Software

You have access to either free or heavily discounted student software licenses for the applications you will most commonly use.

How to get your software

Microsoft Office

You can get free Office 365 subscription via UBC IT’s Software Downloads page.

Anti-virus software

UBC IT also provides a free license of Sophos Anti-Virus.

Adobe Creative Suite

SALA provides Adobe Creative Suite for registered students. View the installation instructions here. Please note that you may need to renew your license every 6 months – if this happens, simply follow the instructions again.

AutoCAD

Autodesk offers a free education license.

Rhino

SALA provides a free Rhino license for registered students. View the installation instructions here. Note that you must be connected to the UBC VPN to use the software. While the latest version has been ported to Mac, we still prefer you use the Windows version. Please also note that you may need to renew your license every 6 months – if this happens, simply follow the instructions again.

Grasshopper

You can freely download this plugin for Rhino. Rhino for Mac now ships with an early port of Grasshopper, but, again, we prefer you use the Windows version.

Running Windows on a Mac

If you are a Mac user, you have two options to run Windows applications:

Boot Camp

Apple’s Boot Camp let’s you chose what operating to run when you start your laptop. 

Virtualization

Software like Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion lets you run Windows and Mac applications side by side. It does so by providing a Windows environment within OS X.

Performance using virtualization may be noticeable slower than running Boot Camp. In both cases, you need to set aside a large portion of your disk space to install Windows and the software applications In addition to the virtualization software, you also need to buy a full version of Microsoft Windows.