Matt plans to loyally continue to use Parallels Desktop for both school work and play to achieve his goals. Post academic goals: Matt aspires to use his mechanical engineering degree to find future employment in the automotive world with innovative companies like Bugatti, Tesla, or Ferrari. However, here are some examples of Matt’s academic projects: Utilizing Parallels Desktop with SolidWorks for the Mechanical Engineering Club obviously has the fun built into the project. Evernote® is a great one for notes.” – Matt Google Drive™ and Dropbox are used alternatively for file sharing/group projects. I use Parallels often with SolidWorks when modeling and designing parts for the Auburn Formula team. I use Microsoft® Office (Word, Excel®, PowerPoint®) often for school. It is also the software that I had heard the most about. “I chose Parallels because it is really easy to use and set up compared to the other guys. Additionally, Matt is a member of Auburn University’s Mechanical Engineering Club, where passionate students fabricate and build an actual Formula 1 car from scratch to compete around the world. He utilizes a virtualized environment to run SolidWorks on his MacBook Pro®.

Now, meet a talented mechanical engineering student from Auburn University, Matt Huffman.

If the macOS is slowed, then everything running on the Mac will become slower, and this includes Parallels Desktop and any VMs, and any apps inside those VMs. However much RAM you allocate to your VM, please keep in mind that your host operating system will need a minimum of 4 GB to run macOS®. Running CAD software within a VM isn’t a “light” performance task. Think of RAM like a work bench: the more space you have, the more projects you can actively work on with less space, only smaller projects will be available. Change this setting to two or perhaps four cores to improve the performanceĪllocate more vRAM to your VM: Dedicating more memory to your VM will help. Use multiple cores for the VM: While Parallels Desktop now defaults to two processors for a new VM, if your VM was created before this setting was the default, your VM might only be using one core. Want to know how to fine-tune your virtual machine for performance-intensive tasks such as running CAD programs? Here are our top tips: Want to learn how-to run Windows®-specific CAD (computer-aided design) software on your Mac®? Don’t fret-you absolutely can! SolidWorks® is a widely used 3D design software that runs very well using Parallels Desktop for Mac.

Solidworks mac