Best advice: max out the RAM. We use revit on parallels in my office and have also experimented with revit running natively on bootcamp.
There's no noticeable drop off in performance except for two things. First, unless the MacBook pro has 16 gigs of RAM, there's a lag in photoshop when you've got the PC running.
Many users pointed out to a great benefit of Frame: running Windows-only app, like Revit, on Mac: “As a Mac OS X user I still need access to Windows Apps in a smooth way. I’m an Architect and I’m depended on 3D-CAD tools like REVIT” And Frame was featured in Archintoch, an online magazine for Macintosh CAD and 3D design.
Second, rendering time appears to be increased. The rendering time turns out to be a non-issue because both methods finish over night. There are a few other tips.optimize for the PC OS by turning off all animations and great looking OS graphics, turn off all connections between the windows 10 OS and microsoft (you'll need to hunt for this because the OS installer basically doesn't do this despite asking you about it, no matter your answer), and avoid logging in to your autodesk account.
The only real difference is that parallels doesn't have the right video driver and needs to emulate. There will be a notice about this when you open an autodesk app.but, as I stated before, the noticeable drop off only occurs during rendering. If you cloud render this would not be an issue. Also.you know you can set it up in bootcamp and still access the bootcamp PC through parallels? We tried this, too, but it's a bit more cumbersome since we use our Macs most of the time. We render so infrequently that we use parallels almost exclusively.
![Air Air](https://www.parallels.com/blogs/app/uploads/2018/03/Revit-On-Mac-Win-10.png)
I'm a student too and I've used Revit through Parallels before, although I've mainly used Rhino and V-Ray in the past couple years. One of the comments here mentioned using Boot Camp and linking Parallels to the Boot Camp partition, which I am using now and would recommend. This gives you the option to use Revit in Boot Camp in the event that a Revit file gets pretty large and starts to run slower in Parallels. There are also certain settings in the setup that will make the Windows OS work smoother, so it's important to set it up correctly. I'd be happy to help with that if you'd like. Overall, I still use Parallels now and it works fine with architectural modeling software, so I'd recommend it. At this point the only thing I'm using Parallels for is V-Ray for Rhino, just because they haven't developed it for Rhino for Mac yet (fingers crossed they do someday).
I do all of my modeling on Rhino for Mac, then use Parallels / Boot Camp to render on Rhino for Windows. I do all of my Photoshop/ Illustrator work on the Mac.
I've never regretted going with a MacBook due to its quality, and I've seen several people have serious problems with their Windows PCs at critical times in the semester. I think a Mac and Parallels will get you through anything you need for school without a problem. Everyone's experience is different of course, but that's my two cents. It depends if you're just using revit. I bought a 2016 rMBP 15' for the same reason. I liked using parallels with windows because it's just easier to transfer files and I can use revit while doing everything else I needed on the OS X side.
But revit and 3ds max files got too big for me. I cheaped out and only got 256 gb of storage.
So either get like 1tb of storage or you'll have to use boot camp on an external ssd like me. It took me a 4 hours or so to get it working on my external ssd but worth it. Also if you're just going to be using cloud rendering then the gpu in the macs will be fine but I'm using v-ray on 3ds max which now supports hybrid rendering. I would highly recommend getting a GTX 1080 and an egpu enclosure.
Right now the best option is the sonnet breakaway but if you wait til late september the higher model will be available and it can charge your mac while attached to the egpu, so you'll only need one cable. No issues modeling. Although with bigger models I do get some stuttering, especially if there's a million materials in revit. I was modeling a 8 floor building that was stuttering towards the end. I couldn't get any renderings done on my mac.
So I used revit cloud rendering for a while since it's free for students. If you're on a budget build a pc with ryzen 1700 and a 1080. If you're flexible get the egpu. A 1080 and egpu will cost about 800-900. But you can build a pretty good system for 1200-1300 plus a monitor. Or just stick to cloud rendering. I just didn't like the final end product with it.
Looking for more of the photo realistic renders with vray. It really depends on what software you're going to use. Also if you get a egpu and a mbp with touch bar since all USB c are also thunderbolt 3 compatible, you only see about a 20% decrease in frame rates vs the same gpu in a desktop. But still significantly faster than anything in the mbp. Its not overpaying i have investigated a lot about this. I thought this way too. But then i realized they use very expensive and excelente components in their machines.
A laptop isnt just processor gpu and ram. There are lots of things in there are important. And apple dont give you the cheaper options like windows laptops. Go to the hp and dell sites try to customize their precision 5520 and studio g4 to the same configurations as the macbook pro, have in mind that quadro 1200 used in their laptops are inferior than the amd pro gpus in the macbook pros and you will see apple is actually more affordable than those laptops and vert durable.
Interesting video, I already saw this, but you could find much more of these videos about dell and hp. No one says apple is perfect and cheap, but it's the most reliable right now.my dell laptop died after one week.ONE WEEK.and I had to wait a month for them to fix it.
My hp laptop and my friends hp lap laptop weren't usable after a year. Not cheap laptops either. I have a desktop windows pc now because I can't trust them anymore. But I need something portable now and I don't want it to die or crash on me like other laptops I Owned.