SIMION 8.0 Issues/Bugs/Enhancements

Issue I464 [80,mostlyresolved]
  Formal support for CrossOver Mac on Intel-based Mac OS X.

  OVERVIEW: As of December 2007, SIS is formally supporting running
  the Windows version of SIMION 8.0.x on Intel-based Mac OS X via
  a third-party application called Codeweavers CrossOver Mac (
  http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/ ).  This means that this
  combination generally runs quite well, and has been tested by SIS.
  You could run into a few minor issues as discussed below, but
  SIS can help with some setup questions and intends to patch SIMION
  if any incompatibilities are discovered.  For other methods
  of running SIMION on a Mac, see Issue I463.

  VERSION COMPATIBILITY: SIS testing was performed on the following
  configuration.  Newer versions, as well as older versions, likely
  work as well (or better), and other users have already successfully
  tried other versions.

    CrossOver Mac 6.2.0 on Intel-based Mac OS X 10.4.
    SIMION 8.0.3/8.0.4.

  PERFORMANCE: It has been noticed that particle flying performance
  under CrossOver Mac (at least 6.2.0), even in batch mode, is roughly
  half that when running under virtualization software such as VMWare
  Fusion and Parallels Desktop for Mac (see Issue I465 / Issue I466).
  Other operations such as refining are much less affected.  This
  behavior also seems to affect Wine/Linux and therefore is probably
  related to the Wine technology used by CrossOver.  This might be
  improvable in the future.  Nevertheless, SIMION performance is quite
  reasonable under CrossOver Mac.

  MEMORY: Maximum memory per PA (using "--reserved-memory"
  command-line option) is about 1.2 GB RAM, or 130 million points.
  This is somewhat below the Windows XP limit but might be
  improvable in the future.

  INSTALLATION STALL: when installing SIMION, the CrossOver
  Software Installer may appear to stall for a few minutes (displaying
  message "Installing Unsupported Software") before the SIMION
  installer window appears.  This is OK.

  RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON: SIMION uses the right mouse button for
  operations such as zooming and rotating, but the default mouse on
  many Macs lacks a right mouse button.  It is recommended you replace
  the mouse with a two-button USB mouse (a USB mouse taken from a PC
  will work).  The mouse scroll button doesn't entirely work in text
  boxes and Modify 3D screen though (minor issue).

  CLIPBOARD: Printing to Clipboard doesn't seem to do anything.
  However, you can print to a file (PS or EMF) and load in another
  application.  A screenshot can be taken using %-Shift-3 (entire
  screen), %-Shift-4 (rectangle), or %-Shift-4 then spacebar (window),
  which is saved as a file on the desktop (see "Shortcuts for taking
  pictures of the screen" in the CrossOver help).

  EXCEL [NOT SUPPORTED]: Communication between SIMION and Excel via
  the COM/OLE interface does not seem supported on the Mac.  A few of
  the Lua user programs in the SIMION examples are designed to use
  this feature for real-time data reporting, and to use these examples
  successfully you will need to modify these programs a bit to output
  data somewhere else (e.g. to a simple text file).  There are two
  reasons for this not being supported currently.  First, the native
  Mac version of Excel 2004 does not support COM.  Though you can
  install the Windows version of Excel (which does support COM) on
  CrossOver, CrossOver COM support appears very limited, though it
  might be possible by installing "DCOM95/DCOM98".  We have not yet
  had success doing this.  (And you may be interested in outputting
  your data to some other program.)

  COMMAND-LINE USAGE: To run SIMION from command-line, select
  "Programs|Run Command..." menu item from CrossOver and click "Debug
  Options|Open Shell".  From the shell run

    cd Program\ Files/SIMION-8.0/ cxstart simion.exe --nogui fly examples/quad/quad.iob

  ADDITIONAL COMMENTS FROM TESTING:
    PRINTING: works

    OPENGL (Modify 3D view): works.

    BATCH MODE: works.

    Opening Notepad (e.g. "User Program..." button in View or
    os.execute "notepad" in Lua: works.

    Opening web browser (e.g. "Docs" button and "Check for Updates"):
    works.

    Copy/Paste from Log Window: works.

    os.execute("start notepad results.csv") in geometry_optimize
    example does nothing (returns 9009).  However, os.execute("notepad
    results.csv") works and does not block.

    JavaScript search in Supplementary Docs: works.

  SIMION 7.0 Notes: SIMION 7.0 has also been known to work under
    CrossOver but there are a couple issues.  There are some mouse
    behavior problems where the mouse moves to the center of the screen
    whenever the mouse is clicked.  Relying more on the keyboard can
    work around this.  Resizing the SIMION 7.0 window can sometimes
    cause stabilility problems, though pressing the Window close button
    in the upper left title bar and then selecting No can reset it.