- Macbook Pro Revit Revit Student Download Revit For Mac
- Autodesk Revit Student Download
- Does Revit Work On Macs
The day has come–officially! You can now run Autodesk Revit, fully supported on your Mac, and stay in your Mac! Different Forms of Native. For many people in the global architectural industry, the desire to run Revit on Mac computers has been all consuming. Run Revit using Remote Desktop (RDP) This is a best option for me since I love to travel light. I just carry my MacBook Air and use the Microsoft provided 'app' Remote Desktop. In more detail, the MBA isn't high spec enough for serious 3D work. You need a MacBook Pro. I have a top spec MacBook Air, and I love it. I use it for 3d work with SketchUp all the time. I've used PCs and Macs, and at the moment I'm principally a Mac user. Autodesk don't make Revit for OS X. Ignore anyone who tells you that it can be.
¹ Learn more about using Autodesk Revit 2019 or Autodesk Revit LT 2019 software with Boot Camp, part of macOS that enables you to install and run Microsoft Windows (and Windows-based applications) on a Mac® computer or with Parallels Desktop, a system utility available from Parallels, Inc. That allows you to run applications in each operating. Having just started using Revit 2011 on a Macbook Pro under Fusion, I'd be really interested in hearing about how Fusion can be tweaked for maximum performance. I did allocate it 2 cores and 4Gb of RAM but that's all I've changed at the moment.
Q. Why run Autodesk Revit on a Macbook Pro?
Answer: I like the MacBook Pro hardware, which is the main reason why I also want to run my primary professional applications on it. In fact, I 'run' Revit on my MacBook Air as well; read on...
Revit using Bootcamp
As many have known for years, for running Revit natively on Mac hardware, booting directly in to a Windows partition is the best in terms of performance. That is to be expected as you are simply using the Mac hardware as a high end PC. You however give up the Mac OS X goodness in doing so.
Revit using Virtual Machines
My article will focus on this section as I have done some research on the subject, and have results to share. My users 'need' to use Macbook Pro while traveling (for some Mac native apps) and also have to run design software (AutoCAD & Revit).
First thing to consider is the specs of the MBP you would select for this purpose.
I recommend buying the 15” MBP with a 'Discrete Graphics' card.
Macbook Pro Revit Revit Student Download Revit For Mac
These models also have larger L3 cache, and Revit performance is sensitive to its size. You will also take advantage of the better specs running Revit using Bootcamp.
For our virtualization setup, I went with VMware Fusion over Parallels due to a slight edge in graphics performance.
Hardware considerations:
- Max out the RAM to 16GB when ordering the MBP
- Get the MacBook Pro with discrete video card - only available on 15” models with the Radeon R9 (2GB vRAM)
- For models with IG (integrated graphics), do consider the fact that the Video RAM will be taken out from the physical RAM. So, if you allocate 8GB RAM to the Virtual Machine, plus 1GB Video RAM, you have effectively taken away 9GB from the 16GB RAM (leaving only 7GB for the Mac OSX side!)
Virtual Machine settings:
- Allocate only 2 CPUs to the VM (For the most part, Revit only utilizes a single processing core at a time, though there are some tasks where multiple cores could be utilized).
- Allocate a max 50% RAM to the VM (8GB, if physical RAM is 16GB)
- Similarly, allocate a max 50% Video RAM to the VM
- For running 3D programs in the virtual environment, use DirectX (10 or 9) from the 3D acceleration menu, and install the VM Tools in Windows OS.
Note: see Parallels Performance Recommendations
Revit in the cloud (accessed via web browser)
Using Fra.me technology, you could access any Windows application running in the cloud from multitude of devices capable of running a modern browser.
The download speeds were amazing, since data exchange is directly between Frame and Autodesk servers. I was able to install Revit 2017 (without the Medium Material Library) in under 6 minutes!
Fra.me utilizes virtualization technology in the cloud and the VM's are running Windows Server 2012 R2.
My verdict after a quick trial - it's very doable, if you are well served by a high speed connection.
Do a trial, and when you are ready, do pick a pricing plan which allows for GPU usage to run Revit.
Run Revit using Remote Desktop (RDP)
This is a best option for me since I love to travel light. I just carry my MacBook Air and use the Microsoft provided 'app' Remote Desktop. If the wireless connectivity is sufficient, I can easily remote into my workstation and utilize the Revit installation remotely. Since I have the office VPN setup, I can do the same when outside the office.
Do remember to carry at least a standard two button wheel mouse, no matter which option you pick for running Revit on a MacBook Pro!
In all of the above scenarios, consider the licensing costs. Both Windows OS and Revit license will be needed in Bootcamp, VM and Fra.me options.
The RDP option will not consume any extra licenses... Best of Luck!
The day has come–officially! You can now run Autodesk Revit, fully supported on your Mac, and stay in your Mac!
Different Forms of Native
For many people in the global architectural industry, the desire to run Revit on Mac computers has been all consuming. In fact, in a display seen by this author in Autodesk’s San Francisco exhibit space more than four years ago, Autodesk noted that Revit was the most popular Autodesk application running on Apple Mac hardware.
Of course, it never ran natively under OS X. And it still doesn’t! But things are different as of this week.
01 – Autodesk Certified apps (Revit and AutoCAD) running on Frame.
At Autodesk University Autodesk and cloud-computing company Frame announced the complete certification of Autodesk applications in a virtual environment. In a nutshell, run Autodesk Revit or Autodesk AutoCAD in a fully certified and supported cloud environment. (editor’s note: AutoCAD for Mac runs natively on OS X as does the LT version).
What’s different about this official supported version and Autodesk’s previous and still running Boot Camp official support is that under Boot Camp you turn your Mac into a Windows PC. That’s not the Mac experience. So, this is truly the first official support of the Mac version because you run Revit at full speed off the cloud through your browser and you stay in your Mac environment. The solution also works on iOS, Android and Chrome Books not to mention Windows OS’s.
Business Moving to Cloud
Frame pioneered the delivery of rich graphics applications from the cloud directly into any browser with no plugins required. Now, the combination of Frame for Business with certified applications from Autodesk provides unprecedented flexibility, performance and scalability for businesses wanting to deploy their Autodesk workflows in the public cloud.
02 – The process by which the Autodesk certified applications run on the Frame Cloud. Image: Frame and Autodesk, All rights reserved.
“Leading businesses around the world are embracing the public cloud for its rapid access to flexible, scalable and low cost IT resources,” said Nikola Bozinovic, CEO of Frame. ”With Autodesk officially certifying Frame platforms, it’s clear the next wave of public cloud transformation is underway through the delivery of Windows applications.”
The Frame Solution
Frame’s solution with Autodesk is simply a certified and structured version of general Frame accounts which come in Frame for Business and Frame Personal. Subscription to Frame for Business starts at $12.99 USD per user per month.
MORE:Nikola Bozinovic talks to Architosh about Frame: What it can mean for Apple’s Mac Customers
Frame and Autodesk have released guides and documents to help answer the many questions folks may have. You can find a key one here .
To give things a test try (for free) you can visit: www.cadonthecloud.com, a featured Frame site. Below is a video from Frame at Autodesk University 2015 announcing the new offering.
Architosh Analysis
Autodesk Revit Student Download
This author has decided to add an analysis section to this article, originally published on the 3rd of December. Although the article says it, we want to make clear that folks understand that this version of running Autodesk Revit via the cloud puts Revit in a browser on your Mac. It could be Chrome, Safari or other compliant browsers, but it isin the browser, not running as a fully native OS X application.
Does Revit Work On Macs
What is important is that Frame and Autodesk got together and certified this solution, a way to install AutoCAD and Revit (initially) for the Frame Cloud platform. For many this beats the pants off of running Revit under Apple’s Boot Camp software precisely because when you Boot Camp your Mac your Mac becomes a Windows PC in essence—losing all its good Mac-ness! And that’s a very different operating experience than staying in OS X but merely accessing Windows apps like Revit via an OS X based web browser.
While nobody knows for sure, this author strongly believes that Autodesk is exploring many ways for Revit to get on the Mac more natively and various cloud technologies give the company a scaled approach to understand what users will actually do. It is based off of this reaction and use that the company may commit one day to a true native Cocoa and Swift-based Revit for Mac OS X. We have been told directly by Autodesk that the company is looking at ways to move forward with programming strategy such that multiple OS targets are more easily achieved from common core code bases.
To understand that strategy more directly, read our feature on Dynamo Studio running on Mac that we published back in June. It explains the de-coupling and stripping to the core programming efforts that are underway with Dynamo Studio.
[Editor’s note: We added an analysis section, to clarify, based on some feedback. – 7 Dec 2015]
[Editor’s note: We made a small edit in the first line, adding “…, and stay in your Mac!” – 3 Dec 2015]