How to run Creo on Mac

What is Creo

PTC Creo is a powerful CAD software, that helps to plan, design, and visualize all assets of different buildings. Creo has all modern functions and tools for generative design, work sharing, visualization, etc. Despite inexperienced users often finding Creo a little difficult to navigate, the advantages of this product design tool are apparent: wide range of capabilities from simulation to computer-aided manufacturing and product data management. Such giants as Toyota, Volkswagen Group, Airbus, NASA, Boeing uses Creo nowadays. Unfortunately, Creo has only Windows distributive, so if you wish to run Creo on your Mac or MacBook, it’s not so easy as usual. You should run emulators or whole Windows on your Mac. If you want to know, how to do it, please read our article below.

Why Creo doesn’t run on Mac?

There are several reasons why some apps don’t run on Mac. It may be an incompatibility with Mac or macOS version.
Also, MacOS Catalina and Big Sur don’t support 32-bit apps. Most apps developers design new, 64-bit versions of the apps but, despite it, there are still hundreds of apps that can only run on 32-bit Macs. In our case, the reason is that Creo native Macintosh version simply doesn’t exist. At present moment there is no information about the release date and the possibility that Creo will be available for Mac.

How to run Creo on Mac

The most popular solution for running Creo on Mac/MacBook is virtualization software. Despite the fact, that emulators usually use much of the resources of Mac, some of them, for example, Parallels, Virtualbox, or VMWare can help to run different programs on OS X with minimal losses in the performance of your machine. Moreover, some of them are compatible with Directx 11, which can help to run graphically demanding apps and games. Also, you can change desktops and copy any files between your Parallels program (Windows Desktop) and OS X freely. Both Student or architecture versions can be run easily.

Running Creo through Parallels

Creo on mac with parallels

If you wish to run Creo on Mac, Parallels Desktop can be a solution. This is software for Windows virtualization on Mac with the full support of DirectX and GPUs. It allows you to install Windows 10 on Mac with a couple of clicks and switch between macOS and Windows instantly. You can run Windows just like on a regular PC and install Creo on your Mac/Macbook.

According to our experience 32-bit versions of Creo 3 can run on Apple Mac M1 Processors without any issues via Parallels

Download Parallels Desktop

Running Creo though other virtual machines

Another popular software is VMware Fusion. It is a software hypervisor that allows running virtual machines like guest operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, NetWare, and Solaris. Fusion can drive heavy, GPU-intensive applications and games with top 3D graphics. Fusion now provides hardware-accelerated DirectX 11 and OpenGL 4.1 capabilities to virtual machines.

Download VMware Fusion

Also, the most well-known free alternative programs are VirtualBox, Wine, Proton, and QEMU, but you will be required advanced skills to run Creo by them.

Running Creo on remote server

If you have a powerful Windows-based server, and a wide-scale internet connection, another method is a Creo running on Windows on a Server machine (in the cloud, or remote desktop) and looking at the screen from your Mac.

You can use TeamViewer, or other software for this purpose.

Running Creo on Windows 10 using Boot Camp

BootCamp allows users to choose the system to work in on startup, however, you won’t be able to switch between systems like in Parallels. Note, that you need no less than 64 GB on the hard disk of your device. We recommend having 128 GB of free space. After Windows installation completes, your Mac starts up in Windows and opens a ”Welcome to the Boot Camp installer” Window. You will need to reboot your machine every time you switch from Mac to Windows and vice versa. To set up Windows via BootCamp, please, do the following:

Note: Mac M1 chipsets don’t suppport BootCamp

For OS X El Capitan 10.11 or later

Mention, that for MacOS versions prior to OS X El Capitan 10.11 you will need to create bootable Windows USB.

  1. Download Windows ISO file
  2. Open Boot Camp Assistant (Go to Applications > Utilities)
  3. Define the Windows partition size, choose downloaded Windows ISO file
  4. Format Windows partition and go through all Windows installation steps
  5. When Windows boots for the first time, follow on-screen instructions to install Boot Camp and Windows support software (drivers)

Software Alternatives

If all steps were unsuccessful, or you wish to run native software instead of Creo. There is professional software that allows users to export projects to Creo and import projects from it, as well as create similar projects in similar fashion. Among the best alternatives are TurboCAD for Mac, ArchiCAD for Mac, SketchUp, FreeCAD.

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