Autodesk on MacBook Pro with Retina Display

I'm a student and I had a question about Autodesk on MacBook Pro laptops.

I am aware that I need to put Windows on the laptop but I wasn't sure which version would suit better for Revit 2014, Windows 8 or Windows 7?

I've heard of problems that have occurred on Windows 8 with Revit but I wasn't sure if that was just Revit 2013 and before and if Revit 2014 would be OK on a notebook?

The second query is how is it best to install Windows 7/8 on a MacBook Pro? The internet suggests different ways, whether by Bootcamp or Parallels?

This laptop also doesn't have a disc drive so are how it is possible to install Windows on it?

Welcome to Mac-Forums.

Revit 2014 has Windows 7 as a minimum requirement and there are some apps that are just unhappy with Windows. That being the case, you can stick with Windows 7.

I know of people who run Autocad tools within a Parallels environment and it works pretty well. Running within Parallels (or VMWare Fusion) gives you the flexibility of not having to boot in and out of OS X/Windows..

You want to make sure that your Macbook Pro, however, is equipped to run the virtual environment at a decent pace, so having enough system memory is important. Revit has a 4GB requirement, and you need to account for Windows itself. So if your MBP has 16GB, you'd want to give the VM at least 8GB to make things be happy..

If you have less memory, then perhaps bootcamp is your only option to get decent performance.

With no disc drive, you'll have to use an external drive (any USB version should work)..

Thanks for your response.

How/where is it possible to set all these system memory values?

I have the latest Macbook Pro if that helps guidance.

Thanks