With over 15 years of industry experience, Donnie is a recognized Autodesk design solutions expert. Note: Although this method will let you run Windows in both Boot Camp and Parallels Desktop, you may need to activate some products twice once in Boot Camp, and another in parallels Desktop. This configuration allows you to boot into Boot Camp when performance is paramount, and run Windows in with Parallels Desktop virtualized when versatility is paramount.
A valid license must be obtained separately to run Windows on your Mac with any of these tools. Our experience testing Windows-based Autodesk applications on a Mac has found virtualization is only plausible when working with basic designs.
Although the versatility of being able to run your Mac applications at the same time you run Windows-based applications like Autodesk Revit is incredible, our experience has found this is not always the most practical solution. The bottom line is that virtualization tools like Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion provide the greatest versatility, whereas Boot Camp provides the best system performance. Boot Camp is the absolute easiest way to run Windows on your Mac, but requires you to reboot choosing Windows instead of Mac OS X to run any of your Windows-based applications. The core difference between BootCamp and virtualization is rebooting.
