New iMac purchase and Chief X4 question

[DHerber]

As a hard-core, tried-and-true, PC user since 1987, I had enough of the Windows camp, and after heavily researching the purchase, bought a new i7 27" iMac this past week from the Apple store. That said, I want to be able to run Chief X3 (my current version) and upgrade to X4 soon.

I've read the various threads on Bootcamp and VMWare Parallels. The consensus seems to be Bootcamp, which I'll run an OEM version of Windows 7 Professional in 64 bit.

What would be the optimal amount of RAM to use for the entire system when running Chief X4? It comes with 4GB standard but has room for maximum of 16GB.

This thing screams and should work well for the next 3 years. The cool thing is, is when the iMac has served its purpose, there are companies that will buy the iMacs back...Wish that was the situation with my custom build CoolerMaster Cosmos 1000 with RAID 1, Intel Dual Core chip and all the now outdated "good stuff".

Are there any potential conflicts that one should be aware of with running Chief on an iMac? Any possibility on porting Chief to the Mac Lion OSX? AutoCAD 2012 just released their build for the Mac a few months ago.