Altium on Parallels Access

[bckybarnes]

Hi. I'm trying to download Altium designer onto my MacBook but it's not able to run. So I've downloaded Parallels to do that, but I have no actual clue on how to use Parallels Access and I was wondering if someone could guide me through it?

[mettlerr]

Parallels Access I think is not what you need. Parallels Access is used to connect from a remote location to your Mac and display applications running on it (Windows and Mac apps), like Remote Desktop for Windows. You still need a virtual Windows environment on your Mac if you want to use Parallels Access.

I think this is what you need: http://www.parallels.com/products/desktop/
Or, from VMware: http://vmware.com/products/fusion/
EDIT: Or, this OpenSource solution: https://www.virtualbox.org

And: You will need a Windows Licenses to be able to legally run Windows on your Mac.

[Aeternam]

Before buying Parallels you also want to check if Altium is able to run in a virtual box; some (usually high cost) software packages refuse to run if they detect that they are installed in a virtualization environment. A quick google should tell you that.

[Bud]

To my experience Altium Versions newer than 14 will not run properly in Oracle VirtualBox. Older versions including v14 run ok. Altium requires specific graphics capabilities which vm platform may not be able provide.