Net for the API, it's currently not working under either Crossover or Wine. So only certain programs will run flawlessly, some sort of work, some only work with older versions of the program, and some just don't work at all.Īnd that's where Revit comes in. So what's the downside? Well, because Wine and Crossover only mimic Windows, it's always behind 'real' Windows in how much is supported. With Crossover or Wine, it just becomes another program on your Mac, running away with everything else.Īnd heck, Wine's free (open source) and Crossover is cheap. This makes it hard to back up and requires you to 'boot up' the VM every time you want to use them (as well as the VM itself taking up a lot of resources when running, slowing everything else down). Finally, with a Virtual Machine your programs and work are locked away in the Virtual Machine. Also, with Wine and Crossover, you don't have to go and buy a full Windows license just to run it in a Virtual Machine. Virtual Machines can never run full-speed, whereas something running via Wine or Crossover can.

Now, with something like Parallels, or Fusion, why would you want to do this? Well, to start with, Crossover or Wine don't need to actually run Windows in the background to allow Windows programs to work. But, more or less, it will (sometimes) let you run Windows software on a non-Windows machine.

It's way more complex than that, but we don't have room (or the expertise) to really go into it right now. These two packages are a little bit more mind-bending, in that they re-create all the libraries and system files a Windows program may need to run on a non-Windows system.

And while we're currently Parallels users, slowly migrating to Fusion (hurry up with the Beta already!), there actually is a better way to run Windows software on non-Windows systems, and that's using something called Wine, or it's better-made commercial brother, Crossover. Probably the two best known virtualization packages out there for Macs are Fusion and Parallels. Since Revit is Windows-only (sadly) we have to run Windows in it's own little sandbox via what's called a Virtual Machine to use it.

Autodesk revit for mac