Adobe creative suite

My 2 cents, however YMMV (your mileage may vary). Indesign is a publishing program, much like PageMaker was back in the day. You may have more success with Illustrator as a tool for vector based rendering (I am assuming that is what your using it for, then exporting to an eps or some other file that can be imported into AutoCAD). Illustrator may be the better tool.

As far as efficiency, I don’t see any particular gain in MAC vs. PC in regards to Adobe products, although each has thier fans and detractors. If there is any difference, I think it comes down to preference and workflow rather than hard and fast number crunching. Using the right program would probably have a much more profound effect.

AutoCAD is native only to a windows (PC) environment. To run it on an Mac you need a virtual machine running a Windows OS of some sort with AutoCAD on that. I’ve had several friends and colleagues work in that environment for some time and without exception there seems to bugs and often lags and crashes even on the faster machines.

I’d say look at getting a decent desktop machine running a current version of Windows 7 (or XP), Adobe CS5, and try using Illustrator with AutoCAD to achieve your workflow. There may be a learning curve to Illustrator (although many tools and vector-based art should transfer without issue), but it was created to handle the larger, vector rendering that it sounds like your trying to do with a publication layout program (InDesign).

Good luck!

I am still a student, but I have used all the software hardware configurations discussed here either at the University, on my personal machine, and at offices where I’ve interned. There is little difference to me for Adobe on mac or pc. I get a few more crashes when running AutoCAD in a Parallels simultaneously with CS4 on the Mac side. But that suits my work flow best so I tolerate the occasional hang. I have even had AutoCAD, ArcGIS, and CS4 running at the same time with satisfactory performance.

Based on my nonscientific analysis, it is the network/antivirus/spyware/autobackup configuration that commonly produces the most instability – not the platform or the design software. Antivirus from all vendors run their tentacles into every corner of our operating systems and can unleash havoc in the background. My worst experiences came with a transition to Trend Micro. Working with the IT people to make sure any automatic tasks performed by the antivirus/spyware has had much better results than platform switching.