Using Pro/E on a Mac using VMWare Fusion or BootCamp

I'm running Pro/E Wildfire 4.0 in Windows 7 on my Mac Pro, and it's great. It's even pretty good in Parallels 5 (which I have mapped to my Bootcamp partition).

Prior to this, I had a 1st-gen 17" MacBook Pro (2.16 GHz CoreDuo, 2 GB RAM) running Windows Vista under Bootcamp (with Parallels 4 mapped to it also). Under Bootcamp, the performance was quite good, and your faster Core2Duo processor and twice as much RAM should make considerable difference. Under Parallels it was considerably slower - I used it when I just needed to make a quick adjustment and didn't want to reboot into Windows, but it was borderline unusable. And from what I've heard, Fusion is actually even slower than Parallels.

Sorry these are just qualitative descriptions, but I don't actually have any objective way of measuring its performance. The bottom line is I would definitely go with Bootcamp for an application like this, and to get the best of both worlds, you can also use your Bootcamp installation in Fusion for some light-duty work. Hope this helps!

Yes, I would definitely recommend setting up BootCamp for this - it's relatively painless. (It can create a new partition in the unused space on your OS X disk without erasing the disk.) The BootCamp Assistant has detailed instructions on how to go about setting up a partition and installing Windows on it, but the gist of it is that you have the BootCamp Assistant create a partition for you, then you boot from your Windows install disc and install Windows on that partition. When you've booted into Windows for the first time, pop in your OS 10.6 install disc, and it will install Apple's hardware drivers and utilities for Windows. If you got 10.6 shortly after it came out, the drivers will be version 3.0 for Windows Vista - you'll need to download version BootCamp 3.1 from the Apple support site to ensure full support for Windows 7. (If you have a newer copy of 10.6, it might have the new drivers already - I don't know, as I have an older one.)

I would, however, also recommend keeping VMWare Fusion (assuming you've already paid for it). Once Windows is set up in BootCamp, you can go into Fusion and create a virtual machine that's mapped to it (so you can also use your BootCamp installation as a virtual machine in your Mac if you don't need the full performance of booting into it natively). It should be fairly obvious how to do that - it will probably prompt you automatically. The virtualization also allows for as many different machines with as many OS's as you want - I'm running every version of Windows I've ever had in Parallels, plus a number of free OS's I'm trying out (BSD, Linux, Solaris). In short, it's a good thing to have.

I'd leave VMWare Fusion installed - you can use it later.

When you say your disk is split 50-50 between the 2 OS's, you mean you actually gave Windows 7 its own partition instead of just creating a virtual disk for it in Fusion?

Ah, yes. Basically Fusion has created a "virtual disk" for your Windows 7 installation. You can delete the virtual machine by right- (or control-) clicking on Windows 7 in your virtual machine list in Fusion, selecting "delete", and then clicking "move to trash" when it asks you what to do with the virtual machine file - then your installation of Windows 7 will be gone; no repartitioning or reformatting required.

When you use BootCamp, Windows will get its own permanent partition, but the BootCamp can create that partition on your Mac disk without deleting the rest of the disk, which is very convenient. I would recommend not splitting it exactly 50/50 - after you create the BootCamp partition and boot from the Windows 7 install disc, the Windows installer will prompt you to format the partition that you want to install it on. If you've made the two partitions exactly the same size, you run a greater risk of accidentally selecting the wrong one and overwriting your OS X installation! (I figured that out because I've got two identical hard disks, one for the Mac and the other for Windows - I ended up removing the Mac disk before starting the Windows installation, just to be safe.)

The BootCamp setup seems like a huge undertaking and might seem a bit intimidating, but Apple's instructions are quite clear and thorough - just be sure print them out before you start, since you won't have access to them during the install process otherwise. (When you first open the BootCamp Assistant, there will be a button to view or print the manual.)

No problem; I'm glad to hear everything's worked out!

Hi max987123,
How's pro-e been working for you on the MBP? I'm about to take the plunge myself and am interested if you've had any stability issues or other problems.
Cheers