I cannot begin to tell you the countless amount of emails I receive that ask me about how I am running Revit on a Mac. Well Greg at Revit3D.com was the first to find a little support page for such an issue.
You want to know if you can run Autodesk® Revit® on an Apple® computer using Apple Boot Camp software.
Solution
Autodesk Revit Architecture 2010, Revit MEP 2010, and Revit Structure 2010 are supported running on a Windows partition of an Apple computer using Boot Camp to manage a dual OS configuration.
Boot Camp is a utility provided with the Apple OS X v10.5 operating system (aka “Leopard”) that enables you to create a separate hard drive partition (on Intel-based Apple computers) on which you can install a Microsoft Windows OS. Boot Camp allows you to specify which operating system to boot when starting the computer. If you start the computer in Windows you can install and run Windows applications at native speeds. Note: Boot Camp does not include a Windows OS. You must purchase the Windows Operating System software separately.
How does Boot Camp differ from Virtualization software?
Boot Camp allows the selected operating system to run in native mode on a separate hard drive partition. Virtualization software allows Windows to run as a “guest” within the “host” Apple OS. Using a virtual machine environment you can switch between the two operating systems without restart. At this time, running Autodesk products in a virtual machine environment is not supported.
What about licensing?
Running in Boot Camp, you can use either a standalone or network license of Autodesk® Revit. Using the Boot Camp OS as the network license server is not supported.
Who do I contact for support?
For questions and issues related to the Mac operating systems or Boot Camp, contact Apple. For issues related to Windows operating systems, contact Microsoft. For questions and issues related to Autodesk® Revit, contact Autodesk.
Should I use a Fat32 or an NTFS partition?
When you install Windows, you can choose to format the Windows partition as FAT32 or NTFS. Although a FAT32 Windows partition will allow read/write access from the Apple OS, an NTFS partition is more secure and efficient and supports partitions sizes greater than 32GB. We recommend that you use NTFS when formatting your Boot Camp partition.
After I install Boot Camp, how do I specify which operating system to use?
From within the Mac OS, you can specify the default Operating System using the Startup Disk preference in the System Preferences application.
To select the startup OS dynamically, hold down the Option key when starting the Apple computer and then select the operating system.
Notes for Mac laptop users:
If you are using the laptop keyboard, you may need to press the fn (function) key with the control, alt (option), delete keys to start Windows.
Because a notebook is configured to preserve battery life, the Power Options may need to be adjusted to take full advantage of processor speed. For example, a 2.8 GHz processor may be operating at 1.59 GHz to conserve power using the default Portable/Laptop setting.
I hope this will help all of you with question about running Revit on a Mac. I highly encourage it if you have the funds. I have had my MacBook Pro for almost 3 years and it is cranking away on Revit 2010 and a 22" monitor. I also highly suggest going with 64bit Vista and upgrading to 4gb of Ram is you take the Macbook Pro route.
