Running Pro100 software on a macOS

Pro100 is a Windows program, and plenty of our customers run it on a Mac every day. How well it runs comes down to two things: which Mac you have, and which method you use to run Windows. Pick the right combination and Pro100 behaves exactly as it does on a PC. Pick the wrong one and it will not usably run at all.

Start here: which Mac do you have?

This one answer decides everything below it. Click the Apple menu in the top-left corner and choose About This Mac.

• If it says Chip — Apple M1, M2, M3, M4, M5 or M6, you have an Apple Silicon Mac. This covers every Mac sold since late 2020.
• If it says Processor — Intel Core, you have an Intel Mac.

Apple Silicon Macs (M1 to M6)

On Apple Silicon you run Windows inside macOS, in a virtual machine. Both run at the same time, you move between them like any other app, and there is no rebooting.

Recommended: Parallels Desktop

Parallels Desktop is what we recommend, and the reason is graphics rather than speed in general. Pro100 is a 3D program — it is drawing a shaded, lit, rotatable room the entire time you are working. Parallels installs a real graphics driver inside Windows and passes that work to your Mac's GPU. Nothing else on this page does that as well.

Parallels will download and install Windows 11 for you as part of its setup, so you do not need to find an ISO or make a USB stick. Once Windows is running, install Pro100 inside it exactly as you would on a PC.

Alternative: VMware Fusion

VMware Fusion runs Pro100 on Apple Silicon as well, and currently carries no licence cost. Its 3D acceleration is not as quick as Parallels, so expect the model to feel heavier as your drawings get larger, and note that Broadcom no longer sells support for it — if you get stuck, community forums are the only help available. It is a sensible choice if budget matters more than smoothness.

Intel Macs

Intel Macs can do something Apple Silicon cannot: run Windows directly on the hardware, with no macOS underneath it.

Boot Camp

Boot Camp Assistant splits your drive and installs Windows as a second operating system. Because Windows gets the whole machine, graphics performance is as good as it gets on a Mac. The trade-offs are real though: you set aside a large, fixed slice of your drive, and you restart the Mac every time you want to switch between Windows and macOS.

Parallels or VMware on an Intel Mac

Both also run on Intel Macs, and both work well. If you switch between macOS and Windows often, the convenience of not rebooting usually outweighs the performance Boot Camp would give you.

What does not work: UTM

UTM comes up often because it is open-source, costs nothing, and the setup genuinely is quick. We tested it on an M5 MacBook Pro. Windows installed, Pro100 installed, and the installer finished without complaint.

It will not run. Installing and running are different things, and this is where the difference shows.

UTM has no DirectX path for a Windows guest. The underlying QEMU engine would need Virgl3D support for Windows and matching drivers, and that work is not being done. Windows sees only a basic display adapter and falls back to rendering 3D in software, on the CPU. Pro100's 3D view is unusable as a result, and the same is true of every other CAD program we are aware of.

If you have already set UTM up, nothing is wrong with your installation. There is simply no graphics acceleration there to use.

Comparing the options

What to give the virtual machine

A virtual machine only gets what you assign it, and the defaults are usually too small for CAD work. When you set yours up:

• Memory: at least 8 GB to Windows. That means a Mac with 16 GB or more, since macOS needs its share too.
• Processor: at least 4 cores.
• Disk: 60 GB or more, leaving room for Windows, Pro100 and your project files.
• Graphics: set the video memory as high as the option allows.

You can change all of these later if the machine feels tight. Shut Windows down first.

One thing that catches people out

Mac keyboards put the Command key (⌘) where a PC puts Ctrl, and Pro100's shortcuts are Windows shortcuts. Copy is Ctrl + C inside Pro100, not Command + C. Parallels and VMware can both remap this, and it is worth doing on day one rather than fighting it for a week.

Still deciding?

Set your Mac up with Parallels Desktop and install the Pro100 demo before you buy anything. It is the same program our customers use, it will tell you in an afternoon whether the performance suits the way you work, and you will have proved the whole setup end to end before committing to a licence.