then started to break up the jobs into 1 file for roughing another for finishing and waterline or pencil in another (if needed). I always used the manual option and started off with small or simple projects to get an idea of the time needed and if the job would actually finish. This allowed me to complete almost every tool path I asked for but it still took a long time for some projects. Eventually I bought a gov. surplus Dell optiplex i7 (as an Apple household this was considered treason and moving to the dark side) and this was not only faster but completed every job. I then enabled all the cores (4 as standard 8 is all the cores) and its about 5 times faster than my laptop. I’m now looking into converting it into a hackintosh to still have the benefits of the MacOS.
Hope this helps
Mike
I use parallel with Windows 10 on my Mac for VCarve, Inkscape and a few other programs and to be frank, it works as well if not better than on a separate minimal PC. IT is cheaper than buying but the cheapest PC that may not last very long.
The bonus is the ability of transferring data almost seamlessly between both environment. I can even cut and copy between. I was in your shoes a few months ago and was looking for a PC then decided to try parallel to run VCarve. I’m glad I did. The only downside I have is that running parallel/Windows uses my battery faster than running MacOS only so I need to recharge during the day instead of having a full day charge.