# Installing VM software and setting up the virtual machine

The ASPECT project provides an experimental
virtual machine containing a fully configured version of
ASPECT. To use this machine, you will need to install
VirtualBox (<http://www.virtualbox.org/>) on your machine, and then import a
virtual machine image that can be downloaded from
<http://www.math.clemson.edu/~heister/dealvm/>. Note, however, that the
machine image is several gigabytes in size and downloading will take a while.
After downloading and installing the virtual image, it is convenient to set up
a shared folder between your host system and the virtual machine to exchange
model files and outputs.